Chapter 33
Willow
Conner walks into the kitchen while I’m pouring coffee. Brenna is at the table with Merric. Rook is in the doorway, eating toast.
“Garrett called,” Conner says.
The room changes. Brenna’s cup stops halfway to her mouth. Merric unfolds his arms. Rook sets down the toast.
“When?” Brenna asks.
“Twenty minutes ago. He knows where we are. One of his men tracked the convoy north.”
“Sit down,” Brenna says. “Tell me everything.”
Conner pulls out a chair. He doesn’t sit so much as lower himself into it, the way he does when his shoulder is bad and he’s pretending it isn’t. I take the chair beside him. Under the table, his knee presses against mine. Not for comfort. For grounding. He needs the contact to get through this.
“He’s furious. Not just about the ledger or the facility. About me. About what I am now.”
“Meaning Ravenclaw,” Brenna says. I can’t help the smile that wants to escape. She’s practically declaring him part of the pack.
“Meaning mated to a magic-blood.” He glances at me. “He called it pollution. Said I’d contaminated the Forrester bloodline.”
The word lands on the table like something dead. Merric’s expression darkens. Rook shifts his weight in the doorway.
“What did you say?” I ask. I keep my voice even, but my wolf is awake and bristling.
“I told him what I watched you do at the facility. Saving all those wolves.” He meets my eyes. “You were a miracle to those people.”
Something in my chest unlocks. Not because I need his validation, but because he said it to Garrett. To the brother he grew up with, the alpha he served for a decade, the man who taught him that magic was an abomination. He said it to that man.
“How did he respond?” Brenna asks, already past the personal, running calculations.
“He shut it down. Went full alpha. Said I’m dead to the pack.” Conner’s voice is steady, but I can feel the cost of that steadiness through the press of his knee against mine. “Then he shifted to the Syndicate. He knows the facility was hit. He wanted to know if I was part of it.”
“And you told him yes,” Merric says.
“I told him I carried children out of the east wing. I told him about Mia.” A pause. “He didn’t care. Not the way you’d want him to. He heard ‘children’ and pivoted straight to containment. What it means for the pack. The exposure.”
Brenna sets her cup down. “Did he give any indication of what he plans to do?”
“Protect the Forresters. That’s all he’s thinking about. He said the Syndicate won’t absorb the loss quietly, that we’ve made them all targets.”
“He’s not wrong about that,” Jericho says.
I didn’t hear him come in. He’s standing behind Rook, tall enough to see over him, his face unreadable.
“The facility we hit was a hub. Losing it disrupts their supply chain across the southern network. They’ll be in damage-control mode already, tracing the breach, identifying weak points. ”
“How long do we have?” Brenna asks.
“They’ll prioritize the facility first. Asset recovery, cleanup. That gives us a window.” He looks at Conner. “The Forrester corridor will be flagged as the weak point. Your family’s operation is the first thing they’ll audit.”
“Then the Forresters are the first loose end they’ll tie off,” Merric says.
I swallow hard, knowing what this means to Conner’s pack.
“Garrett knows that,” Conner says. “But I don’t think he’s aware of the shitstorm he’s about to face. Not just Syndicate. If this thing goes to council, there’ll be political exposure, hearings… He’s going to be stretched in a lot of directions.”
“I’m so sorry, Conner.” I put my hand on his.
He shakes his head. “He had it coming. You get in bed with the devil, at some point, you’re going to hell.”
“Are you willing to stand behind those words?” Brenna asks.
“Absolutely.” He doesn’t hesitate.
“Good.” Brenna looks at him. “Because the council case rests on the ledger. Your testimony. Without you, we have circumstantial evidence. With you, we have proof from inside the operation.”
“You want me to testify.”
“In person. In front of the southern councils. There will be wolves in that room who’ll try to tear you apart. They’ll call it a honeytrap.” Her eyes move to me, then back to him. “They’ll say a magic-blood compromised you.”
“Let them say it.”
“They’ll say you betrayed your pack for a woman.”
“I betrayed a system that sold children, and I’ll make them understand it.”
Brenna holds his eyes for a long moment. Whatever she’s looking for, she finds it. She nods once.
“Good.” Brenna stands. “Because this case isn’t about the Forresters.”
Conner frowns. “What do you mean?”
“The Forresters are a symptom. The disease is Nathan Bern.” She looks at Merric.
