Chapter 28
Bishop
If London had a heart, this was where it pretended to keep it.
The assembly hall sat at the top of a broad flight of stone steps, all symmetrical lines and polished brass railings.
Inside, the air was warm and faintly metallic, smelling of oil, old wood, and too many bodies doused in cologne.
Lamps hung from the ceiling in tiers, glass globes fitted into wrought-iron frames, lit by steady cores connected to a ring of pipes along the walls.
The whole thing ran on pressure and careful engineering, like everything else in the city.
You could hear it if you listened: a soft hiss and ticking behind the walls, the sigh of valves opening and closing somewhere out of sight. A civilized facade laid neatly over steam-powered machinery.
Tamsin and the others looked like they belonged here, which probably said something uncomfortable about how adaptable we’d all become.
Elias wore a dark suit cut to make him look like he’d stepped out of an old portrait, shirt collar unbuttoned just enough to keep him from feeling strangled.
Griff looked like someone had squeezed a bear into formalwear; he tugged at his cuffs, glared at his sleeves, and somehow still carried himself like security.
Nox wore his suit like he’d worn it all his life, which was surprising actually.
Eamon had cleaned up better than any of us, his hair smoothed back, waistcoat buttoned, looking every inch the respectable physician.
Tamsin was the one every eye would land on if we let them.
She stood at the edge of the floor, near one of the marble columns, in a steel blue dress that looked tailor-made: simple, cut for function, but the way it hugged her body was… noticeable.
I slipped through the room like I’d never left this world.
My shoes clicked quietly against the polished wood as I crossed to the center of the room. I could feel the eyes on me before I heard the whispers.
“…Bishop Hale?”
“…no, he died—”
“I read the notice—”
“I heard he went feral—”
A familiar face stared back at me from across the room.
My father looked older.
Of course he did, it had been years since I’d last seen him, but seeing him now was a shock in a way nothing else had been since I got back on English soil. His hair was more gray than dark now, his shoulders a little more stooped, but the lines around his mouth were the same.
“Bishop?” he said, barely more than a breath.
I held his gaze. “Hello, Father.”
My father clutched the drink in his hands hard enough that I worried the glass might shatter. “I was told that you died in a security incident,” he said, louder now. “That there was nothing left to recover.”
“Well,” I said. “That wasn’t true.”
“I can see that now,” he replied.
A pair of councilors drifted past, pretending not to listen while very obviously listening. One of them almost walked into a server because he couldn’t take his eyes off me.
“…that’s Bishop Hale—”
“…no, it can’t be—”
Someone behind me whispered, “If that’s him, then they lied,” and that was the point, wasn’t it?
My father’s fingers loosened around the glass. “Where have you been?” he asked. “All this time…”
“Dumped in Ireland,” I said. “Left to become part of your feral problem. Lucky enough to find people who didn’t think I was a lost cause.”
His throat worked. “You were bitten?”
“Yes.”
“And you—” He swallowed. “You’re not feral.”
“I’m not feral,” I said. “I’m in complete control. Have been the whole time.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?” His voice had gone thin around the edges, like the years of certainty were cracking and he wasn’t sure what was underneath.
“Because you must have asked the wrong questions,” I said. “And they had a story to maintain.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and for a moment he looked small and old. I felt a little sorry for him.
I could have stayed in that moment longer, picked at it, tried to mend something that had been snapped instead of simply bent.
We didn’t have that kind of time.
“Father,” I said, gentler than I felt. “I’ll explain the rest later. Right now, I need you to listen.”
“To what?” he asked.
“To the part where this is much bigger than just me.”
I stepped away before he could answer, weaving deeper into the crowd.
Faces turned as I passed. Some were curious, some wary, some outright hostile. I caught glimpses of familiar profiles from my former life: men I’d drafted policy briefs for, women I’d watched negotiate trade concessions, clerks I’d shared stiff drinks with after long sessions.
None of them had expected the dead son of a minister of parliament to show up at their mixer.
Tamsin caught my eye from across the room, near one of the brass support columns. There was a question in her gaze.
Now?
I gave the slightest nod.
She raised her hand, just enough for Elias to see.
He angled closer to a cluster of uniformed guards by the wall, saying something quietly, requiring them to lean in.
Griff drifted toward the opposite side, near the small, raised dais at the front of the hall where speeches were usually given.
Nox slid between groups, somehow ending up exactly where he needed to be without anyone clocking how he got there.
Eamon stayed near the side door where Zara and Sera would be waiting with the others, his posture loose, hands folded behind his back.
Someone’s idea of a proper physician at a political gathering.
Convincing, really.
I strode to the front of the room.
