“You’re needed for questioning,” one of the younger guards said, still avoiding my eyes. He couldn’t meet my gaze and condemn me simultaneously.
Damon will fix this. He has to. The thought repeated like a mantra as they opened the SUV’s door. My mate wouldn’t let them railroad me for his brother’s murder. The bond between us meant something. The claiming that had upended both our lives had to count for protection when I needed it most.
As guards loaded me into the armored vehicle, I spotted my parents being similarly detained, and realized with cold certainty that the mate bond I trusted for protection had gone completely silent. My mother stood rigid between guards, her morning robe doing little to disguise the indignity of her detention. My father appeared to be arguing with his escorts, his badge meaning nothing against Crown authority investigating regicide.
They’d taken my entire family. The message was clear. The Thornbacks would answer for the dead prince in their daughter’s room.
The vehicle door slammed with finality. Through tinted windows, I watched my childhood home recede. Earlier thismorning I’d been the Lycan King’s mate, elevated however unwillingly to power. Today I was a murder suspect, my family detained.
Laziel’s sightless eyes haunted me as we drove toward whatever justice awaited. The man who’d smiled and brought me whiskey two nights ago. Who’d stood too close and touched too freely but had never deserved such savagery. Who now lay in pieces in my room while the world decided I must be guilty.
After all, who else had access to my room? Who else had the motive to kill the alpha prince? Who else made such a convenient villain in the story of power and passion gone wrong?
The guards drove in silence while I pressed my hand to the mate mark that no longer brought comfort. Decisions were being made somewhere at the Kildare house that would determine whether I lived to see another dawn.
And through it all, the bond that should have protected me remained silent as the grave.
7
— • —
Damon
The great hall reeked of death and politics when I arrived, summoned from my private study where I’d been reviewing territory reports. Someone had burst through my door, breathless, speaking of tragedy and blood, but nothing prepared me for the scene that waited.
My mother, Lucinda Kildare, the image of poise and perfection, stood over a covered form, her usual composure shattered into something raw and terrifying. When attendants pulled back the sheet, my brother’s mutilated body seemed impossible. Laziel was many things. Competitive, charming, occasionally cruel. But he was blood. The only family besides Lucinda who shared memories of our father’s better years.
The wounds defied comprehension. Claw marks had opened him from throat to groin, the kind of savage attack that spoke of ragebeyond reason. His face, always so animated in life, was frozen in an expression of shock. As if he couldn’t believe what was happening even as it killed him. Blood had pooled beneath him, dark and sticky on the marble floors we’d played on as children.
Council members ringed the scene like vultures, their royal suits making them look like judgy executioners. They maintained careful silence, but I could read their thoughts in the way they shifted, the glances they exchanged.
“Your omega whore did this.” My mother’s accusation cut through my emotional paralysis. Her perfectly manicured nails had left crescents in her palms, blood dripping onto marble floors. The sight of my mother drawing her own blood in grief made a crack inside my chest. She’d always been the strongest among us, the one who held the family together after Father’s death. Now she looked broken, aged a decade in a single night.
The gathered council maintained careful neutrality, but I read judgment in their calculating eyes. An omega in a heat frenzy, they were thinking.
The mate bond thrummed with Rhea’s distant panic, but rage drowned out its insistence on her innocence. How convenient that she’d gone into heat at my ceremony. How convenient that I’d abandoned everything to claim her. And now my brother was dead.
My brother’s blood demanded justice. The thought crystallized as I stared at his ruined form. Laziel and I had competed for everything growing up. Father’s attention, mother’s pride, the best training masters. But he was still my brother. Still the boy who’d snuck into my room during thunderstorms, who’d takenbeatings meant for me when Father was in his rages. Whatever our rivalry, we were blood.
Harrison, eldest of the council, cleared his throat. The sound echoed in the vast hall, drawing every eye. He’d served my father and grandfather before me, his loyalty to the bloodline absolute. If he spoke against Rhea, the others would follow.
“We should examine the evidence before making accusations,” he said carefully. “The Lycan King deserves facts, not speculation.”
But even as he spoke, I saw the doubt in his eyes. An omega in heat was capable of violence beyond their normal strength. It was documented, studied, warned against. That’s why unmated omegas were supposed to be secured during their heats, kept safe from others and others safe from them. Instead, I’d claimed her publicly, let her heat drive me to abandon every protocol.
The council shifted, waiting for my response. They expected leadership, decisions, the kind of cold justice my father would have dispensed without hesitation. But all I could see was my brother’s blood and my mother’s tears, while the mate bond pulled at me like hooks in my chest.
“Bring me everything,” I commanded, my voice steadier than I felt. “Every piece of evidence, every witness statement. I want to know how this happened.”
They scattered to obey, leaving me alone with my mother and my brother’s corpse. Lucinda hadn’t moved, hadn’t stopped staring at Laziel like she could will him back to life through sheer force of grief.
My fists clenched hard enough to crush bones. The mate bond pulsed again, carrying Rhea’s growing terror. Part of me wanted to go to her, to protect what was mine. But the larger part, the part staring at my brother’s corpse, wanted answers that only evidence could provide.
Harrison returned with preliminary findings, presenting them with clinical detachment. Time of death: between midnight and three AM. Cause: massive trauma from claws, the wounds showing characteristic curved patterns. Location: Rhea’s room at the Thornback’s house. The evidence built like walls around Rhea, each fact another stone. Security footage showed Laziel entering the Thornback wing around midnight, but nothing after. The cameras mysteriously malfunctioned for crucial hours.
“The malfunction is suspicious,” Harrison admitted. “But it could be a coincidence. The Thornback wing hasn’t been updated in years.”
Or it could be deliberate. Someone covering their tracks. The thought made acid rise in my throat. Had Rhea planned this? Used her heat as bait, knowing I wouldn’t be able to resist? The timing was too perfect, too convenient.
