Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 287

Chapter 287: Too Late

"I have to find him."

They were moving fast down the corridor, Derek half a step ahead, Kira’s hand still locked in his.

"The Shadow King." She glanced up at him. "It’s not enough to fight them out there. Every single Umbra in this place is running off one tether, and every tether runs back to him. Kill enough of them and he’ll simply make more. He’s been making them for years."

"I’m not letting you go near that thing," Derek said.

"No." She said it gently, because she knew exactly what she was asking him to swallow. "I need to go. I need to stop him. That’s what I’m for, Derek. It’s the whole reason they’ve spent my entire life trying to get their hands on me."

He was quiet for three long strides.

"I’m not letting you go there alone," he said. "Not for a second."

Kira’s mouth twitched. "That’s fair."

"It isn’t up for discussion."

"I said it was fair."

They stepped through an open set of double doors into a vast room that must once have been a ballroom. The high ceiling was lost in shadow. Broken chandeliers hung at odd angles. All across the polished floor Lycans and Umbras tore into one another.

A fresh group of Umbras turned toward them at once.

Derek and Kira met the attack side by side.

They fought like they’d rehearsed it a hundred times. Kira went low and Derek went high without either of them signalling.

She’d feel him shift his weight behind her and know to duck, and he’d feel her turn and know to catch what came round the other side. When she moved left he was already covering the space she’d left behind. When he lunged she was already there to close the gap.

Both of them didn’t shif, they fought in their human form.

Light rose up through Kira, spilling out along her arms and pouring off her skin until the marble around her feet glowed pale gold.

She didn’t strike the Umbras. She raised a hand and they came apart anyway, dropping where they stood with their faces going blank a half-second before their bodies caught up.

Somewhere off to her right, a black Lycan was fighting.

She noticed it in the middle of taking down three at once, and the noticing snagged on something.

He was close. Closer than any stranger had reason to be, working the space at her flank as though he’d been assigned to it, tearing through anything that got within ten feet of her back.

Something about him pulled at her. Something familiar, sitting just under the surface where she couldn’t get a grip on it.

She turned her head and looked at him properly for half a second. The Lycan didn’t look back and Kira turned away and kept fighting.

But they were coming faster now. For every one she unmade, two more poured in through the far doors, and she could see it happening across the whole room, the Lycans being pushed slowly back towards the walls.

Derek. She caught a claw on her forearm and threw its owner across the floor. It’s not working. We could stand here all night and it wouldn’t matter.

I see it.

They don’t run out. That’s the point of them, they don’t run out. She dropped another two. The only way any of them die is if I find him and end him. All of this stops the second he does.

Then we find him.

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