"Connor! Let her go this instant!"

Kira was on her feet in an instant, her heart hammering against her ribs as she stared at the scene.

"She’s done nothing to me. I am perfectly fine, Connor. I just let my emotions get the best of me, that is all."

Connor did not move straight away. He stood there, his hand still wrapped around Claudia’s throat, completely ignoring the poor woman’s desperate gasps for air, and staring down at her with cold suspicion, weighing whether one word from his queen was enough to undo whatever instinct had brought him charging across the room.

"Connor, please. Look at me," Kira pleaded, softening her voice but keeping it firm. "I am commanding you as your queen. Let her go."

Finally, after what felt like eternity, Connor slowly retracted his long, wicked claws, and released his iron grip on Claudia’s neck and took a single step backward. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

He did not go far, though. He stood right beside the table, crossing his arms over his massive chest, glaring at Claudia with an expression that loudly said he would rather chew off his own foot than leave Kira’s side again.

Claudia slumped back into her chair, clutching her bruised neck. She sucked in sharp breaths, coughing violently as the air rushed back into her lungs.

Her face was completely pale, and she looked at Connor as if he were the literal bogeyman.

Kira let out a long sigh, turning her attention back to her overprotective guard detail.

"Connor, I need you and the others to leave us. Go back outside. I am completely safe, I promise you."

Connor hesitated. He looked at Kira, then at the trembling Claudia, and then back at Kira. His jaw clenched tight, clearly hating the idea of leaving his queen alone with a stranger who had just made her cry.

But seeing the stubborn look on Kira’s face, he knew he had no choice. With a deep, reluctant sigh, he gestured with his head, signalling the other guards to follow him. He turned on his heel and marched back towards the entrance.

Kira watched them go, only relaxing when the restaurant doors finally swung shut behind them. She turned back to the shaking woman across from her, immediately pushing a fresh glass of water towards her.

"I am so sorry about him," Kira said, her voice full of genuine apology. "Are you okay? He didn’t break anything, did he?"

Claudia managed a small, shaky smile, though she kept one eye on the door just in case. She picked up the glass with trembling fingers and took a long, grateful drink. Once her coughing fit finally stopped and she got her breath back, she looked at Kira.

"You truly are your mother’s daughter," she whispered. "She would have done exactly the same. Defended a stranger from her own guards."

She drank once more and gathered herself. When she looked up again, her eyes had softened with memory.

"We didn’t abandon you. We all believed you were dead, my Queen," Claudia continued, setting the glass down.

"For twenty years, we mourned you as dead. It was not until that day, when I saw you at the mall, that I realised that Claire’s daughter was alive after all."

Kira lowered herself slowly back into her chair.

"You keep saying my mother is alive," she said carefully. "But I’ve been told my whole life that she died. Lydia explicitly told me that Rolf strangled her to death in a fit of rage."

Claudia nodded. "He strangled her, yes. Or he tried to."

Her hands quivered on the table. "You see, when Rolf found out that Claire was pregnant with Alpha Ethan’s child, he completely lost his mind."

"He was furious, completely consumed by jealousy and hatred, and he wanted to kill her right then and there. But your mother was clever. She managed to escape his clutches that very night. She ran as far away as her legs could carry her, hiding in a small, quiet human territory where she lived under the radar with a kind old human woman."

Kira leaned forward. "So, if she escaped, how did I get separated from my mother and my brother? How on earth did I end up back in the hands of that monster Rolf?"

Claudia took another sip of water, her eyes full of pity.

"Rolf never stopped hunting her. He finally found her hiding spot, but the timing could not have been worse. The night he came for her, Claire had just gone into labour. It was a chaotic, terrifying night. She had only just given birth to the first child—your twin brother, Braxton.

Her voice dropped. "Knowing that Rolf was outside the door, Claire threw the baby into the arms of the old human woman, begging her to flee into the night and make sure the boy found his real father, Alpha Ethan."

She looked at Kira, and shook her head slowly, with terrible gentleness.

"But you... you came a little late, my queen. You hadn’t yet descended when Rolf broke through the door. He took her, still heavy with you, back to Moonfang that very night. You were born there, in his house. And it was there, that same night, that he wrapped his hands around her throat."

Kira’s chest ached. Tears threatened to spill again, but she forced them back.

"But why? Why go through all the trouble of bringing her all the way back to Moonfang if his only goal was to kill her? He could have easily murdered her right there in the human territory and saved himself the burden."

Claudia let out a dry, bitter laugh.

"Because Rolf is a clever, manipulative bastard. He wanted to keep his own hands completely clean of the blame.

She set the glass down again. "He had a reputation to protect. He wanted the entire pack to believe his pathetic, tragic story—the narrative that he loved her so deeply, even after she supposedly cheated on him and broke his heart. Most importantly, he wanted the pack to believe she died of natural complications during childbirth."

She paused. "If she died at home, in a medical bed, he was the grieving husband. But a body found in a human settlement, throttled? That would raise questions."

Kira took a deep, shuddering breath, rubbing her temples. It was an overwhelming mountain of information to take in all at once. Her whole life had been a carefully constructed lie built by a murderer.

"Alright," Kira said, trying to steady her voice. "Let us say all of this is true. After finding out exactly who I was... why did you or Braxton keep it a secret? Why didn’t he say anything to me when we met? Why didn’t he just announce it to the world?"

Claudia leaned in closer, her voice dropping low.

"Alpha Braxton meant to tell you everything," she said. "He truly did. But after he actually met you and spent time around you, he realised something quite alarming."

Kira’s brows drew together.

"You did not have a single clue about what you truly are. He saw that your powers hadn’t even manifested yet, and forcing that truth on you might have put you in harms way."

"What are you talking about?" Kira asked. "Manifested what?"

Claudia looked around the restaurant nervously, her voice dropping even lower, completely serious.

"You’re the Nexus, my Queen."

The words hung in the air between them.

"You’ve reached the age where your power comes fully into its own," Claudia went on quietly. "It’s waking inside you, right now, whether you feel it or not. And that is the real reason, the Umbras have been crawling out of their hiding holes after all these years. They can smell it. Your growing power is acting like a beacon, drawing them out of the shadows straight to you."

Kira went completely still, the blood running cold in her veins.

She stared at the woman across the table, every word landing like a stone dropped into deep water, the meaning of it spreading out slowly through her in cold, widening rings.

The Nexus. The thing the Umbras had attacked Snow Crest hunting for. The thing she had written about in her own diary, never once imagining it could be her.

But before she could even open her mouth to demand a proper explanation, the peaceful silence of the night was completely broken.

The glass entrance doors shattered inward with a crash, raining shards across the marble floor.

A half shifted Connor came tearing through the wreckage, a blur of fur and fury, locked in a vicious, snarling fight with three dark wolves that had come crashing in behind him.

Kira’s heart dropped straight through the floor.

She knew, with sickening certainty, exactly what those three creatures were.

Umbras.