Chapter 221: The Last Time
Chapter 221: The Last Time
Derek froze where he stood, the phone pressed hard to his ear.
You remember what I did to that bitch, Natalie Wolfe, on that table all those years ago?
The words rang through him, and something inside him went very still and very cold. The muscles in his fingers turned weak and useless, and he could no longer hold the phone.
It slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground.
He blinked twice, trying to clear his vision, but the world around him began to blur and fade at the edges, the colours draining away, the sounds going thin and distant.
His heart pounded so loudly that it was all he could hear, a great slow drumbeat filling his skull.
Derek was not a man who stumbled easily. He stood like a mountain, always. But now he stumbled once. Then again, catching himself against the wall.
Through the fog in his brain, he could hear a voice speaking to him. The words sounded muffled and far away, as if they were rising up to him through deep water.
Suddenly, a torrent of agonising memories flashed vividly before his eyes, ripping through his consciousness like wildfire.
He saw his mother on that banquet table. Saw the men crowding around her, closing in like wolves on a wounded doe. Her screams, those terrible, agonised screams that had haunted every night of his life since.
And then, at the end of it, her body. Still and broken. Her lifeless eyes turned toward him, the boy who could do nothing but watch.
His whole body began to tremble, a deep, violent shaking that started in his bones. Rage poured into him, white-hot and total.
And inside him, Leo threw back his head and roared, going feral and taking over his consciousness for the first time since Kira had fled the palace. The beast surged up, wild and unleashed, demanding blood.
He felt a firm hand wrap around his bicep, trying to steady him, but he couldn’t even process who it belonged to.
He didn’t know how he freed himself from the grip, nor could he tell when his body actually began to move.
All he saw, in every direction was red.
***
Back inside Bianca’s living room, Crane was just turning to hand the phone off to one of his men, when the front door flew open with a bang that shook the walls.
"Crane!"
Derek’s roar filled the house, and before a single person in the room could so much as blink, he crossed it like a bolt of lightning and slammed into his uncle.
Crane hit the ground hard, already shifting into his Lycan on pure reflex, fur and claws bursting out of him mid-fall.
But Derek did not care. His pheromones flooded the room, crushing and immense, and though they did little to a Lycan of Crane’s strength, Derek’s raw Alpha power bore down and pinned the older beast flat against the floor.
And then Derek began to rain down blows.
Around them, his men crashed into Crane’s men, claws and fists flying, subduing the three Lycans one by one in a chaos of snarls and snapping jaws.
Bianca scrambled across the floor to her girls the instant the claws left their throats, gathering both terrified children into her arms and dragging them into the far corner, wrapping her trembling body around them as a shield.
Derek pummelled Crane without mercy. And with every single punch, the memories flashed behind his eyes again, fueling his fury.
The table, the men, his mother. The man beneath his fists, the man who had laughed about it on the phone only moments ago.
Crane did not defend himself. He could not. Blow after blow landed, and his Lycan form flickered and gave way, shifting back into the body of a man, his face splitting and swelling under Derek’s knuckles, blood spraying across the floor, until at last his eyes rolled back and consciousness started to slip away from him.
Derek drew back his fist for the final blow. The death blow.
But right before the fist could descend, a hand closed around his wrist, holding it in the air.
Beneath him, Crane lay gurgling, coughing weak red bubbles, barely clinging to life.
Derek’s chest heaved without control. He looked up, his eyes still blazing amber, and found Connor gripping his raised hand, holding it back.
Connor shook his head slowly and jerked his chin toward the corner of the room.
Derek followed his gaze.
Bianca and her two small daughters were huddled there, trembling like leaves in the dead of winter, their faces white with terror, watching the King’s brutality.
"Let’s take this piece of trash back to the pack grounds," Connor said quietly. "We don’t want to traumatise the young girls any further tonight. They’ve seen enough."
Derek didn’t say a single word in response. His mind was still a chaotic mess of rage, but the sight of the terrified children seemed to pull Leo back from the edge of madness.
His breath came in ragged, heaving gasps, his whole body still shaking with the force of what he’d unleashed.
Declan moved in on his other side, and together he and Connor pulled Derek up and off his uncle’s broken body.
Declan quickly stepped in, gently leading the tense King out of the room. As they walked toward the shattered doorway, Declan looked back over his shoulder, giving quick orders to the remaining gammas.
"Connor, get the men to bundle Crane and his men’s unconscious bodies outside immediately. Throw them straight into the back of the transport truck. We move out in ten."
Once Crane and his unconscious henchmen had been bundled into the back of the truck, Connor came back inside.
Bianca and her daughters were still where he’d left them, in the corner, weeping and shaking, clinging to one another.
Connor approached them slowly, carefully, the way one might approach frightened animals. He crouched down a little distance away and spoke gently.
"It’s alright now," he said softly. "You’re safe. All three of you. No one is going to hurt you. I promise you that. It’s over."
The girls’ sobs began to quiet, just a little.
Connor rose, went off into the house, and came back a moment later with a mop and a bucket of water.
Without a word, he set to work, mopping up the blood from the floor, wiping away the worst of the violence that had erupted in their home.
Then he moved about the room, quietly setting things right, lifting the toppled chairs, straightening the table, putting back the small ordinary pieces of their life that had been knocked aside.
Bianca and her daughters watched him in trembling silence.
When he had finished, he crouched down in front of them once more.
"I’m sorry," he said. "For all of this tonight. For the disturbance, for bringing this to your door. But I give you my word, this will be the very last time Lycans ever trouble the peaceful life you chose for yourself here. The last time."
Bianca’s lips parted, but no sound came.
"And your husband is fine," Connor added gently.
"He’s safe. He’s only sleeping, up in the attic. We had to remove him and put him into a deep sleep before any of this began. If we hadn’t, he’d have fought, the moment he saw Crane threatening you and the children. And Crane would have cut him down where he stood, in an instant. We did it to keep him alive. He’ll wake soon, none the worse for it."
At last, Bianca found her voice. "Thank you," she whispered, fresh tears spilling, but different ones now. "Thank you." She swallowed. "And Brian? My son. Is he... is he alright?"
Connor offered her a small, kind smile. "That," he said, "is a question best left for his wife to answer, I’m afraid."
He straightened, walked out of the room, and returned carrying a suitcase. He set it on the table and opened it. It was filled, edge to edge, with money.
"This is from the King," Connor said. "For the damages, and for everything you’ve been put through."
"You can use it to start again somewhere new, somewhere far from here, if you no longer feel comfortable staying in this place. The choice is yours. You’ll have the means, either way."
Bianca stared at the suitcase, then up at him, her brow creasing through her tears.
"How..." she breathed. "How did you know? How did you know that monster was coming for my family tonight?"
Connor only smiled at her.