Chapter 158

We hadn’t spoken in any way that mattered. Not about the truth, not about what it meant, and certainly not about what came next. Richard had accepted the council’s decision to name me joint commander without protest or hesitation, but he hadn’t looked at me, truly looked at me, since the day I found out who I was.

He walked beside me only when duty demanded it, spoke to me only when protocol required it, and though his voice stayed calm, I could feel the way he avoided my presence like it burned. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing or, worse, of saying the right thing too late. And I didn’t chase him, even when my heart cracked wider every time he passed without stopping.

I stayed in my apartment and followed the regimen Simon had given me with obsessive precision. It was the only thing I could control. I woke early each morning, choked down the bitter tonic, stepped into the freezing water until my breath shuddered and my skin went numb, and then sat in silence, counting inhalations as if they could balance out the chaos.

I reviewed council files, replied to logistics requests, signed off on equipment orders, and kept myself busy enough to pretend the silence meant healing. It didn’t. It meant I was learning how to live with the pain.

Two days later, I learned about the debate the same way everyone else did. I didn’t hear it from Richard. I saw it on the network broadcast while sipping tea alone in my kitchen. A live debate, moderated by a neutral tribunal and broadcast through three separate redundant uplinks to ensure no interference.

There would be no cuts, no edits, and no protective buffers, only Richard and David, face to face. And Richard had already agreed.

“It’s a calculated move,” Nathan said when I found him reviewing the internal logs. “He wants to show transparency and reclaim the narrative.”

“Transparency doesn’t mean safety,” I replied. “It just means we’ve painted a bigger target on our backs.”

He nodded, not disagreeing, because he knew I was right. The details were already finalized. The moderators had been chosen, the security zones defined, and the public alerts scheduled. We were committed.

And the public still didn’t know what I was.

They suspected and whispered. They speculated about the bond mark on my neck, the way I moved differently now, and the impossible scent that lingered in my wake. But no one had dared speak the word aloud, not yet. The council had supported me when it counted, but their loyalty was provisional. If David played the right angle, if one image made the wrong impression, they would abandon me without hesitation. He didn’t need to prove anything about me, he only needed to plant the right question.

So I changed the conversation.

I worked through two sleepless nights drafting an emergency refugee integration plan. It included immediate housing credits, cross-pack sponsorship incentives, and priority resource access for displaced wolves and hybrid civilians.

It was bold, expensive, and logistically messy. I knew it would draw fire, but I didn’t care.

I bypassed the Council altogether and delivered it directly to the regional governors. The vote passed by a margin so narrow it nearly cost me the momentum I had built, but it passed. And when the networks picked it up, the tone of the conversation shifted just enough.

That was when Nathan handed me the flash drive.

“Three separate accounts,” he said. “All unregistered and routed through an erased firm connected to the Lower Court. The recipient? David’s personal consultant.”

He placed the drive on my desk and stepped back. I watched the footage alone. It was grainy surveillance, low quality but undeniable. The consultant met with cloaked figures at a former courier depot that had long since been abandoned. One wall was scorched from a Hollow fire. They exchanged briefcases, and their handshake lingered just slightly too long, the sort of detail that screamed rehearsal.

“This gives us grounds to open a case,” I said.

“It’s not enough to finish one,” Nathan replied. “If we act now, they’ll shift the rest and disappear before the council can review the footage. If we wait too long, they’ll bury it all.”

So we waited. It was excruciating.

Security protocol tightened again. Every badge was reissued, every name re-vetted, and every delivery scanned twice. The sensor gates at the main tower were updated with reactive scent barriers. Still, we didn’t catch the next breach until it nearly detonated in our faces.

The debate stage had been built in a cleared plaza under a neutrality agreement. The moderator, a retired Alpha with no clear ties to either party, arrived with a small team. All of them cleared basic screening. But one of them didn’t smell right.

I caught it first. A chemical sharpness that wasn’t just nerves or fear but something heavier and forged. I circled toward the aide’s flank. He glanced at me, paled, and took off at a sprint.

He didn’t get far. A perimeter guard tackled him in the parking tier. He carried no visible weapon, but the second he hit the ground, he started to seize. Foam bubbled from his lips, his eyes went wide then unfocused, and he screamed in a language I didn’t know before biting into his own tongue with enough force to tear it.

We barely stabilized him. He refused to speak once conscious. The moderator claimed no memory of assigning him, and the aide’s file disappeared off the personnel database ten minutes later.

I ordered a full sweep of the debate site. We worked through the night. Around midnight, a junior guard flagged an air vent disguised behind an access panel. It opened into a tunnel.

The stone was old and damp, clearly predating modern infrastructure, but the scent trails were recent. One path ran straight beneath the primary wiring hub of the debate stage.

“They could’ve knocked the stream offline,” Nathan said, examining the tunnel walls, “or worse, killed everyone onstage and blamed it on us.”

I ordered the tunnel sealed with silver-dense concrete and directional sensors. We rerouted the wiring, built a backup stage offsite, and installed a decoy switchboard at the original location lined with cameras.

They would not catch us unprepared again.

I trained harder. My hearing had refined to the point where I could distinguish guards’ voices through closed doors. My scent could detect fear in the air before it reached the skin.

I began logging fluctuations in pulse rates and stress spikes, adjusting formation orders and timing drills before anyone even realized something was wrong.

Simon noticed. Once, during a field test, I caught him watching from the second-floor lab window. He didn’t speak. He just nodded, like he knew there was no stopping what I was becoming.

Richard didn’t watch. Not where I could see. But I felt him hovering at the edge of the bond, distant, restless, and grieving.

We finally shared a room again two nights before the debate. The war chamber. He stood over a table littered with tactical notes and broadcast schematics, his shoulders taut. He didn’t look up when I entered.

“We need agreed language in case Serena comes up,” he said, eyes still on the paper.

“I’m not discussing her,” I replied. “Not with cameras rolling.”

“You might not get that choice.”

“Then I’ll make one anyway.”

He finally looked up, and the weight behind his eyes stopped me mid-breath.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said, voice quiet. “I just didn’t know how.”

I didn’t speak. Every part of me wanted to scream. Every part of me wanted to press my hands against his chest and ask how he could let me burn alone when he had known I was made of fire.

“Keep the footage sealed,” I said instead. “No leaks, not even internal. Add scent logging to every schematic and require triple verification.”

“Already in motion.”

I nodded, then turned. My hand paused on the doorframe.

He didn’t ask me to stay.