LEVIATHAN
By the time we get back to Essence, I know enough that I don’t need to see Gerald’s files again.
Rowan and Amand gave me the important parts on the drive over, and every mile made the pressure under my skin worse.
Gerald has been predicting what my designation might do, choosing situations that could force those abilities out of me, and tracking what happens when Rowan and Amand are close enough to stabilize whatever changes.
The part that keeps circling back is Rowan.
I can still feel the weight of his face between my hands and the way his breathing kept getting shallower while stone crawled into his chest. That memory has nothing to do with charts or projections or whatever clinical shit Gerald wrote after the fact.
Rowan almost died because we took a case Gerald already believed could force my designation into something new.
Gerald is behind his desk when we walk into his office. He looks up from whatever he’s reading, takes in Rowan’s expression, Amand shutting the door behind us, and me standing in front of the desk instead of dropping into my usual chair. “I assume you found the files.”
I stare at him for a second. “That’s it? No pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about?”
“There would be little point.” Gerald closes the folder in front of him and sets it aside. “You have questions.”
“I have several, but we’re starting with whether you’re going to waste my time lying.” I plant both hands on the edge of his desk and lean toward him. “Did you give me the unicorn case because you thought exposure to them would force my designation to develop?”
“Yes.”
The answer lands harder because he doesn’t hesitate.
Rowan moves closer behind me while Amand stays near the door, cutting off the easiest exit without making a production out of it. Gerald notices both of them and still looks more interested in me.
“You came to our house with photographs of three dead shifters,” I say.
“Every one of them had a perfectly round hole through the chest because someone had run a unicorn horn straight through them. You told me the shifted form carried different DNA than the human body, so ordinary tracing wasn’t getting you anywhere, and there was no obvious connection between the victims.”
“That was all true.”
“You also told me you wanted me because I could smell designations other investigators couldn’t.”
“That was true as well.”
I straighten and fold my arms. “You keep saying that like using true information makes the rest less fucked up.”
“It means the case wasn't fabricated for you.” Gerald’s tone stays calm. “Elias was killing people before Essence became involved. The victims existed independently of my interest in your designation. What I controlled was who took the assignment.”
There’s the distinction he thinks matters.
I remember standing over those bodies, trying to separate the unicorn signature from everything around it.
I remember Gerald pushing me to identify what I could smell, how much I could isolate, whether I could reproduce it.
Later, when I got close enough to the unicorns that scent alone wasn’t enough, my designation went farther.
I didn’t just smell like something else.
I could present as another shifter strongly enough to get inside their world until Elias figured out what I was, dosed the stable with ginger to interfere with me, and decided framing Silas and keeping me as some kind of prize sounded like a reasonable end to his evening.
“You knew full presentation was possible before I ever did it,” I say.
“I believed it was possible.”
“So you put me around a designation rare enough that I’d have to adapt if I wanted to keep up.”
“Yes.”
I drag one hand through my curls and look back at Gerald. “The unicorn case wasn’t the beginning, though.”
“No.”
“Ginny was.”
Gerald’s expression changes slightly. “Ginny made me aware that your abilities were developing outside any known Chameleon pattern.”
“That case had nothing to do with you.”
“I know.”
I wait, because if he is going to use something that happened before I ever worked for him as justification, he can say the whole fucking thing.
Gerald leans back in his chair. “You were already investigating the missing Omegas when Essence became aware of you. Vince had spent five years paying off his debt to Ginny through smaller jobs. When that stopped being enough, she told him she needed pure energy. She never told him to bring Omegas. That was his choice because he could threaten them, manipulate them, and move them with dark magic without drawing immediate attention.”
My jaw tightens at Vince’s name.
Gerald continues. “By the time you reached Ginny, several Omegas were dead. She was draining pure magic because she intended to use it in a resurrection ritual for the first Alpha. She captured you, bound you with dark magic, interfered with your voice, and began drawing from your magic as well.”
“I was there.”
“Yes, and you survived it while continuing to identify things most investigators missed. You separated Ginny’s magic from the Omegas she had used.
