Chapter 167

The leak hit just after sunrise. I could feel it before I opened my eyes, the kind of tension that vibrates through your skull before your brain has even caught up. My phone buzzed across the nightstand like it had a personal vendetta.

The vibration wasn’t steady or rhythmic; it came in sharp, uneven pulses that warned me something had gone wrong. My hand fumbled for it in the dark. There were five missed calls from Nathan, a dozen messages from the crisis line, and three flagged folders marked PRIORITY. Simon’s subject line was the worst: "Containment."

I sat up, wincing as my thighs protested. My body still ached from the night before. There was heat between my legs, a lingering ache in my lower back, and a tightness in my throat that hadn’t faded with sleep. I swallowed and opened the first message.

The image filled the screen like a slap. It was a freeze-frame of me leaving the crypt. My eyes shone red from the flame-light. My mouth was open mid-breath. My face was streaked with ash and sweat.

Someone had slowed the footage, added a dark filter, and looped eerie music underneath. The caption said: "Hybrid corruption exposed. This is what they want leading the Pack?"

It had already gone viral. Comments were piling up fast. David's people had launched a coordinated blitz. Every post used the same tags: Demon, Heretic, False Luna, Burn the bridge.

I let the phone fall onto the sheets and rubbed my face hard enough to hurt. I didn’t get a chance to scream or think before the door opened without warning.

"Don’t panic," Emma said, breezing in with a tablet and a to-go coffee. She wore leggings and a wrinkled hoodie, like this was a casual morning. "We already flipped it."

"Flipped what?"

"The narrative."

She handed me the tablet. I took it without trusting her.

The video started playing automatically. It was me again, but not the same version. This was training dome footage with sharp lighting, clean camera angles, and no fear in my face. The bell tower hummed softly behind me. Simon stood off to the side with his telemetry rig. Richard stood in the background with his arms crossed, his posture steady and unreadable.

In the clip, I closed my eyes. The sound pulsed. My body took the resonance without flinching. When I opened my eyes, the red was there again, but it was steady and deliberate. There was no flicker, no chaos. Only control.

Simon’s voice layered calmly over the footage: "Subject demonstrates full resonance control at peak threshold. Zero instability. Zero threat indicators. Results consistent across multiple trials."

The caption was simple: "Hybrid evolution: discipline over destruction." The Pack seal pulsed in the lower corner. The message was clear, strategic, and precise.

I stared. "When did you take this?"

"Last week," Emma said. "Richard asked me to record your surge trials. Simon signed off on the visuals this morning. I pushed it live three minutes ago."

I looked at her, tired and raw. "You filmed me without telling me."

"Yes, and it saved your ass."

I didn’t answer. Not because I agreed, but because I didn’t have the strength to argue. There wasn’t room for that right now.

Simon’s voice crackled through the wall comm. "Amelia, status check. I need you cleared for speech readiness within the hour."

I pressed the intercom. "Physically or psychologically?"

"Preferably both."

Emma laughed as she ducked out.

I moved like a machine. I showered without thinking, dressed in black slacks and a high-necked blouse, and pulled my hair back into something smooth but effortless. The mirror showed a version of me that didn’t look scared, but I wasn’t sure I trusted her. My eyes looked older. Not just tired, but sharpened by too much.

At the comms center, Nathan waited with a tablet in hand. A holographic overlay blinked in red.

"All rooftop emitters have been located and pulled. Drone teams swept twice, and all access points are locked down."

"Who installed them?"

"Purchases link back to a shell firm funded by David’s campaign accounts. Our legal team has the receipts."

I nodded. "Tell Simon to add it to the rally packet. Full transparency."

I stepped into the briefing room. The air inside felt still and artificially calm. Richard stood at the far end, looking down at something in his hands. When he looked up, he didn’t speak. He just held up the photograph.

I knew it instantly. It was me at thirteen, mud-streaked and grinning at the camera. My vest didn’t fit, and I looked like I had just won a fight I wasn’t supposed to be in. Ten feet behind me, clipboard in hand, stood Richard.

"You kept that?"

"It reminds me how long you’ve been surviving things no child should have had to face."

I moved closer, letting myself look at it longer this time. My hair was sticking up, my face still full of baby fat, and my knees bruised. But I looked happy. Not safe, but proud. And Richard wasn’t just standing there in the background. He was watching me. I could see it now. The tension in his posture and the focus in his eyes told me it hadn’t been casual. He had seen something.

"You thought I might matter," I said quietly. "Even back then."

Richard didn’t look away. "I thought you might save us. You weren’t born into it, at least not then, but you stepped into it anyway. And you never stopped."

My throat caught. I turned from the photo and cleared it.

He gestured to the cue list. "We follow this order. You start with policy. Make it clear the charter revisions passed legally. You don’t hesitate or qualify it."

"Understood."

"Then we present the network sabotage. Show them the data, identify the emitters, and frame the entire thing as a betrayal of the Pack’s trust."

"Facts first. Good."

"Then you talk about her. Serena. And yourself. You don’t need to give them every genetic detail, but you do need to own your identity before someone else does it for you."

"I plan to."

He hesitated. "We were always going to tell them, Amelia. Soon. We had the rollout drafted and the footage cleared. But now it looks like we’re scrambling to control a leak. It looks like we only owned the truth because David forced our hand."

I nodded slowly, jaw tight. "I know. That’s why it has to come from me. Not as defense, but as fact. As choice."

His voice softened. "You’re not just confirming bloodlines. You’re setting precedent. For the first time in our history, someone hybrid-born will speak for both sides of a broken peace. They need to see not just what you are, but who you are."

I nodded again. "No pressure, then."

"We end with questions. Controlled pool. Emma and Simon will screen. You answer what you want, and nothing more."

"No teleprompter?"

"No. You speak like you did in the temple. Like yourself. Plain, sharp, and steady."

I stared at the cue list, then looked up at him. "What if I freeze? What if I lose the thread?"

He stepped in close enough that I had to tilt my chin to meet his eyes. "Then I will be beside you, and I will carry it with you. But I don’t think I’ll have to."

"Why not?"

He didn’t blink. "Because I’ve seen you take a beating you couldn’t walk away from and still drag someone else across the finish line. Because I’ve seen your hands shake and your voice steady. Because when everyone else left, you stayed. And because I know you want this to mean something."

I looked back at the photo of myself as a girl. The mud on my knees and the defiance in my smile still looked familiar. I remembered how scared I was that day, and how I never let it show. I remembered the way he had watched me, even then.

"I want to be the one to say it," I said. "Not because I have to, but because no one else can."

He didn’t smile. He reached out and touched the edge of the photo with one fingertip, then looked back at me.

"Then let’s show them the truth."