Chapter 32
Brenna
Two days after they tried to take my son, we sit down to figure out how to destroy the man who sent them.
The air in the lodge back-room carries the tension of people who’ve stopped debating whether there’s a problem and started planning what to do about it. Merric sits at the head of the table, and I sit to his left because that’s where I belong.
Rook is against the wall with his tablet, scrolling through the evidence files he’s spent hours organizing, and Jonas stands at the window, watching the compound with the vigilance of a man who’s learned the hard way that attacks come when you’re looking the other direction.
And Edda Beaumont sits across from me.
That’s the development I didn’t expect. She arrived five minutes after we did, set a leather folder on the table, and sat down without being invited.
When Merric looked at her, she said, “If you’re planning a response to what happened, I should be in the room. I spent thirty years trusting the wrong people. I’d like to start trusting the right ones.”
Nobody argued. Edda admitting she was wrong is rare enough to qualify as a natural phenomenon. You don’t question it. You just make room.
The communication device sits in the center of the table. The Syndicate device recovered from the extraction team leader. Rook spent twelve hours delving through it, leaving him red-eyed and short-tempered, which for Rook means he answered questions in four words instead of six.
“The routing is clear,” Rook says. He projects the message logs onto a screen on the wall.
Lines of text, timestamps, relay coordinates.
“Operational communications ran through a relay station in Darkwood territory. The station uses infrastructure that’s registered to the Darkwood pack council.
Bern’s council. His communications network, his encryption protocols, his hardware. ”
“Which he’ll claim was compromised,” I say. “Hacked. Used without his knowledge.”
“He can claim that.” Rook pulls up a second screen. “But the encryption key is council-level access. Not something you hack from outside. Someone with Bern’s authority—or Bern himself—generated that key and distributed it to the Syndicate operatives.”
“Can you prove it was him specifically?” Jonas asks from the window. “Not his aide, not a subordinate. Him.”
“The key was generated from a device registered to his personal account. Could he say someone stole his credentials? Yes. Would it hold up under scrutiny? Depends on who’s scrutinizing.”
That’s the problem. It’s been the problem since I started monitoring these networks two years ago.
Every piece of evidence has an edge of deniability.
Not enough to exonerate him. Enough to create doubt.
And doubt is all Bern needs, because the man has spent decades building the kind of political capital that makes doubt generous.
“He’s mentored half the alphas in the southern territories,” I say.
“He sat at the founding table for three of the regional packs. He’s the elder statesman.
The reasonable voice. The man who talks about tradition and stability and the greater good.
” I look around the table. “When we go public with this, his first move won’t be denial.
It’ll be sympathy. He’ll frame himself as the victim of a coordinated attack by a disgruntled Ravenclaw witch and the alpha she’s seduced.
He’ll call it a power grab. And half the southern packs will believe him, because believing him is easier than accepting that the man who shaped their political world has been selling them to the Syndicate. ”
The room is quiet. Not because anyone disagrees. Because they know I’m right.
Merric speaks. “Then we don’t go public yet.”
I look at him, and I know what he’s thinking; not the specifics, but the shape. Methodical. Patient. The approach of a man who’s spent decades navigating pack politics and knows that the fastest path is rarely the straightest.
“We build the case until it can’t be spun,” he says.
“Not just the communication device. Everything. Brenna’s field intelligence.
The surveillance network she covered. The pattern of attacks on magic-blooded wolves.
The correlation between Bern’s council visits and subsequent Syndicate operations.
We build a picture so complete that denying it looks worse than confessing. ”
“That takes time,” Edda says. Her voice is measured.
The voice of a woman who once would have defended Bern and is now calculating the cost of dismantling him.
“Bern won’t sit around while we assemble evidence.
He’ll know the device was captured. He’ll know we have the routing data.
He’ll be moving to cover his tracks right now. ”
“Which is why we need allies.” Merric pulls out his phone. “I called Viktor Parlance at Aurora this morning.”
He puts the phone on speaker. The call was recorded—something Viktor agreed to, which tells me Viktor is already thinking in terms of evidence chains and future proceedings. The conversation plays through the lodge’s quiet air.
Viktor’s voice is careful. Precise. The tone of a man assembling a picture from pieces he doesn’t like.
