Razing the Throne
The travel from The Stonecrest Lodge grounds & root cellar to Pemberton Tower penthouse, Veridia consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The armored SUV cut through the Veridia city traffic like a blade through flesh, Killian at the wheel with one hand bandaged from the estate fight, his knuckles white against the leather steering wheel. Lyra sat in the passenger seat, Jace buckled in the back between Beckett and Miriam, tshe boy’s eyes wide as she watched the glass-and-steel towers of the financial district rise around them like a concrete forest of enemies.
“Tell me this plan works,” Beckett said, pressing a gauze pad against the gash on his forearm. The bullet had grazed him clean through, but he’d lost enough blood to paint his shirtsleeve burgundy.
“It works because Victor Pemberton is arrogant,” Killian replied, cutting across three lanes of traffic. Horns blared. Lyra gripped the door handle but said nothing. “His arrogance is a door we walk through.”
Miriam adjusted her glasses, a tablet balanced on her knee. “I’ve routed the press pool to the plaza outside Pemberton Tower. Anonymous tip about a major corporate scandal breaking at noon. They’ll be waiting.”
“Mommy, I’m scared,” Jace whispered from the back seat.
Lyra turned, her hand reaching between the seats to squeeze his small fingers. “I know, baby. But we’re doing this so you never have to be scared again. Okay?”
Jace’s eyes flickered gold. Just for a moment. Then he nodded, his jaw set in a way that reminded Lyra exactly whose son he was.
Pemberton Tower loomed ahead, fifty stories of smoked glass and black steel, the Pemberton crest emblazoned above the revolving doors like a crown on a coffin. Killian pulled the SUV to a hard stop at the curb, ignoring the valet’s indignant gesture.
“Miriam, you know your role,” Killian said, killing the engine.
“I call the tip line at exactly eleven-forty, inform the authorities of an active hostage situation with a firearm involved on the penthouse floor.” She recited it like a prayer. “They’ll dispatch tactical units. Arrival time approximately eight minutes from call to breach.”
“Beckett, you’re with me. Lyra—”
“I know my part.” Her voice was steady, though he could see the slight tremor in her hands as she adjusted the lapel mic hidden beneath her blouse. “I get to the sixty-eighth floor, I find the conference room with the camera feed, and I tell the world exactly what Victor Pemberton did to me. To us. To everyone he’s ever crushed.”
Killian reached across the center console, his calloused hand covering hers. “He’ll try to stop you.”
“Then you’d better make sure he can’t.”
The elevator ride to the penthouse was a study in controlled violence. Killian stood at the front, his breathing shallow as he counted the floors ticking upward. Forty-one. Forty-two. Beckett checked his sidearm, the click of the magazine seating a sound of grim punctuation. Forty-seven. Forty-eight.
Killian had memorized every detail of the schematics Miriam had pulled from public records and a sympathetic city planner who owed the Crescent Moon pack a favor. Victor’s penthouse occupied the entire sixty-eighth through seventieth floors: private office, conference room with a redundant camera feed that piped directly to the building’s security hub, and a panic room that Killian intended to make irrelevant.
The doors opened onto a reception area that cost more than most people’s homes. Marble floors. A receptionist whose eyes went wide as Killian stepped out with his half-shifted hands visible, claws extended, face still bearing the residual marks of his partial transformation.
“Mr. Pemberton is in a meeting,” she stammered.
“Cancel it.”
Killian moved past her desk, Beckett falling into step beside him, weapon drawn but held low. The double doors to Victor’s office were walnut and brass, probably imported from somewhere Killian couldn’t pronounce. He didn’t bother knocking.
Victor Pemberton looked up from his desk, surprise flickering across his patrician features before settling into cold amusement. Silas stood by the window, a glass of bourbon in his hand, his posture rigid.
“You’re either the bravest man I’ve ever met or the stupidest,” Victor said, setting down his pen with deliberate calm. “Breaking into my building. On camera. With witnesses.”
“I’m counting on the cameras,” Killian replied, stepping inside. Beckett flanked left, training his weapon on Silas, who didn’t flinch.
“Dad,” Silas said, his voice tight, “maybe we should—”
“Shut up, boy.” Victor rose from his chair, adjusting his cuffs. “You think you can threaten me in my own home, Crane? I own this city. I own the police commissioners. I own the judges who will bury you so deep the moon won’t find you.”
“Then why do you look afraid?”
Victor’s composure cracked, a vein pulsing at his temple. “I’m not afraid of a mongrel playing alpha.”
At the sixty-eighth floor conference room, Lyra slipped past the security door that Miriam had conveniently left propped open with a doorstop—a detail so banal no guard would question it. The conference table could seat twenty. The wall of monitors showed weather patterns, stock tickers, and a live feed from Victor’s office.
She found the camera controls, adjusted the angle until Victor’s desk dominated the frame, and pressed the button that routed the feed to every screen in the building’s lobby, the press staging area, and—thanks to Miriam’s earlier infiltration of the building’s network—the live feeds of three major news stations.
Then she pressed the mic button on her lapel.
“We’re live in one minute,” Miriam’s voice crackled through the earpiece. “Just keep calm. Tell them what he did.”
Lyra closed her eyes. She thought of Jace, waiting in the SUV with Miriam while Killian and Beckett walked into the lion’s den. She thought of the nights she’d spent looking over her shoulder, the years stolen from her, the child Victor had tried to erase from existence.
She opened her eyes when she heard Killian’s voice through the monitors.