He nods; they’ve clearly discussed this.
“We’ve had Bern’s communication data since we ran the misinformation operation.
Relay networks, encryption keys, council-level access codes.
What we haven’t been able to prove is the financial connection between his network and the feeder packs.
The money trail.” She looks at Conner. “Your father’s ledger proves it.
The payment channels the Forresters used route through the same intermediary nodes as Bern’s Syndicate communications.
Different entry points, same infrastructure. ”
“So the ledger doesn’t just prove what my family did,” Conner says slowly. “It proves who was paying them. And it shows how Bern was connected.”
Brenna nods. “It leads to Bern’s network.
Which he built, which he controls, and which he’s used for integrating into Syndicate operations while sitting on the southern council playing elder statesman.
” There’s an edge to her voice that I recognize.
“Take him down, and you sever the link between the legitimate wolf power structure and the Syndicate. That’s what the council case does.
It doesn’t just expose a corrupt politician.
It cuts off the political cover that’s let the Syndicate operate in wolf territories for years. ”
The kitchen is quiet. Rook has stopped eating entirely. Merric is watching Conner, reading how this lands.
“Garrett doesn’t know any of this,” Conner says. “He thinks the operation was local. A regional arrangement.”
“Most of the packs that are involved probably think the same thing. That’s how Bern built it: compartmentalized, deniable, every pack thinking they were dealing with a private network rather than a single man’s empire.
” Brenna pauses. “But the financial routing tells a different story. And your testimony puts a face on it: the enforcer who ran the ground operation, confirming how the supply side worked. Without you, Bern has room to claim the connections are coincidental. With you, he doesn’t. ”
“When?” I ask.
“Soon. This week, if possible.” Brenna’s voice sharpens.
“Garrett’s call changed the timetable. Bern’s had decades to build alliances on that council.
The moment he understands we have the financial trail, he’ll start working every contact he has.
Reframing the narrative before we can present it.
Calling this a Ravenclaw vendetta, a magic-blood power grab, a disgruntled enforcer seduced by—” She stops herself. Glances at me. “You get the picture.”
“We hit him before he poisons the well,” Merric says.
“Exactly.”
“And the Syndicate itself?” Conner asks. “The facilities, the network… that’s bigger than a council hearing.”
“That’s the Aurora Collective’s fight. Viktor Parlance has been coordinating since connecting with Merric and Frostbourne.
Other packs, other alphas who’ve been hit.
They’ll deal with the big picture; they have the infrastructure for it.
” Brenna picks up the file that’s been sitting on the counter since last night.
Thick. Dog-eared. “But Bern is the bridge. He sits on the council and feeds intelligence to the Syndicate. Cut the bridge, and the Syndicate loses its access to wolf territory. That’s what this does. ”
She tucks the file under her arm. “Conner, you and I are going to sit down this afternoon and build your testimony. Every detail of the pipeline, from the assessment to the junction to the truck. How it worked, who you contacted, what you were told.” She meets his eyes.
“The councils will try to break you. We’re going to make sure they can’t. ”
“Understood.”
“Willow, I need Arden. Everything she hasn’t told us about the facility’s operations, how the supply chains connect, what she overheard about the wider network. If Bern’s lawyers try to isolate the Forrester operation as a single bad actor, Arden’s testimony is what proves it’s systemic.”
“I’ll find her.”
Brenna leaves. Merric follows. Rook picks up his toast, looks at it, and puts it down again. He heads out without a word.
The kitchen empties. Conner and I sit at the table with cooling coffee between us.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He nods. He doesn’t look okay. “Bern. I know the name. Never met him formally. He came through the southern territories a few times when I was younger. Pop treated him like visiting royalty.”
“He would have. Bern cultivated every pack in the south. That was the whole point.”
“And my father never knew he was part of something that big?”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t want to.” I put my hand over his. “Does it change anything for you? Knowing it goes higher?”
He thinks about it. Really thinks, the way he does—not performing consideration, actually sitting with the question.
“No,” he says. “The wolves in that facility don’t care about the politics. They care that someone came.” He turns his hand under mine. Holds it. “The rest is for people like Brenna to untangle. I just need to stand up and tell the truth.”
I lean over and kiss him. Brief. Firm. A reminder that the consequences include this: us, here, whatever we’re building. He catches my hand as I pull back. Holds it for a second. Lets go reluctantly.
We leave the kitchen. We both have work to do.