Annabella
Chapter twenty-seven
“It’s a recent alliance,” Sam said, watching my face. “Twelve, maybe eighteen months. Kane wants Shifters eliminated. Webster wants the Council destroyed. Different endgames, same method: destabilise Shifter communities until the whole system collapses.”
“But they’re—” I stopped myself. I’d been about to say, “they’re enemies.” That was Simon’s version. Simon’s framing. Everything in neat little boxes: the Council was corrupt, humans were dangerous, Kane was a fanatic, and Simon was the only one trying to fix it.
What if the boxes were a lie?
“We think Webster plans to deal with Kane after the Council falls,” Sam said. “Use him, then discard him. Kane probably thinks the same thing about Webster.”
“Charming partnership,” Gideon muttered from the wall.
“If what you’re saying is true,” I said carefully, forcing each word out, “then Simon is using Council money meant for ripple victims to fund…what exactly?”
Derek looked at Waylen. “Show her.”
Waylen pulled up a new display with purchase orders, shipping records, supplier databases. “These shell companies aren’t just laundering money. They’re buying things.” He highlighted a series of orders. “Chemical compounds. Greenhouse equipment. Specialised botanical materials.”
“The chemical name for ripple is Theriothiamine,” Derek said.
“It targets Shifter-specific pheromone receptors. That’s why it doesn’t affect humans.
The base compound is derived from a genetically modified plant that requires specialised greenhouse conditions to grow.
Without the plant, you can’t make the drug.
That’s what these purchase orders are for. ”
I was staring at the screen, but my mind was somewhere else. In Simon’s study at three in the morning, watching him pore over reports he never let me read.
Theoretical research, he’d called it, with a smile and a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll understand when you’re ready, Annabella. Trust me.”
I had trusted him.
“The synthesis process,” Gideon said, pushing off the wall, “matches the profile of military research into ways to permanently block Shifters from accessing their wolves. Kane ran that programme years ago, off the books. It was shut down after test subjects died.”
I thought of Kane in my cell at Adarcan. His flat, clinical voice. “If I can isolate what allows your two natures to coexist, that knowledge has applications. Practical ones.”
“Kane kept the research,” Sam said. “And when he connected with Webster—”
“Webster provided the spell-work,” Derek finished. “Kane provides the chemical foundation. Together, they created ripple.”
The room went very quiet.
“You’re telling me,” I said, and each word scraped out of me like glass, “that Simon and Kane aren’t just profiting from ripple. They made it.”
“Yes,” Derek said.
I wanted to deny it. Wanted to find the flaw in their logic, the gap in the evidence, the thing that proved Simon couldn’t possibly have—
“The spell on ripple,” I said. “What does it do exactly?”
“Makes Shifters feel their Pack bonds are contaminated,” Sam said. “Blocks their ability to Shift. And drives them to break their Pack bonds.”
I stared at him.
Three separate magical threads. My mind was already running ahead of me, pulling the spell apart before I could stop it.
“A blocking hex to suppress the Shift; that’s advanced work, but it’s achievable,” I said, thinking out loud.
“But making wolves perceive their Pack bonds as impure? That’s not just suppression.
That’s manipulation of instinct. Of the fundamental connection between wolf and human consciousness.
” I looked up. “And driving them to sever those bonds? That’s corruption magic.
The kind that twists someone’s desires, makes them want things that go against their deepest nature. ”
Waylen’s fingers had stopped moving. Derek was watching me with a different expression that was sharper, reassessing.
“You’d need at least three separate magical threads working in concert,” I continued.
“Suppression. Perception alteration. Compulsion. Each one calibrated precisely to the other two or the whole spell collapses. And they’d all have to be stable enough to survive being embedded in a chemical compound.
That’s not something a single witch throws together in an afternoon.
That’s years of development. Years of testing, adjusting, failing, refining—”
My voice died.
Years. Simon had spent years on this.
“The original spell,” I said slowly. My throat felt tight. “The Webster Incident. When witches were banned from the North. Simon always told me it was a protection mechanism meant to restrain only rogue wolves during violent episodes.”
“That’s the version he tells,” Sam said carefully. “The Council’s investigation and the Inner Coven’s independent review both concluded the spell was designed to enslave werewolves. Put them under Webster’s direct command. If it had succeeded, every Shifter in the North would have been his.”
“The Inner Coven investigated?”
“They had no reason to side with the Council; they were victims of the purge that followed. But they confirmed what the spell was designed to do. I can show you the reports. The evidence. All of it.”
Simon. My father. The man who’d shown up at Ashridge Pack and taken me away from that nightmare.
Gave me training, purpose, a mission that mattered.
