I Survived Midnight With The Alpha King—Now His Board Wants Me Dead

The celebration in the upper suites of Croft Tower was subdued, attended only by Kane’s closest inner circle.

Chloe was resting in the medical recovery wing downstairs, her injuries treated, surrounded by four loyal Croft bodyguards. For the first time in five years, my sister was safe. Cascade’s debts were legally expunged, the Mercer conspiracy was shattered, and the title deeds to our ancestral lands sat locked in my personal safe.

Yet as midnight approached, the tension in the penthouse grew suffocating.

Kane stood on the open observation deck, fifty stories above the rain-swept streets of Seattle. The wind was ferocious, whipping his dark coat around his frame. He had his hands braced against the glass railing, his head hanging low between his shoulders.

I stepped through the sliding doors, the cold air hitting my face like a slap.

"Kane?"

He didn't turn around. "You should be asleep, Harper."

His voice was terrifyingly strained. It sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together in the dark.

I walked closer, stopping three feet behind him. The air around him was shimmering with unnatural heat. The silver veins along his neck and hands weren't just glowing; they were throbbing violently, black and violet light pulsing just beneath his skin.

"The medical report," I said quietly. "Gideon showed it to me before the council meeting."

Kane let out a rough, broken breath that fogged instantly in the freezing air. "Then you know."

"The aerosol spray in the courtyard," I said, my chest aching. "It accelerated the poisoning. The synthetic compound didn't just irritate your system; it broke down the remaining cellular barriers around your heart."

"In forty-eight hours, the silver rot will reach the ventricle," Kane said, his tone devoid of self-pity, hollowed out by absolute pragmatic acceptance. "When that happens, the shift becomes permanent. My human consciousness will be extinguished. What’s left will be a nine-hundred-pound feral beast that will tear apart anyone who approaches it until the Croft Guard puts a fifty-caliber round through its skull."

He turned around slowly.

His face was drawn, pale, the veins around his eyes blackened with dead tissue. He looked like an ancient king standing on the edge of his own execution pyre.

"You have Cascade, Harper," he whispered, stepping toward me, his hand coming up to touch my cheek with agonizing gentleness. His fingers were burning hot. "The council signed the deeds. You have the Croft treasury to rebuild your pack. Take Chloe and go back to the mountains tomorrow morning. Don't be here when I lose the war."

I looked up into those golden eyes, seeing the raw, unmasked terror of a proud man who knew his own mind was being stolen from him.

"You think I stayed that first night just for the money?" I asked, my voice fierce, catching in the wind.

"You stayed because you're a warrior," Kane said, his thumb brushing a tear from my cheek. "And because you're too stubborn to run from a dying monster."

"I stayed because you were the first man who looked at me and didn't see an asset to be traded!" I snapped, grabbing his lapels, pulling him down until our faces were inches apart. "You gave me your crown, Kane Croft. You gave me your protection. Did you really think I was going to let you die quietly on a balcony while I ran back to the woods with my prize?"

Kane’s breath caught. "Harper, there is no medical cure. The Mercers designed this weapon specifically so it couldn't be reversed by science."

"Science isn't the only law in these mountains," I said, my mind racing through the ancient, leather-bound pack histories my mother had made me memorize before she died. "The Cascade ridge has an old site. The Blood Spring on the Olympic crest. The ancestral grounds where the first Alpha Kings cleansed their blood after the Silver Wars."

Kane went completely rigid. "The Blood Run. It's a myth, Harper. No one has survived the ritual ascent in three hundred years. The thermal waters are saturated with raw volcanic sulphur and native silver. To an infected wolf, entering that spring is agonizing death."

"Or absolute purification," I countered. "The poison burns out, or you die trying. But you die on your feet, Kane. As a King. Not locked in a basement while Gideon Locke puts a bullet in your head."

Kane stared at me, the golden fire in his eyes flaring with sudden, terrifying intensity. The beast inside him stirred, not with madness, but with the primal hunger of a predator offered one final, glorious chance to cheat the grave.

"The ascent takes twelve hours through winter blizzards," Kane murmured, his hands wrapping around my waist, lifting me slightly off the wet deck. "If my wolf takes over on the ridge, I will have no human mind to stop me from killing you."

"Then I'll bring the iron poker," I whispered against his lips.

Kane didn't speak. He crushed his mouth down against mine in a kiss that was violent, desperate, and searing with untamed power. It tasted of rain, ozone, and defiance.