Chapter 33
Briar
The hearing room is fuller than last time. Same building. Same timber frame, same long windows, same rows of chairs around the central floor. But the crowd has doubled.
Delegates from packs I’ve never heard of, council representatives from territories as far north as Montana, observers who’ve come because the Forrester corridor case has become the thing everyone in the southern supernatural world is watching.
I’m in the third row. Same seat as last time.
Willow beside me, Conner on her other side.
Mia is on Conner’s lap. He tried to leave her with Sable at Ravenclaw, but she screamed until he picked her up.
Willow said bring her. Brenna said bring her.
So Mia is here, in a meeting hall full of wolves, sitting on Conner’s knee with her rubber ball — the new one, the replacement she picked from the toy bin after she gave the red one to Garrett.
Garrett is in the respondent’s chair. Same position as before. But nothing else about him is the same.
Last time he sat in that chair, he was the alpha of a functioning compound, dressed in clothes that fit, wearing the mask he’d built over five years.
Today he’s wearing another of Conner’s shirts — still too tight across the shoulders — and jeans someone at Ravenclaw found for him.
The bruising on his face is gone, but the scars on his wrists from the dampening cuffs are visible, raw pink lines that he hasn’t covered.
The silver lines on his forearms — mine — catch the light when he moves his hands.
He looks like a man who’s been through something. He looks like a man who walked through it on purpose.
Brenna opens with an introduction. “This hearing reconvenes with new evidence and voluntary testimony from the respondent, Garrett Forrester. For the record, Mr. Forrester is present of his own volition and has not been compelled, coerced, or offered any agreement in exchange for his testimony.”
The council chair — an older wolf from the East Texas packs, gray-haired, steady — nods. “Mr. Forrester. You understand that anything you say in this proceeding can be used in formal charges.”
“I understand.” Garrett’s voice carries. Not the alpha register, the one that commands wolves to listen. Just his voice, clear, filling the room because the room is quiet enough to hear a breath.
“You may proceed.”
He stands. He doesn’t go to the central floor, he stays at his chair, his hands at his sides. His eyes move across the room. Not avoiding anyone. Taking in the faces. The delegates. The survivors in the back rows. Martin, who’s watching with the lean fury that hasn’t softened.
“My name is Garrett Forrester. I was alpha of the Forrester pack for five years. During that time, I operated a transfer corridor that moved magic-blooded wolves from my territory to Syndicate facilities in the southern region.”
He keeps it simple. Just the sentence, delivered without fanfare. Here. This is where I am.
“The corridor was established by my father after the death of my sister, Maren. She died because a magic-blood crossed our packlands and couldn’t control his power.
It killed her. My father’s response was to create a system that removed magic-blooded wolves from our territory.
He called it protection. I inherited the system at twenty-one. I called it the same thing.”
He pauses.
“The corridor processed thirty-seven documented transfers over ten years. Some were individuals. Some were families. The youngest wolf I transferred was eighteen months old. The oldest was sixty-three.”
The room is silent. The kind of silence that presses.
“Each transfer was arranged through a contact number connected to the Syndicate’s southern regional network.
Wolves were collected at a junction on the western edge of my territory.
They were loaded into vehicles and driven south.
I did not inquire about the destination.
I did not ask what happened to the wolves after they left my jurisdiction. ”
He stops. Looks at his hands.
“That’s not a defense. It’s part of the crime.
I maintained a supply line for ten years, and I chose not to know what it was supplying.
The answer — which I’ve now seen, through the testimony at the previous hearing and through my own experience in Syndicate custody — is that it was supplying human beings to a research operation that used them as test subjects.
Children were separated from parents. Wolves were numbered.
Medical procedures were performed without consent.
Some wolves survived. Some didn’t. The ones who survived carry damage that doesn’t heal on a wolf’s timeline. ”
The council chair leans forward. “Mr. Forrester. The evidence submitted by the Aurora Collective includes financial records from your family’s ledger. Are you prepared to speak to those records?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate. “The payment records in my father’s ledger don’t terminate at the corridor.