“—illegal mercenary contracts paid through a shell company in the Caymans. Bribes to three city council members totaling over two million dollars. And the attempted kidnapping of a six-year-old child for the purpose of extortion.”
“Prove it,” Victor sneered, spreading his hands. “You have nothing. You’re a werewolf with a grudge and a dead pack.”
“I have your ledgers.” Killian pulled a tablet from his jacket, the screen glowing with documents Miriam had spent the entire drive organizing. “I have the account numbers. I have the wire transfer timestamps, the IP addresses, the testimony of the mercenaries you hired who are currently singing to federal investigators in exchange for immunity.”
Lyra watched Victor’s face go pale. Then she took a breath and spoke.
“My name is Lyra Prescott.”
Her voice echoed through the speakers in the lobby below, through the press pool’s cameras, through the televisions that were suddenly broadcasting live from Pemberton Tower. She saw Victor’s head snap toward the camera, saw the realization dawn across his features.
“I am the woman Victor Pemberton ordered killed six years ago. I am the mother of the child he tried to steal last night. And I am here to tell you exactly what he did to me, what he’s done to dozens of others, and what he was willing to do to a six-year-old boy to protect his empire.”
She told them everything. Her voice never broke.
Victor moved faster than a man his age should. He pulled a pistol from his desk drawer, the chrome barrel gleaming under the office lights, and fired at the camera in the corner of his office—the one Lyra was using to see him.
The bullet shattered the lens.
Then he turned toward Killian, murder in his eyes.
“You think this ends with me in handcuffs?” Victor snarled. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill your boy. I’ll burn every trace of your bloodline from this earth.”
He aimed at the second camera, the one Lyra was using for her broadcast, but Killian was already moving.
The shot went wide, punching through the drywall where the camera had been a moment before. Killian slammed into Victor, driving him back against the floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass groaning under the impact. The pistol clattered across the marble.
Beckett had Silas pinned against the wall, the younger Pemberton’s face pressed to the wood paneling. “Don’t move, you gutless wonder.”
Victor threw an elbow into Killian’s jaw, the impact jarring but not enough. Killian’s hand closed around Victor’s throat, claws dimpling the skin, and for a moment—for one terrible, beautiful moment—he wanted to squeeze.
“Killian.” Lyra’s voice came through the speaker in his earpiece. “Don’t. He’s not worth it.”
He looked at Victor’s face, the man’s eyes bulging, his composure finally shattered into raw animal panic. Killian remembered every threat, every injury, every nightmare Lyra had suffered because of this man’s greed.
He let go.
Victor collapsed, gasping, as the sound of sirens rose from the street below. Police. Federal. Someone Miriam had called.
Silas looked at his father on the ground, then at the handcuffs Beckett was producing from his belt. His eyes went cold and calculating.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” Silas said. “But I’m not going down with you.”
Victor looked up, confusion flickering across his features as his son pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed.
“I’m Silas Pemberton,” he said into the receiver, his voice steady. “I have information regarding Victor Pemberton’s financial crimes. I want immunity, full witness protection, and I’ll testify to everything.”
“Traitor,” Victor whispered.
“Survivor,” Silas corrected.
The police breached the penthouse doors exactly three minutes later.
They found Victor Pemberton on his knees, Killian Crane with his hands raised, and Silas Pemberton already dictating a confession into his lawyer’s voicemail.
Lyra met them in the lobby, Jace’s hand in hers, Miriam close behind. The press cameras flashed as the police led Victor past in handcuffs, his face a mask of shattered dignity. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at Jace.
But Jace looked at him.
The boy’s eyes flickered gold one last time as Victor Pemberton was loaded into the back of a patrol car.
“He can’t hurt us anymore, can he, Mom?”
“No, baby.” Lyra knelt, pulling him close. “He can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Killian made his way down the elevator, his shoulder burning where Victor’s bullet had caught him. The graze was clean, but the blood had soaked through his jacket, painting a dark bloom across the fabric that the press cameras captured in high definition.
“Sir, you need medical attention,” the paramedic at his side insisted.
“In a minute.”
He pushed through the crowd, past the reporters shouting questions, past the police trying to form a perimeter, until he found Lyra and Jace standing in a pocket of still air amid the chaos.
“You’re bleeding,” Lyra said.
“I know.”
Jace looked up at him, his small face serious. “Did you win, Daddy?”
Killian lowered himself to one knee, wincing at the pain. He put his good hand on Jace’s shoulder. “Yeah, buddy. We won.”
Jace hugged him, and Killian felt the boy’s small arms wrap around his neck, felt the weight of six years of running, hiding, fighting, all of it settling into a quiet moment of victory that tasted like copper and smelled like rain.
The paramedic finally got through, and Killian let himself be guided to the back of an ambulance, Lyra and Jace following close behind. Miriam promised to handle the clean-up, the press statements, the legal paperwork. Beckett was already giving his statement to a federal agent, his bandaged arm propped against his chest.
As the ambulance doors closed, Killian sagged against the stretcher, the adrenaline finally wearing off, leaving only exhaustion and the raw burn of the bullet wound.
Lyra knelt beside him, pressing a scarf to his wound. It was the scarf she’d worn that first night in the estate, the one she’d been holding when he’d found her in the garden. “Don’t you dare leave us now,” she whispered.
He smiled weakly, his vision swimming at the edges. “Wouldn’t dream of it, love. I have a son to teach how to howl.”