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The abandoned warehouse reeks of rust and decades-old motor oil, but the thick concrete walls make it perfect for hiding from magical surveillance. Kellan reached out to us mere hours after the confrontation with Estella, tracking down a massive cache of paranormal council records and requesting my specific expertise to parse through the sheer volume of data. Now a couple of days later, he has transformed the main floor into a makeshift command center—laptops humming on folding tables and encrypted phones charging in neat rows while surveillance monitors cast blue light across the stacks of documents.

This mountain of bureaucracy has kept me fully occupied for the last three days, providing the ideal opportunity for Serenity to heal in peace. She sits cross-legged on a ratty couch as she sketches symbols from her visions in a leather journal, occasionally glancing up when she thinks I'm lost to the screens. Earlier, she had handed me a heavily encrypted flash drive containing her personal network—informants and safe houses along with the direct line to a human detective named Nolan Graves, insisting we'd need her allies if the PGC turned on us. At times, her gaze drifts, fixing on the far corners of the dark warehouse as if she is watching an unseen world unfold, though she keeps those insights strictly to herself. She offers occasional assistance with the sorting by sliding a relevant file across the table, but I make sure to recede back the moment our fingers brush. Maintaining this unyielding, emotional distance is a boundary I have strictly chosen, a necessary shield to protect myself even as it aches to keep her at arm's length.

"Find anything useful in that mountain of corruption?" Kellan drops into the chair beside me, coffee mug in hand.

"Not yet," I reply. My encrypted phone vibrates on the table—a priority alert from Lynn. I open the message, reviewing the brief, violent update. "Lynn just found our leak. Her head of security was on Gideon's payroll." I show Kellan the attached image of the traitor bound in metal chains. "She dealt with him personally. Her network is secure again."

"Good to know we still have friends in low places," Kellan mutters.

I keep scrolling through the archives, my eyes narrowing as a bizarre string of anomalies breaks the standard formatting of the log. Intrigued by the strange pattern, I dig more into the subfolders, sorting through the encrypted lines until a specific entry catches my eye.

My hand freezes on the mouse. "Wait, look at the digital signature on these files. This archive was actively managed and refined through an external connection."

"Boring but necessary." Kellan leans in, his interest piqued as he peers over my shoulder to see the anomaly. "Let me see the encryption stamp."

I tap the laptop screen, bringing up the root directory. "Council meeting minutes from seven years ago. Financial discrepancies, backdoor communications between certain members and external supernatural factions... and someone spent a lot of effort trying to scrub a specific name."

Kellan studies the data as I refresh the broken code. "Wait, go back to that last file."

I scroll up to a series of encrypted communications between a few council members. The timestamp catches my attention—three months before my pack's massacre. I also spot hundreds of missing persons reports for individuals with lunar bloodlines, all manually intercepted and reclassified by a single clearance code as “territorial disputes" and "runaways" alongside "rogue vampire casualties." Feeling uneasy, I click open the message thread.

Subject: Alliance Destabilization Protocol

The witch-shifter treaties grow stronger each month. Recommend immediate action to prevent unified paranormal governance.

The sender's name makes my blood freeze: Gideon Night. As a low-ranking bureaucrat turned influential council liaison, his signature enforces the full weight of the law—and his intimate ties to my own pack change everything.

"Son of a bitch." The dangerously edgy string of profanity grates low in my throat and vibrates.

Serenity looks up from her journal. "What is it?"

I scroll through more messages, each one driving nails into a coffin I thought was already sealed. There are financial transfers and strategic recommendations along with detailed intelligence about pack territories and defensive weaknesses. There are even logs showing Gideon directly funneling intel to vampire nests—including Martel Vex, the bloodsucker Kellan and I handed over to the PGC before getting the call about Serenity. Gideon was orchestrating the territory disputes himself to manufacture the chaos the entity needed.

The Morvane pack represents the strongest witch-shifter alliance. Eliminating their leadership will send the appropriate message.

A tremor rattles my hands as I read the response from another council member.

Approved. Initiate Protocol Seven.

"Darius, talk to me." Kellan's voice sounds distant, like he's speaking from underwater.

"Gideon Night." I can barely force his name past the rage building in my chest. "He had a hand in all of this."

"Gideon Night? Who is he, and did you know him?" Serenity's question breaks the rising storm inside my head. Her sharp eyes pierce through miles of bureaucracy and betrayal effortlessly.

I inhale slowly, struggling to leash the beast clawing inches beneath my skin. "Gideon was a small player at best," I manage while looking at Kellan for support, though the words burn my throat. "Part of the witch alliance negotiations. His job was supposed to be keeping the political waters calm."

Kellan shakes his head, a bitter laugh escaping despite the tension. "Guess he was keeping them calm by destabilizing them from the inside."

Gritting my teeth as the revelation slams into me, I exhale sharply and ball my fists until my knuckles turn white. "All those years, believing the blame belonged all to the witches..." I drop to a harsh whisper. "Believing it was your people."

Serenity shifts slightly, her lips parting as if to offer a comfort she quickly realizes is useless. She chooses silence instead, a quiet acknowledgment that offers no easy platitudes for a wound this extensive.

The restraint cracks. A violent, suffocating heat floods through me, overriding my logic as seven years of misdirected vengeance boil over. The room tilts as a sudden spike of my power thickens the air until it is suffocating. "He helped tear my family apart," I force out, the reality fracturing into sharp, jagged pieces. "And I have spent over half a decade hunting the wrong target."

Before the rational part of my brain can intercede, my arm snaps forward. My fist crashes into the warehouse wall with the full force of my fury. The impact vibrates up to my shoulder, a dull, thudding pain that only feeds the fire. Concrete groans under the knuckles, carving a fractured crater that radiates a web of cracks across the surface.

Kellan stands rigid beside me, his eyes locked on the shattered wall. The easygoing nature is fully gone, replaced by a tense shock that nails him to the floorboards.