The routing connects to a broader financial network — payments that were channeled through intermediary accounts before reaching the Forrester operation.
When those accounts were traced, the trail led to council-level funding.
Specifically, to accounts linked to Elder Nathan Bern. ”
The room shifts. Not a sound — a movement. Fifty wolves redirecting their attention from the respondent’s chair to the back row.
A man in Bern’s delegation is on his feet immediately. “The council should not permit unsubstantiated accusations against a sitting elder during a respondent’s testimony. This is a hearing into Forrester conduct, not a platform for—”
“The financial evidence has been submitted to the council through proper channels,” Brenna says. Her voice cuts clean across the objection. “It’s in the evidentiary packet distributed to every delegate this morning. Mr. Forrester is speaking to records that are already before this body.”
The council chair holds up a hand. “The objection is noted. The respondent’s testimony will continue. Elder Bern’s representatives will have an opportunity to respond through the appropriate process.” He looks at Garrett. “Continue, Mr. Forrester.”
Garrett nods. His eyes don’t go to Bern. They don’t need to. The name is in the room now, and the room is doing the work.
“I’m not here to ask for forgiveness,” Garrett says.
“I don’t think forgiveness is something I get to ask for.
I’m here to put the full truth on the record so that the councils can act on it.
The corridor is closed. The Syndicate’s southern facility has been destroyed.
I voluntarily surrendered to Syndicate custody ten days ago and was held and interrogated for two days before an extraction team retrieved me.
During that time, I gathered intelligence on the Syndicate’s broader operations that I’ve provided to the Aurora Collective. ”
He sits down.
The room exhales.
In the back row, Bern is very still. His representatives are leaning toward him, speaking low, but he isn’t looking at them. He’s looking at the room, reading it, the way a man who’s controlled rooms for thirty years reads one that’s turning against him.
I watch him calculate. The stillness isn’t calm.
He’s deciding whether to let the accusation sit unchallenged or to stand up and put his voice on it.
Letting it sit means the financial trail dominates the conversation after the hearing.
Standing up means controlling the narrative now, while the room is still processing Garrett’s testimony and before anyone has time to dig into the evidentiary packet Brenna distributed.
He’s going to stand up. I can see it in the way his hands flatten on his knees. He’s going to get ahead of this.
“If I may.” He stands. Buttons his jacket.
The gesture is precise, the last piece of the mask going on.
“The council should note that while Mr. Forrester’s testimony is moving, it pertains to the operations of a single pack.
The Forrester corridor was a regional arrangement between a local alpha and elements of the Syndicate.
It is not reflective of the broader policies of the southern pack alliance, nor of any coordinated effort by established pack leadership. ”
He shifts his weight. Settling in. The room is his now, or he thinks it is.
“Financial records pass through many hands. Account linkages can be manufactured, misattributed, or misinterpreted, particularly when the source material is a disgraced pack’s ledger, maintained without independent oversight.
I would urge this council to exercise appropriate caution before drawing conclusions from a document that has been presented by parties with a clear interest in broadening the scope of blame. ”
He’s good. The argument is constructed to give every delegate in the room a reason to hesitate: reasonable doubt, procedural caution, the institutional instinct to protect the system rather than examine it.
“I personally had no knowledge of the specifics of the Forrester operation. No involvement. No communication with the Syndicate regarding the corridor or its —”
Mia screams.
The sound cuts Bern’s sentence short. High, thin, a child’s scream, but there’s nothing childlike about the force behind it. Every wolf in the room flinches. Conner’s arms lock around her, but she’s rigid on his lap, her body stiff as wood, her eyes fixed on Bern.
She’s pointing at him. One small hand extended, finger aimed at the silver-haired man in the back row. Her mouth is open, and the scream goes on and on.
“Mia—” Conner tries to turn her. She won’t turn. Her eyes are locked on Bern, and her body is vibrating. And then—
The wave hits.
Not sound. Not physical force. Something else. Something that slams into my skull with the flat, bright intensity of a flashbulb and floods my head with images.