Chapter 180

Zane POV

And I thought my study couldn’t get more crowded.

In addition to the usual suspects of Travis, Rucker, Whitmore, and Wilson, we now had Ted sitting in one corner, typing away but still managing to listen to every word, and Dr. Hayes in the other corner, nodding to himself.

Add Sarah and me to the mix, and the room was full, except for the various laptops showing the full-screen faces of Melissa, Shotz, and Delia, with a shared screen for Ambassador Torrin and her son, Claude.

We’d had a little trouble at the beginning of the meeting getting people on task. Shotz wanted to talk about the mine, Claude kept bringing up his channel for no reason I could see, and Delia and Melissa talked about doing a documentary. Sarah, goddess bless her, reminded everyone we had a specific purpose in getting together, and after that, everyone seemed able to focus.

Everyone we had asked had agreed to join in the project, and this was our first “official” meeting. All our “lieutenants” (They had unanimously approved of the title.) had emailed their choice for their own teams before the meeting, and Travis and Rucker had vetted them.

“So, I’m sorry,” Travis was telling Delia, “but his background makes him too much of a security risk. In short, his drug conviction and shiny new identity make him too obvious a target for blackmail.”

“I understand,” Delia said from her screen.

“Can we keep an eye on him?” Sarah asked. “I mean, for use in some other way?”

Travis recognized her peacekeeping attempt and nodded.

Delia shrugged. “Best case scenario for him is probably just to move on and forget about me, but I can tell he wants to atone for his past, you know? Like, if he’s just a regular guy, he’ll never be able to forgive himself. He was dealing meth, for goddess’s sake.”

“We can keep an eye on him,” Travis said. “But the three others you’ve picked all seem fine to us, Delia.”

“Great,” she said with a smile while writing something down.

“I think that just leaves me,” Shotz said.

“We like three of your choices as well,” Rucker said.

“Who’s the bad apple?”

“She may be perfectly fine, but there’s a lot of politics in her background. Andrea Gladd,” Rucker said.

Shotz looked surprised. “But she was my only wolf.”

“Yes.”

“You’re OK with my network being all human?”

“No reason not to be,” Rucker said.

“Great.”

“Our next order of business is this conspiracy theory going around that I was in on Chloe’s kidnapping,” I said, going off the agenda we’d hammered out over email.

“Got nothing on that,” Melissa said.

“Same,” Delia said. “Everyone’s too busy talking about Grace’s performance at the school recital, especially with the audience shot.”

“What audience shot?” Sarah asked.

Delia shrugged and replaced her image with a video of Grace singing. Fortunately, the sound was poor, but then there was a shot of me and Sarah and Chloe watching Grace sing, and we were obviously enraptured.

Delia’s face returned. “Everyone’s talking about how loving and supportive you guys were, so rumors that Zane, um, Alpha Zane kidnapped Chloe are just not popular.”

“The theory will resurface in time, of course,” Whitfield said. “But for now, there’s major speculation about Grace’s singing ability.”

“I heard she was lovely,” Ambassador Torrin said. “I wish I had been there. I confess I adore opera.”

My instinct was to snap at her to keep on task, but Sarah and Whitfield had separately warned me not to be too hard on people who wanted to make conversational asides. We had an eclectic mix in the room, physically and virtually, and it would be impossible for them not to want to mingle a bit.

“I know you’re not thrilled she’s getting so much air time,” Melissa said, probably to me.

“Actually, in terms of going viral,” Delia said, “Grace isn’t the hottest video from the night. That goes to some kid they’re calling ‘Rockin’ the Boat.’”

“Oh, he was great,” Sarah said. “Anything we need to see in the video?”

“Nah.”

“There is a new theory going around, though,” Melissa said.

“Please feel free to share,” I told her, which got a few chuckles.

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it,” she hedged, “but several accounts have been posting that Sarah is a werewolf.”

The room was quiet except for the quiet rainfall of Ted’s typing.

“What?” Shotz asked first.

Melissa shrugged into her camera. “It’s trending hard, I’m afraid. Sarah is a werewolf in hiding, and her pretending to be a human is all some sort of test by the Luna Temple.”

“What?” Sarah asked this time.

Melissa looked down at her notes. “Yes, you’re an alpha in hiding, and the Luna Temple is urging you to pretend to be human to promote human-wolf relations.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Sarah muttered.

“And I have to say,” Melissa continued, “they’ve got some pretty convincing evidence.”

“Hey.”

“I mean, convincing to people who don’t actually know you. There’s your showing at the charity auction, the way you took over at the mine and the school, and the fact that, well, can we all say it together?”

“Being a goddess-mother?” Shotz put in.

“Exactly.”

“Well, for the room, I’m not a wolf,” Sarah said.

“Anything else?” I asked Melissa.

She smirked. “Another rumor says Sarah is actually an omega, and this is the way we’re going to be shown that omegas are people too.”

“I like that idea,” Sarah said, and I believed her.

“Any other new theories online?” I asked. When no one answered, I nodded to Travis. “Our last order of business today is what Travis and Rucker intend to offer as their first piece of evidence online that isn’t already public knowledge.”

“Yes,” said Rucker. She held up a page with a chemical formal on it. “This is the breakdown of the drug they were using to keep humans docile for the auction. We did it expecting to find it was GHB or some variant, but instead this is quite the sophisticated nastiness.

“It is a derivative of GHB, but not one we’ve ever seen before. We’re going to let this leak tonight to see if anyone has a clue what lab made it or what territory it might be from.”

She looked to Ted. “You’re ready to go on this?”

“Absolutely,” Ted said, barely looking up from her screen.

“What are you typing, exactly?” Rucker demanded.

“Well, right now, I’m setting parameters for the algorithm set to filter information on Miss Sarah to flag accounts claiming they have evidence she’s a wolf and making sure the theories she’s an alpha and she’s an omega are kept separate. That way, we can see if someone is making claims for both theories so we’ll know that person is just spreading garbage to see what sort of attention they can get, or if that person is purposefully spreading misinformation. That way, I can flag future posts from that account to backdoor their network if they keep posting.”

“Sounds good,” Rucker said somewhat faintly.

I smothered a smile, but I could see Sarah caught it. Ted really was something.

“All right, we leak the formula tonight, and then we see what happens. Meanwhile, Lieutenants, go ahead and recruit your people.”