Ruby knew this was bad news for her. If the King’s attention truly shifts, she would lose the respect of the ladies of the court. She won’t allow it.

She was still pulling that thought apart when laughter reached her from below.

She looked down instinctively.

Derek and Kira were crossing the courtyard below, moving through the pool of lamplight near the main fountain. Kira was saying something, one hand pressed dramatically to her forehead as though she were about to faint, her face turned up towards him.

And then Derek, without a word, scooped her clean off the ground, cradling her in his arms as though she weighed nothing at all, while Kira shrieked with laughter and grabbed his shoulders, her legs kicking out as he held her bridal-style against his chest.

He leaned down to whisper something against her ear that made her laugh even harder. Then, the King of Dravengard, the man feared by every pack in the West, began to run toward the palace front doors, carrying his wife like a prize, their joined laughter echoing through the silent night air.

Ruby stood very still at the window.

She had known Derek since they were children. She had been there through his brooding teenage years, through the cold fury that followed the massacre of their families, and through the bitterness of Sandra’s betrayal.

She had been there through every cold, closed year that followed, and she had tried. She had tried in every way she knew how, with competence and loyalty and carefully managed closeness, and the most she had ever earned was a chuckle and a brief, distracted smile.

He had never laughed like that. Not once and not for her.

The thing in her chest was not heartbreak. Ruby had stopped allowing herself heartbreak a long time ago. What it was instead was something older and darker, a jealousy so sharp it had teeth, and a rage underneath it that was very quiet and very dangerous.

Her breathing was coming faster than she wanted it to.

"Ruby? Ruby?!" Sasha’s voice came from somewhere behind her. "Are you alright? You’ve gone pale."

Ruby blindly shoved the wine glass into Sasha’s hands. "I’m fine. I just... I need water. Get me some water!"

She heard Sasha move, heard her quick footsteps moving towards the door. The moment her friend was out of the door, Ruby walked back into the room, reached out and grabbed the edge of her bedsheet. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

She yanked it off the bed in one violent motion, and the scream that came with it was low and brief and muffled in the fabric before it could reach the walls.

She stood there for a moment, breathing hard, the crumpled sheet in her hands.

Then she let go of it, smoothed her hair back and stood up straight.

She would not allow it. She had not spent years building her position inside this palace, had not sacrificed and schemed and endured, to watch a wolfless little werewolf walk in and take everything that should have been hers.

A pregnancy would complicate things significantly. An heir from that runt would change everything.

She would not allow it.

***

"She’s beginning to ask questions."

Declan looked up.

They were now in Derek’s office the next morning. Usually, this was the time of day when Derek was at his sharpest. But today, the coffee in his mug had gone cold, and the digital tablet in front of him remained on the same page it had been for the last twenty minutes.

Declan sat on the other side of the desk, having just finished a lengthy report on the alliance responses from the northern and eastern regions. He had just been about to close the tablet when Derek spoke.

His brow furrowing as he closed the tablet. He didn’t need to ask who ’she’ was. There was only one person currently capable of throwing the King of Dravengard off his axis.

"What questions?" Declan asked carefully, though his internal alarm bells were already starting to ring.

Derek finally looked up, though his eyes seemed to be seeing something else rather than the man sitting in front of him. "She asked me last night why I married her. The real reason."

He had been haunted by the look in Kira’s eyes when she had asked the question. There had been no malice in her voice, no hidden agenda, just a desperate need to know if any part of the last few weeks had been real.

He had spent most of his adult life believing that emotions were a vulnerability, a crack in the armour that his enemies could exploit.

But with Kira, the rules felt different. When he was with her, the crown felt lighter. The world felt less like a chessboard and more like a place worth living in. Was that a good thing? Or was he walking straight into a trap set by his own heart?

Declan set the tablet down and leaned back in his chair. He had been watching Derek closely since they returned from the honeymoon. He had noticed the way the King’s shoulders had lost their permanent tension.

He had noticed that Derek mentioned Kira in conversation far more than any subject warranted. He had seen the way Derek actually smiled—not the cold, mocking smirk he gave his enemies, but a genuine, relaxed expression that made him look like a man instead of a brooding statue.

Just this morning, Declan had walked into the study to find Derek staring at his phone with an expression that had absolutely no business being on the face of a man reviewing border patrol reports.

Declan knew what love looked like. He had watched it dismantle better men than Derek. He knew what it did to him. He also knew that none of that changed where Kira came from.

"And?" Declan prompted, his voice coming out a bit harsher than intended. "I hope you didn’t give her an honest answer."

Derek said nothing.

"Derek." Declan leaned forward. "She is asking questions now. Do you understand what that means? She is probing. She is looking for something she can use." He paused, choosing his next words with the carefulness of a man walking across uncertain ground. "She is a Moonfang woman. Her father is—"

"I know who her father is," Derek said quietly.

"Then you know that trust is a luxury you cannot afford with her," Declan reminded him, his voice dropping to a warning growl.

"Their blood is built on deception. Whatever you’re feeling, you need to remember the mission. And now she is asking why you married her." He shook his head slowly. "Finally, she is trying to extract information from you. I knew it would come."

Derek’s gaze drifted back to the window.

That was what unsettled Declan the most. In the past, a conversation like this would have sharpened Derek immediately, pulled him back into the cold, methodical thinking that had kept him alive and in power since he was twenty years old.

Instead, he looked like a man who was somewhere else entirely, turning something over in his mind that had nothing to do with strategy.

Declan would rather chew broken glass than trust a woman from Moonfang. Everything inside him resisted it, every scar from his own experience, every year of watching Derek carry the weight of what had been done to their people.

If it turned out that Kira was her father’s instrument, that all of this warmth and humour and apparent openness was a performance, then whatever Derek had allowed himself to feel would not just hurt him.

It would destroy him.

And Declan could not watch that happen.