Chapter 178

Damon

A half dozen hunts, and there was still nothing.

No trace of her scent, no villager willing to speak her name in my presence. There were only dead ends and dead Rogues. And still the cowards in this Council hall dared to look at me as if I were the problem.

“Report,” I snapped.

An elder cleared his throat. His voice wavered thin like an old reed pipe. “Your Majesty, the raids are too costly. Warriors return with wounds but nothing more. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?” I cut him off, leaning hard across the table. “Perhaps we wait? We hide in these walls while Rogues drag innocents from their beds?”

My hand slammed down, rattling inkpots, making one young noble jump. “Every day we do nothing, more of my people bleed. And you dare counsel patience.”

The younger Lord rose, face flushed. “We dare counsel sense! You hunt as if grief is your guide, Your Majesty. Entire units thrown into the woods for rumors. This is not a sound strategy, it is an obsession!”

Obsession. I straightened slowly, gaze raking across their faces. Fear stared back at me. And beneath it, something the unspoken thoughts I knew they whispered behind my back. Tyrant. Madman.

Zane prowled inside me, hackles high, demanding silence. Break them.

“Obsession?” My voice dropped to a growl. “Do you know what obsession is? It is the only reason you sit breathing in this hall. I united packs with obsession. I crushed your enemies with it. And you,” I jabbed a finger toward the young lord, who flinched, “have the balls to lecture me as if you’ve ever bled for anything but your purse strings.”

Shouts erupted. Old men waving arms, voices colliding. Words like reckless, madness, ruin. Their noise scraped raw against my skull. I heard rebellion in every syllable, mutiny in every sideways glance.

“Enough!” My roar cracked the chamber, silencing them mid-breath.

The echo bounced around the room. I felt my claws half-formed, teeth pressing against the inside of my lips. If one of them so much as blinked wrong, I would tear the throat from his neck.

“You question my judgment?” My gaze swept them, daring any to meet it.

“You whisper of unfit leadership while Rogues run free at our borders. You speak of caution while our enemies hunt in packs bold enough to stalk the palace woods. Tell me, who here would you crown in my place? Who among you will bleed in my stead?”

My challenge was met with silence. Cowards. Every one of them cowards, content to throw blame elsewhere and not do a damn thing themselves.

I wanted one of them to rise. To point a finger and call me unworthy so I could silence him in front of the rest.

It would have been easier to draw blood and use my power to dominate. That would silence the whispers. But none of them dared.

Their hesitation was almost worse; it was a rot spreading through the heart of my court. I could feel their loyalty thinning with every passing day. They obeyed because they feared me, not because they believed in me.

And fear would crack loyalty the first time it was tested.

“Until you bring me a true rebellion, your words mean nothing,” I snarled. “You will follow my orders. Hunts continue. The Rogues will be broken.”

An elder rose, trembling, and bowed so low his beard brushed the floor. “As you command, Your Majesty.”

One by one the rest followed, some with stiff necks, some with eyes carefully lowered with submission. It calmed me enough for the moment.

I turned from them, cloak snapping behind me, and strode out as their whispers rose again in my wake. I didn’t need wolf-hearing to catch them this time.

Tyrant.

The word should have shamed me. Instead, fury coiled hot and certain in my chest. If they wanted a tyrant, then a tyrant I would be.

Better feared than betrayed. Better feared than pitied.

My feet took me to my study, and I shut the doors hard enough that the walls shook, but silence settled again easily, swallowing the sound.

I braced both hands on the edge of the desk, staring down at the marks of my own fury. Maps laid out every route I had searched, every red circle inked into the forests around the palace, each one had been a failure.

Not a single one had led me to Lila.

I had thrown warriors at every rumor, every whisper of a sighting, and still she slipped through my grasp.

Maybe that’s what she wanted. Maybe she was running not from Asher, not from Rogues, but from me. The thought left me hollow, my chest burning with a grief too sharp to voice.

I whispered her name aloud sometimes when the room was empty, when even Zane went quiet.

Tonight was one of those nights. The word slipped past my lips, hoarse and cracked, and dissolved into the dark.

My gaze snagged on a letter near the edge of the table. Ronan’s handwriting. A report from before the fire, before the betrayal, before I’d chained my own Beta in front of the court and stripped him of everything.

My fist curled over the parchment until it crumpled.

I’d exiled Ronan. I’d driven Lila away. I’d forced, and then broken, an engagement neither of us wanted…

Guilt gnawed through me. Every decision was a stone tied to my ankles, dragging me deeper underwater.

I caught my reflection in the polished brass of a discarded goblet. Red cheeks, hollow eyes, jaw set so tight it trembled. A stranger stared back.

The candle beside me flickered. The shadow of my reflection stretched long and crooked across the maps, a tyrant bent double by his own rage.

This is what they see now, I thought. This is all I am to them.

Zane stirred low, grief rumbling through me. He mourned what we had lost, mourned the mate we couldn’t reach. He pressed against my bones like he was trying to crawl out and find her himself.

“Did trying to save Lila cost me everything worth saving?” The question slipped from me in a whisper. My throat tightened. “My mate, my Beta, maybe my crown… myself?”

The only answer was the crack of the fire and the rustle of parchment where my hands shook against the maps.

What was I still fighting for if she didn’t want me? If my own Council didn’t want me either?

If I didn’t even want me.

I leaned harder over the table, eyes burning. The routes blurred until they looked like scars carved into the land. Every path led to dead ends. Every circle tightened around nothing.

I gripped the edge until my knuckles whitened and my claws pricked; until the wood finally splintered under my hands.

I couldn’t stop looking for her.

If I stopped, if I let the one good thing about me go, then the whispers in the council chamber would become a fulfilled prophecy: I would truly be the Tyrant King.

I forced my head up. Forced my breath steady. Forced myself to trace another line across the map, another futile path, another desperate chance.

If I moved enough pieces, if I spilled enough blood, maybe one trail would finally bring me to her. It wasn’t hope that drove me anymore, it was desperation.

I was the cornered wolf, heart injured, without his mate.

I stayed bent over the table, alone with my shame and guilt and anger, clinging to the only truth that mattered: If I didn’t find Lila soon, there would be nothing left of Damon Sinclair.

Only the Tyrant King the world already believed me to be.