"Have mercy on me, Your Highness. I pledge my loyalty to you." The man’s voice cracked under the weight of his own desperation. "I just need to see my son. He is all I have left."

Kira looked at him for a long moment.

She recognised him, not as someone she knew well, but as someone she had seen before in the worst possible circumstances. Milo. The mate of the late Lara Vaughn, the woman who had poisoned her tea on the day of the queen’s blessing ceremony.

She remembered him from that day, too, kneeling and pleading in much the same way, swearing loyalty if only she would spare him for the sake of his young son.

She had been so consumed by shock and anger then that she had barely registered Lara’s death or Milo’s desperate pleas for mercy.

But that was then.

She understood now, in a way she hadn’t before, what it meant to be caught between loyalty to someone you loved and the consequences of choices that went wrong.

Getting to know their pain and grief gave her a certain kind of clarity. She could not bring herself to punish them with the same cruelty they had shown her.

She would never excuse what had been done to her. But Milo had been an accomplice who seemed ready to repent then, and even more so now. She didn’t want his son growing up with no parents because of her.

"What is his case?" she asked, turning her attention to the gamma standing to her left with the folder of files.

The gamma blinked at her, visibly caught off guard. "Your Highness, he has not been here very long—"

"I asked for his case," Kira said quietly. "Please answer the question."

The gamma conceded with a small bow and opened the folder. "His full name is Milo Vaughn. Formerly a trained gamma of Dravengard. Married to the late Mrs Lara Vaughn, the palace herb supplier. He has a three-year-old son with special needs, who is currently in hospital custody."

He paused. "Charge: treason by complicity."

Milo’s hands came together in front of him, fingers laced tight, knuckles pale. Tears ran freely down his face. "I promise on my son’s life, Your Highness. I will live quietly. I will never trouble you or His Grace again. You have my word."

Kira held his gaze for a moment, then made her decision.

"I’m going to hold you to that promise," she said. "Every person in this corridor is my witness. If you break it, there will be no second conversation." She looked at the gamma. "Release him."

The gamma’s mouth opened. "But Your Highness, he has only just—"

"You heard the Queen," Nana cut in sharply. "Her word is law here. If she says release him, then release him."

The gamma snapped his mouth shut, muttered a quick apology, and moved to unlock the cell.

Kira’s heart swelled with a quiet sense of peace and joy as she glanced at Nana and found her already smiling in the way she always looked when she was quietly proud of something. Kira smiled back.

For the first time in a long while, she felt truly powerful. The feeling coursed through her veins like something alive, warm and electric. That strange sensation, like something stirring just beneath the surface of her skin.

It had been happening more frequently, always arriving uninvited at moments of strong feeling, and she still had no name for it.

Milo stepped out of the cell, crossed to her immediately, dropped to both knees, and pressed his lips to her feet.

Kira went very still, unsure what to do with her hands.

"It is a gesture of deep loyalty," Nana said beside her, low and amused. "Accept it gracefully."

Kira accepted it, though gracefully was doing a lot of work in that sentence.

When Milo rose, his face was wet, and his shoulders had lost the rigid, desperate set they had carried since she walked in. He looked like a man who had just been handed back something he thought was gone for good.

"You did well," Nana said, as they moved on.

"Did I?" Kira asked. "Or did I just let my emotions make the decision for me?"

Nana chuckled softly. "They are not always different things. Trust your instincts, my darling. Now," she gestured ahead, "the next one."

***

Derek pushed open the door of his study and stopped short. Ruby sat on the sofa, legs elegantly crossed.

She wore a rich russet fur coat, bold makeup, and sleek ankle boots. Her red hair fell in soft waves around her shoulders. She looked exceptionally beautiful tonight.

No. It was the subtle scent drifting from her that clouded his thoughts.

The scent arrived at the edges first, subtle and sweetly familiar, and then it was everywhere, coating the inside of his nose and pulling at something underneath his thoughts.

Leo recoiled immediately, hard and violent, retreating so far to the back of Derek’s mind that the sudden absence of him felt like a door slamming shut. Derek’s human side was left alone in front of his own head, and the scent pressed in.

"What are you doing here, Ruby?" Derek growled, his senses already beginning to dull.

Ruby rose with a slow smile. Without warning, she shrugged the fur coat from her shoulders and let it pool at her feet. She stood before him in nothing but red lace lingerie that left very little to the imagination.

The scent that had teased him earlier now engulfed him completely. It was familiar, yet far more overwhelming than he remembered.

Derek’s hand shot out and found the bookshelf behind him. His thoughts were moving slower than they should have been, like something had been poured into the machinery of his mind and was gumming up the works.

His body was responding in ways he was not authorising, and the gap between what he wanted to do and what he was capable of doing was widening by the second.

"Ruby." His voice lacked the authority it needed. It came out low and slightly unsteady, closer to exhaustion than command. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She walked toward him. "I’ve missed you so much." Her voice was soft, almost gentle, the way it never usually was. "I’m wearing an aphrodisiac. Your body can’t fight it, Derek. Not without your lycan."

"Go away," he said. The words were right. The weight behind them was not. "I told you I’m married."

"It’s an open marriage." She reached him and raised one hand, trailing her fingers down his collarbone slowly. "You don’t love her. You know you don’t."

Derek caught her wrist.

He didn’t push her away. He was torn — half of him wanted to shove her onto the desk and take her roughly, the other half screamed to throw her out. But he could do neither, because the part of him that made decisions was buried somewhere beneath a fog that smelled like flowers.

Leo was not coming forward. The beast had flatly refused, retreating in revulsion from a scent that was not Kira’s, and without him, Derek was standing in his own body with reduced access to himself.

"You are going to regret this," he said.

Ruby moved closer. "I want to carry your child." She pressed both hands against his chest and walked him back until his legs found the sofa, and he sat, and then she was in his lap, her voice dropping to something that sounded almost like grief. "If we have pups together, you won’t need to depend on weak pups from a wolfless girl."

"Ruby—"

"Please, Derek," she pleaded, her voice desperate as she rocked against him. "I’ve given you everything. My time. My loyalty. I was there through all of it, Derek. Every worst moment. I never left."

He opened his mouth.

She silenced him with a fierce kiss, grinding down harder. Derek grunted against her mouth as she grabbed his hands and pressed them to her breasts.

"Give me your pups," she whispered, kissing him again, deeper.

The study door burst open.

"Derek, you will not believe what I did today at—"

Kira’s words died on her lips. She froze in the doorway, eyes wide as she took in the sight of her husband — the man who had promised her fidelity — entangled with his so-called childhood friend.