Made me believe I was fighting for something righteous, a world where witches and Shifters could coexist, where half-breeds like me wouldn’t have to hide what they were.
I’d spent five years working for that vision. Five years trusting him completely because he was the only person who’d ever believed in me. Who’d ever seen potential instead of contamination.
And these men were telling me it had all been a lie.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I managed.
Sam was beside me instantly, hand on my shoulder. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
But I couldn’t. Five years. Five fucking years of my life, and I had nothing to show for it but a list of people I’d hurt for a man who’d been using me since the day he found me.
My wolf rubbed against me; offering her comfort.
The same wolf I’d caged for years because Simon had told me she was the lesser half.
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. We both knew it. But the lie bought me the time I needed to lock everything down—the grief, the humiliation, the white-hot fury—and shove it somewhere I could deal with it later. Preferably while setting something on fire.
“So what does he actually want?” I asked. My voice came out flat. “What’s the endgame?”
“The Council falls,” Derek said. “That leaves a power vacuum. Webster’s spent years positioning himself and his coven as the solution to the ‘werewolf problem.’ The visionary with the magical knowledge to fix what the Council can’t.”
“Every person who ever stopped him, rejected him, told him no, proven wrong,” Sam said. “Every institution that humiliated him, dismantled. And a world that finally recognizes his genius. That’s all it’s ever been about.”
I thought about Simon in his study. The way he talked about the Council, the way every story ended with him as the victim and everyone else as corrupt or stupid or too blind to see his brilliance.
The way he demanded absolute loyalty and reframed any doubt as betrayal.
Him coming to the warehouse to talk to Talia Johnson, the way it felt like he was there to gloat.
And every time, I’d told myself he was protecting the mission. That loyalty meant trusting his judgment even when it didn’t make sense.
“So the ripple crisis is just a tool,” I said. “Manufacture enough chaos, create enough fear, and people will beg for someone to step in and take control.”
“Now she’s got it,” Waylen said quietly.
The fight drained out of me. I slumped back and stared at the evidence on the table. The photographs. The financial records. The shipping manifests.
“There’s more,” Derek said. “Ripple production is limited because you need a witch at every manufacturing site. That’s the bottleneck. Webster’s found a way around it.”
“Spell containment,” Waylen said, pulling up diagrams. “Small metal containers, about the size of a dollar coin, couple inches deep. Covered in engraved runes. A witch captures the spell inside, seals it. Later, someone breaks it open over a shipment, and every pill in that batch carries the spell’s effect. No witch needed at the factory.”
I recognized the theory immediately. Spell storage was one of the oldest problems in witchcraft.
Magic was living energy; it degraded when separated from its caster.
You could hold simple charms in crystals or carved wood, but anything complex enough to alter consciousness? That would decay in minutes.
Unless you found a way to stabilize it. Unless you’d solved the containment problem that had baffled witches for generations. And if anyone could do it, it was Simon. He was brilliant. Brilliant and patient and utterly without conscience.
“He’s consolidated his operations,” Derek continued. “Brought witches together at a single fortified location—we believe in Quebec—creating these containment boxes. As soon as he’s ready, he’ll start shipping them to production facilities worldwide.”
“How many facilities?”
“Twenty-five confirmed,” Gideon said. “Likely more.”
“Production capacity jumps from thousands of doses per month to hundreds of thousands,” Waylen said. “Maybe millions once they scale fully.”
Hundreds of thousands of Shifters who would never access their wolves again. Who would tear apart their own Pack bonds. Some would end up attacking humans, feeding Kane’s narrative that Shifters were animals who needed to be caged or put down.
“How long?” I asked. “Until the containment boxes go into full production?”
Waylen and Derek exchanged a look.
“Days,” Waylen said. “Maybe a week. First major shipment looks imminent.”
“Once that happens,” Sam said, “the power balance shifts permanently. They’ll have the capacity to destabilize every major Pack in North America within months.”
Days. We had days.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “But I need to do something first.”
Gideon straightened. “If you’re thinking of confronting Webster—”
“My sister.” The words cut through whatever warning he’d been loading up. “Ellie. My mom. They’re with the Ashridge Pack. Simon knows exactly where they are.”
“You think Webster will go after them,” Sam said.
“The second he finds out I’ve turned, he’ll take them.” The bitter laugh that came out of me tasted like dust. “He might even treat them well. But I’ll never see them again.”
And whatever else I’d done, however badly I’d fucked up, I wouldn’t let Simon use my four-year-old sister as a pawn.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Sam—”
“Non-negotiable,” he said, his voice firm.
“Fine,” I said. “But we go tonight.”