An Hour Earlier... 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"How does that bastard still have the nerve to go ahead with the coronation? After everything?"

Crane paced the length of his room, like a man who had swallowed a hornet’s nest.

Brian sat slumped in an armchair, watching his father’s frantic pacing with the tired expression of someone who had seen this show too many times. He didn’t say a word. He just waited for the storm to pass.

Crane reached the window and stopped, looking down at the courtyard where the guests had begun to arrive.

Alphas and high-ranking Lycans, their cars rolling in one after another, doors opening, finery spilling out across the steps. The whole of the upper tier of Lycan society, gathering to watch his nephew take a crown.

"Think, Brian. Think!" Crane snapped, turning sharply. "Why are you suddenly so nonchalant about him being crowned?"

Brian sighed. "Father, you’ve been the one acting nonchalant about the coronation. Why the sudden panic now?"

Crane turned from the window. "That was before I learned the truth. Before I knew the real reason that bastard married a werewolf girl."

He had learned it from Ruby. She had mind-linked him during her trial, desperate, spilling everything she knew about Derek and the queen’s marriage, begging him to use it to divert attention from her own case.

Crane had listened to every word. And then he had done nothing for Ruby at all. He had filed it away, neatly, for himself.

A Lycan in love with his wife was a vulnerable thing. That was the weapon Crane had been quietly building toward all this time.

But the truth Ruby had handed him changed the shape of everything, and now he was faced with two possibilities and no way yet to tell them apart.

Either Derek had genuinely fallen for the girl and abandoned his original plan entirely.

Or Derek was still committed to that plan, and the love was nothing but a performance to keep everyone, Crane included, looking the wrong way.

Crane needed to know which Derek he was dealing with before the crown touched his head.

Because a crowned king was a very different animal from a regent. The moment Derek was officially King of Dravengard, his position became legally untouchable, and every door Crane still had open would slam shut at once.

Trying to stall the coronation hadn’t been about stopping it. It had been about buying time. Time to confirm which man he was facing, and to position himself accordingly, before that window closed for good.

But Derek had not fallen for that trap, and it infuriated Crane more than anything.

"Then why not simply tell Nana and the others about his original plan?" Brian’s voice dragged him out of his thoughts. "Expose it, instead of these schemes that keep collapsing one after another?"

Crane rounded on him with a glare. "Because you are, as ever, stupid and weak." His voice dripped contempt.

"Do you imagine Derek and that old mother of mine wouldn’t find a way to twist it, to explain it away, to crown him regardless?

"Have you forgotten what happened eight years ago? When they kicked you off the throne just because Derek started speaking again? Why do you think they won’t make another excuse this time?"

He turned to the window again.

"And then, the moment the crown is his, he turns and crushes everyone who dared move against him. We do not show our hand while he can still punish us for it."

He shook his head in disgust. "Use your brain. Just once."

Brian sighed and leaned back. "Then leave him be, Father. Maybe this is simply fate. Maybe the throne was never meant for you, or for me. Maybe it was always meant to be his."

Crane crossed the room in three strides, seized Brian by the collar, and hauled him up out of the chair.

"Coward," he spat. "This. This is exactly why your younger cousin will always stand head and shoulders above you. You should be ashamed to call yourself my son."

Brian looked into his father’s eyes, and slowly, he nodded.

"You’re right," he said quietly. "Derek is better than me. Of course he is. I’m an illegitimate child. Your bastard son after all. What claim do I have to any inheritance at all?"

Crane’s hand cracked across his face.

Brian’s head snapped to the side. He brought a hand up to his cheek, but he said nothing. He did not flinch away. He simply held it there.

"Dravengard belongs to me," Crane said, his voice low and shaking with something old and rotten.

"Can you not see it? We were wronged from the very beginning. I had an heir before my twin brother Maurice had a single child. Why was he crowned and not I? I drew breath in this world five minutes before he did. Five minutes. The throne was mine by every right that matters."

He stared at his son.

"Everything I have done, I have done to carve out a place for you in this kingdom. A position. A future. And you stand there and dare to lecture me about fate."

Brian chuckled and wiped the blood from the corner of his lip with his thumb and looked at it.

"You’ve done nothing for me," he said. "Nothing. You used me. That’s all I’ve ever been to you. A pawn. A piece to push across the board toward whatever you couldn’t take for yourself." He met his father’s eyes. "Your dirty little instrument."

"Brian—"

"You’ve spent lives, Father. Real lives. And for what?" Brian’s voice rose. "Kai is lying in a bed right now, fighting to breathe, for something he knew nothing about. Nothing. He was never part of any of this."

Crane’s brow creased. "Why the fuck do you suddenly care about Kai?"

"Because he’s my cousin too. Because he has nothing to do with your war." Brian’s jaw tightened.

"If your younger brother wronged you, fine, that’s between you and a dead man. But what did your sister ever do to you? What did Aunt Angelica do, that you’d drag her son into it and leave him bleeding out on the stones? Do you care about family at all?"

Crane laughed. It was a cold, cruel, scraping sound.

"You’re just as evil as I am, boy. Don’t pretend otherwise." His eyes glittered.

"If you’re so righteous, so full of principle, then tell me. Why have you been mooning over your cousin’s wife like a lovesick dog?

"Why have you spent your whole life wanting everything Derek has? Why did you crawl into bed with his woman before this one? Don’t you dare climb up onto a moral high ground with me."

"I am nothing like you." Brian’s voice was hard. "I would never cause the deaths of my own people because a woman wouldn’t open her legs for me."

Crane’s hand shot out and caught his collar again, dragging him close.

"Don’t be foolish, boy. And don’t even think about trying anything clever." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Because if you do, I will find that whore of a mother of yours, and I will open her throat myself."

"You bastard." Brian bared his teeth, a snarl building low in his chest. "You forced yourself on her. And you have the gall to call her a whore?"

Crane smiled. Slow and sinister.

"And I won’t stop there, Brian. Oh, no. First her. Then that little spawn of yours. And after that..." His smile widened.

"After that, I’ll come for your latest obsession. That pretty little werewolf queen." He leaned in close. "Don’t bite the hand that’s fed you all your life, boy. You’ll starve."

He shoved Brian away, hard, sending him stumbling back.

"Now," Crane said, straightening his jacket, smoothing it down as though nothing at all had happened. "Do exactly what I tell you. Or you’ll see precisely what I’m capable of."