Chapter 174

Damon

The chamber doors crashed against stone as I shoved them open. The sound thundered through the vaulted hall, snapping every head toward me.

Elders, nobles, advisors…they sat at their long table with quills and parchments, while behind them, guards lined the walls in rigid silence.

And among them, standing tall as though he’d expected an ambush of his own, was Ronan.

Ronan, the man who’d stood beside me in a hundred ways and dragged me from death’s edge more times than I could count. His face was steady, unreadable.

The letter in my pocket burned and Asher’s smirk still flashed in my mind. Ronan helped her.

I stepped quickly to the floor, each footfall sharp enough to shake the table. My wolf prowled just beneath my skin, teeth scraping bone.

“Tell me,” I demanded, voice hard as iron, “before this Court, before your King. Did you help her?”

Murmurs rippled through the room, some confused, others struck with the scandal of it all when they realized what I was asking. Who I was asking about.

Ronan didn’t flinch. He didn’t even glance at the council. His gaze stayed locked on mine, steady as a blade. “Yes.”

The single word detonated in the chamber. Elders half-rose from their seats, voices colliding—traitor, impossible, what does this mean? Guards shifted, uncertain. The air filled with the sour reek of panic and opportunity.

I surged forward, fisting his shirt in my hand, dragging him half off his feet. “Why?” The word ripped from my throat, raw and furious.

Ronan’s jaw tightened, but his voice was calm. “Because she deserved freedom. The kind you would never have given her.”

The sentence cut deeper than any knife.

My hand trembled where it gripped him. “You presume to judge me?”

“You chained her to her room while she wasted away near death,” he said, his voice low but clear enough for every vulture at the table to hear. “I gave her a chance to live.”

“A chance to live?” I snarled, shoving him harder. “You call it mercy to rip her from her mate? You call it freedom to hand her to Rogues that would gut her or use her against me?”

Ronan’s lips thinned, his expression iron. “I call it freedom because she chose it. She would rather face Rogues and starvation than another day in your cage. That is what you made of her bond to you.”

I heard the council draw sharp breaths, but my focus was only on him, the man who once swore his life to mine.

The council erupted into chaos. Shouts rose, overlapping, biting. The king blinded by his Luna. A Beta turned traitor. Who leads if the guard cannot be trusted?

Whispers coiled like smoke: unfit, reckless, ruled by grief, ruled by a ghost. And on it went.

Zane surged, snarling for blood. Rip him apart before them all. Show them no weakness.

I yanked Ronan closer, my breath hot between us. “Tell me where she is.”

He didn’t blink. “No.”

My claws dug into his tunic. “You will give me her trail, or I will—”

“You will what?” Ronan’s voice cut across mine like steel. “Tear me apart in front of your council? Prove them right? That you are nothing but the Tyrant King they whisper about?”

For a heartbeat, silence swallowed the hall. My pulse roared. He knew where to drive the knife—straight through my pride, straight through the fragile tether I still clung to.

“You’ve already lost her, Damon,” he said more quietly, though the whole chamber still heard. “And it wasn’t because of me. It was because you never saw her as anything but yours to cage.”

I shoved Ronan back with such force he stumbled against the guard restraining him. My own voice thundered over the chamber: “Seize him! Bind him!”

Steel clashed as guards moved at once, wresting his arms behind him. He didn’t even try to fight. He didn’t beg. His eyes found mine again as chains locked around his wrists.

And there was no shame there. No regret. Only a steady conviction that nearly broke me in half.

The council shouted over one another, but I didn’t hear them anymore. My gaze was fixed only on Ronan, the silence between us drowning out the noise.

My Beta had admitted it before my entire court. My court had witnessed my failure. And the kingdom would feast on the carcass of that betrayal by morning.

There was no undoing this.

I turned to the guard, voice like a blade drawn across stone. “Bring him to the courtyard.”

The sentence wasn’t death yet, but the thoughts sliced through me as surely as if I had bared my own throat to the knife.

The courtyard was filling already with guards, courtiers, curious nobles who had abandoned the chamber to watch blood spill by the Tyrant King. Word spread fast what Ronan had done.

He was dragged forward in chains, wrists bound, his cloak torn where I had seized him. He walked steadily despite the weight of iron, his head held high. The sight churned my gut with yet another grief.

I mounted the steps at the front of the courtyard and turned to face him. My crown had found its way onto my head and seemed heavier than ever. The crowd stilled, eager to hear whether their Beta would live or die.

I forced my voice to be steady. “Ronan, you were my Beta. My shield. My brother in arms. And you betrayed me.”

He lifted his chin. “I kept faith with her, your declared mate and Luna, when you would not.”

The words struck hard and rage cracked through me, barely leashed by the thin thread of my control.

“You aided a deception. You conspired against your King. You set fire to this place and injured countless people. That makes you no brother of mine. Only a traitor.”

Gasps rippled through the watching guards. Some turned their eyes away; others clenched fists against their sides. They had marched behind Ronan as long as they had marched behind me.

Ronan’s gaze never wavered, and he didn’t bother to deny anything. He stood as though my condemnation meant nothing, as though my fury was a passing storm he had already weathered.

“Say what you will,” he said at last, his voice ringing over the courtyard, “but she is alive because I chose to help her. That is a truth you can’t deny.”

The crowd stirred, some flinching at his audacity, others staring at me with unease. My chest burned as though he had struck me.

I drew breath through my teeth, feeling Zane pacing, claws against bone. If I let him out, this would end in Ronan’s death.

Instead, I forced the words through my mouth, because after everything he did… he wasn’t wrong.

“By my decree as King of the Lycans, I strip you of your title, your rank, and your right to stand within my Pack. You are exiled from this Court and condemned as traitor.”

The declaration hung in the air, final.

The guards moved at once, hauling Ronan back toward the gates. He didn’t struggle. His eyes never left mine until the very last moment, and what I saw there gutted me worse than his betrayal.

Pity.

The chains rattled, fading into the distance, until the great gates groaned open and swallowed him whole.

I stood alone on the steps, fury locking my jaw, grief clawing my chest raw. Around me the Council whispered already circled the fresh wound.

The last tether to my humanity had been cut, dragged out into the night in chains.

And as silence fell heavy across the courtyard, I knew the only thing left inside me was the Tyrant King.