You recognized that Vince was wrong long before you had proof he was delivering people to her, even while he was hiding behind a badge and suppressing what little wild magic he had.
You tracked signatures through interference that should have muddied them beyond usefulness. ”
“And then Cole called Essence after we got him out.”
Gerald nods. “That was when I had enough to justify looking into you directly.”
I remember Cole throwing himself at me before leaving with his Alpha. I remember Gerald’s card sitting on the counter afterward and being too exhausted to care that the owner of some supernatural PI agency had offered me work because his team apparently needed more brains.
“You didn’t choose Ginny,” I say. “You watched what I survived and decided I was interesting.”
“That is a simplified version, but yes.”
“Good. We’re getting somewhere.”
Gerald’s mouth tightens, but he lets me continue.
I step away from the desk and pace once before turning back.
“Then you recruited me. You showed up while we were moving, disappeared in front of me, told me you were another Chameleon, and explained why being away from Rowan and Amand was making me sick. You told me Basilisk venom had become something my body needed and that separation could eventually kill me.”
“I told you because it was true.”
“You also told me you’d been waiting a long time for another Chameleon.” I look at him until his expression hardens. “What you forgot to mention was that I was already a research project by then.”
“I had begun documenting your abilities.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
Rowan’s fingers catch the back of my shirt and hold there. He isn’t restraining me so much as giving my body somewhere to put the urge to move.
I look down at Gerald’s desk, then back at him. “Now we get to this case.”
Gerald doesn't pretend he doesn’t know what I mean.
“Medusa walks in here because her gargoyle ex cut one of the snakes from her head and figured out how to keep it alive. By the time we get involved, he’s already experimenting.
We find animals only partly petrified in that warehouse, then the shifter who cut off his own leg before the stone could spread farther.
After that we get the wolf fully petrified in his house while he’s still conscious inside it, and then another victim where the effect is cleaner because the gargoyle’s magic is already starting to merge with Medusa’s. ”
Gerald listens without interrupting.
“You knew the case involved stolen magic actively changing around another designation,” I say.
“You knew it was getting stronger every time he used it. You also had a prediction sitting in your files that said threatening one of my mates might force my designation to develop some kind of countermeasure.”
“Yes.”
The word comes out as calmly as the first one.
Something cold settles in my stomach.
“You didn’t know Rowan was going to pick up a snake fragment.”
“No.”
“You didn’t know it would start turning him to stone.”
“No.”
“But you knew this case had the kind of magic that could threaten us badly enough to test your theory.”
“Yes.”
I turn my head and look at Rowan.
He’s standing close enough that our shoulders nearly touch now, breathing normally, warm and solid and very much not stone. That should help.
It doesn’t.
I look back at Gerald. “He couldn’t breathe.”
Gerald’s expression stills.
“I had my hands on his chest and there was barely any movement under them. The stone had already crossed his ribs, and every breath got smaller while Medusa kept telling us the fragment should weaken eventually.” My voice gets rougher despite my best effort to keep it level.
“The healer found damage in both lungs and his diaphragm afterward. He was healing torn tissue because the petrification had gotten that deep.”
Gerald starts to speak, but I cut him off.
“What did you think happened if I couldn’t reverse it?”
His eyes stay on mine. “You did reverse it.”
For a second, I’m sure I misunderstood him.
I tilt my head. “Try that again.”
“Your designation adapted. The bond gave you access to Rowan’s magical state, you responded to the petrification as a direct threat, and the resulting countermeasure disrupted the stone while protecting the tissue underneath.”
“I know what happened.” I step closer until Rowan’s hand closes around my upper arm. “I asked what happened if I failed.”
Gerald’s brow furrows as though I’m insisting on discussing the least useful part of the equation. “But you didn't fail.”
The anger inside me changes shape.
I stop trying to find the version of Gerald who is going to understand why that answer is horrifying. He isn’t hiding behind the result because he feels guilty. The result is genuinely the only part he considers important.
“You really believe that,” I say.
Gerald’s gaze narrows slightly. “The outcome demonstrated that the projection was correct.”