The dais wasn’t much, two steps up onto a slightly higher section of floor, a lectern positioned so whoever spoke could look out over the bodies and brass with appropriate gravitas. A pair of guards stood nearby, more ornament than deterrent.
One of them frowned as he noticed my trajectory. He stepped toward me, hand lifting.
“Sir, that area is—”
Griff bumped into him.
It looked accidental. A slight stumble, a muttered apology. But his hand landed on the guard’s arm with enough weight to redirect him half a step off course. By the time the man had steadied himself and realized what had happened, I was already past him.
The second guard moved to intercept me.
Nox appeared at his elbow, smiling like they were old friends. “They’re calling for more wine in the back,” he said, tone just urgent enough. “You might want to sort it before someone important decides their glass has been empty for far too long.”
The guard hesitated, caught between orders and social pressure.
“Go,” Nox said, grin widening. “Trust me.”
He went.
By the time anyone in the room realized what I was doing, I was already on the dais with my hand on the lectern.
The hum of conversation dipped.
I cleared my throat once and the nearest conversations faltered.
“Good evening,” I said.
The words carried loud and clear across the room. Heads turned. Laughter died mid-breath. The murmurs didn’t stop, but they changed, picking up my name and passing it around like a contagion.
I waited until the noise settled into a low, expectant buzz.
My father had pushed his way closer to the front. He stood just below the dais now, looking up at me with a face that belonged to two men at once: the one who’d raised me to serve this room, and the one who’d signed off on my death believing the lie.
“Bishop,” he said again. Less sure this time.
I met his eyes. “You were told I died,” I said, not to him now but to the room. “You were told it was a security incident. That my death was an unavoidable tragedy.”
Several heads nodded reflexively, like they were agreeing with their own memories.
“That was obviously not true,” I said.
The quiet deepened.
“I worked here as a policy aide,” I went on. “Most of you know that. I’m the son of Minister Hale. I sat in your galleries and wrote your speeches and watched you decide how the world outside these walls should look.”
I let my gaze move, not stopping on any one face too long. This wasn’t about picking individuals. It was about refusing to let them pretend I wasn’t talking about them.
“I was bitten,” I said. “Bitten because I followed one of your trusted scientists—Dr. Helena Voss—into a restricted facility beneath this city. I saw cages full of wolves who were not feral until she and her people pumped something into them.”
Someone near the back actually dropped their glass. It shattered against the wood floor. No one moved to clean it up.
“I saw them chained,” I continued. “I saw them drugged. I saw a man watch as a wolf was released into the room with me. I saw him wait until it bit me and then order that I be sedated and removed. That man’s name was Lord Ashcroft.”
My father’s hand gripped the glass in his hand, knuckles white. A shocked murmur came over the crowd before it quieted again.
“I woke up in Ireland,” I said. “Alone. Confused. And as far as this city was concerned, I was dead.”
I paused, then added, “They told my father I died. I found out years later that they told him there was nothing left to recover.”
I looked down at him again.
He looked back, eyes bright with emotion.
“But I didn’t die in London, and I didn’t die in Ireland,” I said, straightening, voice rising again. “I came close. Ireland is a dangerous place these days. But I’m here to prove to you that not all wolves go feral.”
On cue, Zara and Sera emerged from the side with the first of the stabilized wolves. Lady Faera walked with her spine straight and her chin up, Jonah just behind her, Lionel hovering like he wanted to disappear and couldn’t.
A ripple ran through the crowd as names and faces clicked into memory.
“Lady Faera?” someone said, astonished. “But you—”
“Were sent to Ireland after they made me go feral,” she said.
Jonah lifted a hand. “Jonah Pike.”
Lionel simply waved.
“These people,” I said, gesturing to them, “were written off. Declared irretrievably feral. Shipped out so you wouldn’t have to see what happened next. And yet here they stand. Not because of anything you did. But because someone else chose to help them.”
Eamon stepped to the front of the room and cleared his throat.
“They were made to go feral using a drug ordered and authorized by Ashcroft and developed by Dr. Voss. We treated them with a healing serum. Their cognitive function returned completely. Their memories remained intact. They remember being bitten. They remember who made them go feral.”
The hall was very, very quiet now.
“What you’ve been told is the inevitable outcome of being bitten,” I said, “is an engineered fallacy. On purpose. A lie repeated over and over for years. I am a bitten wolf,” I said.
“They are bitten wolves. We are standing here in front of you, calm and in control, not tearing this room apart and devouring all of you.”
I let that settle.
“Wolves do not always go feral,” I stated steadily.
“That narrative has been convenient, but it is not true. People in your employ have been intentionally inducing ferality, lying about it, and using those lies to justify everything from deportations to executions. It has been an exercise in social control. And it has worked. Until now.”
Tamsin stepped onto the dais beside me and took my hand.
“It. Stops. Now.”