“The attack on Frostbourne wasn’t isolated. We’ve had reports from three other packs in the last month. Different methods, same signature. Syndicate operational teams coordinating with local purist groups. Someone’s been building this network for years, Merric. Bern is one node. There are others.”
“How many?”
“Too many. This goes beyond southern wolf politics. The Syndicate has been cultivating relationships across the supernatural communities… wolf, witch, dragon, and others. Whatever they’re building, it’s bigger than any single pack. Bigger than any single species.”
“What do you need from us?”
“Time. Evidence. And people who’ve been inside Syndicate operations and survived.” A pause. “Your mate qualifies. So does your son.”
The recording ends. The room processes.
“Viktor’s building a coalition,” Merric says. “Other packs, other alphas who’ve been hit. He needs our evidence as part of a larger case. Not just Frostbourne’s grievance, but a pattern across the territories. That’s harder for Bern to dismiss as personal.”
“And it protects us,” Rook adds. “If it’s Frostbourne alone accusing Bern, we’re a single pack with a grudge. If it’s Frostbourne, Aurora, and a dozen other packs presenting coordinated evidence, it’s a reckoning.”
Edda has been quiet, reading the message logs projected on the wall.
She looks up. “I can reach two council members who’ve expressed private concerns about Bern’s influence.
Margaret Cope at Riverbend and Hugh Cabbot at Stonewall.
Neither will move publicly without cover, but if I approach them with this,” she nods at the evidence, “they’ll listen. ”
“You’d do that?” The question comes from Jonas, and it carries genuine surprise. Edda Beaumont, reaching out to undermine the elder she defended for decades.
“I spent half my life supporting a man who was selling wolves out to the Syndicate,” Edda says. Her voice is hard. The tone of someone who’s done the private reckoning and arrived at a conclusion that costs more than she’ll show. “That’s my responsibility. I intend to correct it.”
I watch her across the table. The rigid posture that I’ve come to understand isn’t coldness; it’s compression. Everything Edda feels, she feels at full force. She just keeps it under pressure that would crush most people.
“Margaret and Hugh are a start,” I say. “I have contacts of my own. Pack leaders who lost families to Syndicate raids in the last eighteen months. They’ve been too scattered and too afraid to act alone, but if they know there’s a coalition forming —”
“Reach out,” Merric says. “Carefully. Bern’s intelligence network is still active. Anything that touches the council communication channels, he’ll see.”
“I didn’t survive two years in the field by using official channels.” I allow myself a thin smile. “The network I built is intact. Bern doesn’t know it exists because he’s never been able to see what he wasn’t looking for.”
The meeting continues for another hour. Rook builds a timeline of Bern’s movements cross-referenced with Syndicate operations.
I fill in the gaps from my field work—the surveillance positions, the supply routes, the pattern of attacks that always seemed random but make sense when you overlay Bern’s travel schedule.
Edda adds political context: council votes, policy shifts, the slow erosion of protections for magic-blooded wolves.
By the time we’re done, the wall behind Rook is covered in projected data.
A web. Bern at the center, lines radiating outward to Syndicate contacts, compromised council members, purist pack leaders, surveillance teams. My field intelligence merged with Rook’s communication analysis and Edda’s political knowledge.
It’s not enough. Not yet. But the frame is there, and the picture is taking shape.
“How long?” Jonas asks. The practical question. The one nobody wants to answer.
“Weeks,” Merric says. “Maybe longer. Viktor needs time to coordinate. Edda needs time to build bridges. Brenna’s contacts need to be approached carefully.”
Weeks. The word sits in my stomach. Weeks at Frostbourne, while Ravenclaw sits hundreds of miles south with thirty wolves and wards that won’t last forever.
The meeting breaks. Edda leaves first, folder under her arm, already composing the approach to Margaret Cope in her head. Jonas follows, heading for the patrol rotation. Rook and Merric stay to organize the evidence files.
I walk back to the cabin in silence. The compound is settling down for the day. The south gate—rebuilt, solid, the timber still pale—catches the last of the light. Wolves move between buildings. Somewhere, a hammer rings against metal. The ordinary sounds of a pack putting itself back together.