LYSANDER

I stood outside the infirmary with wolfsbane powder hidden in my pocket and my resolve crumbling like wet paper.

The decision that had been made days ago. Nights added, if I counted the sleepless nights spent cataloging my father’s crimes against my mother. Against every decent person who’d crossed his path. Against the stability of our entire pack. I’d rehearsed the justifications until they felt like truth. He was a monster. He needed to be stopped. Someone had to do it.

But knowing something and acting on it still lived in different worlds entirely.

My hand closed around the vial through the fabric. The glass felt too small, too fragile to contain something capable of hurting and ending a life. Especially his life. The man who’d taught me to shift. Who’d sat with me through my first rut and explained how to anchor myself when the animal tried to take over. Who’d looked at me with something almost like pride when I’d passed his trials.

Weak. That’s what I was. Standing here and still somehow debating whether to murder my own father despite convincing myself that I had crossed that water.

He was chained and vulnerable. Exactly where I needed him to be. This was the ideal situation.

It only made it clearer to me that I was still the kind of pathetic creature he’d have despised.

The healers’ wing was empty. They’d all sequestered themselves for the heat, driven into their own rooms and outside in the field where the orgy was occurring, by biology they couldn’t control. The scent of arousal hung thick in the air, a cloying sweetness that did nothing to stir my own instincts. The suppressants I’d taken saw to that. I’d needed my head clear for this. Needed to be the one person in the entire compound who wasn’t ruled by base urges.

I left the infirmary and walked toward my mother’s chambers. Each step felt measured. Final. Like walking toward an execution I’d both scheduled and dreaded in equal measure.

The smell hit me before I reached the hallway.

Blood. It was fresh and copper-bright.

Whay the fuck was that the case? Without slight hesitation, I broke into a run. The door to my mother’s chambers rattled in its frame, shaking with impacts from inside. Metal shrieked and I could swear that I heard someone scream. Then silence dropped like a blade.

I pressed myself against the wall beside the door and waited. My heart hammered against my ribs. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be the one in control. The one who chose the moment.

The rattling then stopped.

I pulled the wolfsbane from my pocket and shoved it deep into my coat before my hands found the door handle. It was locked.

I twisted harder, putting my weight into it. Still, the mechanism held fast.

Fine.

I stepped back and drove my shoulder into the wood. The frame splintered on the second impact. The third sent the door flying inward, torn half off its hinges.

The scene inside made no sense at first.

My father stood in the center of the room with one platinum chain still attached to the ceiling and the other dangling free from his wrist. His chest heaved with labored breathing. Blood covered his face in red streams that dripped from his nose and mouth. His eyes burned gold. Pure rut gold without a trace of humanity left in them.

And Hazel.

Hazel stood three feet away, covered in white powder and blood. Her nightdress clung to her body. Her lip was torn nearly in half. Her face was split open from what I could only deduce was a chain strike and that had left her cheek hanging in a flap of ruined flesh.

What was she doing here?

The question formed and died in the same instant as understanding crashed down. The nightdress. The powder covering them both. The blood on my father’s mouth. The absolute terror in her eyes as she spotted me in the doorway.

Despite everything she’d said. Despite the political betrothal and the careful dance we’d been performing. She’d been plotting. The very thing I had warned her not to do.

She’d tried to seduce my father during his heat and now... and now she was collateral damage. A risk that I did not want present.

She bolted toward me and tried to slip past while I was still processing. Her broken wrist cradled against her chest. Blood was pouring from wounds that would scar even with healing.

No... I really couldn’t leave witnesses.

The thought arrived fully formed. It was cold, as it was practical. If she lived, she’d talk. She’d spin this into something that ended with me executed for patricide and benefited her somehow. If she did not do that, she’d use it as leverage to keep herself around. She’d destroy everything before I’d even had the chance to finish what I’d started.

My palm caught her face like a wall.

Her head snapped back. I felt the impact travel up my arm as her skull connected with the doorframe. It was followed by a wet crack that might have been bone. I didn’t stop. I slammed her head into the wood again. And again. And again until I felt something give, and she went limp in my grip.

She crumpled to the floor.

I kicked her deeper into the room and pulled the broken door closed behind me. The lock was destroyed, but I wedged it shut well enough.

"Good. You dealt with that bitch." My father’s voice came rough and strained, still more animal than man. "You will not imagine what she tried to do."

I said nothing. My mind was racing through new calculations. New variables that I hadn’t planned for.

"Why are you not participating in the heat?" He tilted his head. Blood still streamed from his nose, where something must have happened between them. "Most of the unmated males are rutting themselves unconscious in the common areas."

"I do not feel the heat." The truth came easily. "I am on suppressants right now."

His eyes gleamed brighter. Gold bleeding into the temporal green until there was nothing else left. "Drag the bitch to a cell. I am still not in full control of myself, and the last thing I want is an accident to happen."

"That will not be necessary." I pulled the wolfsbane from my pocket. "She dies too." 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

His head snapped toward me. The animal receded again just enough for confusion to show through. "What does that mean?"

I ran at him.

My fist caught his nose before he could process the movement. The cartilage crunched under my knuckles. He staggered backward but the ceiling chain held him upright. His eyes flew open. Gold and green warring as comprehension tried to fight through the rut haze.

"What the fuck—"

I did not hold back as I threw the wolfsbane into his face.

The powder exploded across his skin. It began burning immediately. The chemical fire that ate through flesh wherever it touched. He screamed and clawed at his face, but the worst of it had gotten into his eyes. I watched them cloud over. I watched the tissue start to blister and weep as the poison did its work.

He went blind in seconds.

The chain in his free hand swung wildly. He wielded it like a whip, lashing out at sounds and movement he could no longer see. The platinum caught the dresser and shattered it into splinters. It cracked the mirror. It hit the marble floor hard enough to leave gouges in the stone.

It caught Hazel who was unconscious across the throat. Red bloomed across her neck where she laid.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Lysander?" The chain whistled through the air again. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Yes."

I moved behind him as I spoke. His head whipped toward my voice, but I was already gone. The chain smashed into the wall where I’d been standing.

I caught his free hand mid-swing and twisted and snapped the bone clean. He howled and started pulling at the ceiling chain with his other hand, trying to rip it free through sheer force.

I gathered the loose chain from the floor and looped it around his throat.

He headbutted me before I could tighten it. Stars exploded across my vision. My grip loosened. He grabbed the ceiling chain with his good hand and hauled himself up, putting his full weight into tearing the anchor point free.

"Have you gone mad, son?" Plaster rained down from above. The anchor groaned under the strain. "You want me dead?"

I leaped up and drove my fist into his skull with everything I had. Something rattled inside his head. The impact sent him swinging backward on the chain. He would have hit the ground if the restraint hadn’t caught him.

"I have to protect her." The words came out steady despite the blood running down my face. "We might have been able to take your madness. But some people cannot. Like mother."

"I loved your mother." He spat blood. His ruined eyes wept clear fluid down his cheeks. "She happened to be disappointingly weak. But I gave her everything I could. My love—"