SERAPHINA’S POV

Catherine and Marcus had spent years hiding in the shadows.

Their operations hid beneath secrecy—false names, hidden routes, erased memories, sealed minds.

They had built their empire beneath the surface, so people could whisper about disappearances but never point to a door and say, there, that is where the monster lives.

Jack, however, might as well have been standing on top of a mountain, wearing a neon sign reading: COME AND GET ME!

Kieran had already been digging into him for months once he found out that Jack was responsible for the earlier rogue attacks on me.

Once we had his location from the puppet’s mind, everything moved with ruthless precision.

The first signs were quiet.

A missing shipment here.

A frozen account there.

A courier route that suddenly went dark.

Then came the raids.

Not loud enough to look like open war, nor reckless enough to leave bodies in the street, but precise strikes meant to choke Jack’s network until every hidden vein surfaced.

Warehouses connected to rogue trafficking rings were shut down by human authorities after anonymous tips exposed illegal weapons, false documentation, and smuggling operations.

Underground transit routes used to move wolfsbane and captives disappeared overnight after allied patrols intercepted transport teams and handed carefully prepared evidence to law enforcement.

Shell companies Marcus had used to funnel money toward Jack began collapsing one after another under investigations that looked almost impossibly well-timed to anyone who did not know how long we had been preparing.

Quiet pressure first.

Isolation second.

Exposure last.

By the third day, the atmosphere across both the human and werewolf worlds had shifted so sharply that even standing still felt like standing inside a gathering storm.

Nightfang now felt less like a home and more like the heart of a war machine.

The massive strategy room pulsed with constant movement as reports poured in faster than anyone could properly sort them.

Monitors lined nearly every wall, displaying rotating surveillance feeds, territorial updates, financial statements, public sentiment charts, and news coverage from both human and werewolf networks.

The long central table had vanished beneath organized chaos—files stacked beside tactical projections, half-drunk cups of coffee abandoned near glowing laptops, hastily scribbled notes overlapping supply manifests and patrol rotations.

The air smelled of paper, overheated electronics, stale coffee, and exhaustion.

Representatives from all the allied packs moved through the room, elbow deep in one assignment or another.

Everyone was tense but disciplined, swept along by the relentless pace of people trying to keep up with s shifting storm.

I made continual rounds, scanning the room and checking in with team members, but remained distracted by the reports spread across the table in front of me.

Public sentiment indexes.

Pack reactions.

Territorial statements.

The numbers climbed higher every hour.

Fear.

Anger.

Outrage.

...Toward rogues.

That was the dangerous part.

I could feel it spreading beneath the surface like oil through water, slow and suffocating and difficult to contain once it started moving.

Jack operated through rogue channels long enough that, naturally, the public couldn’t see one bad egg from any wolf outside a pack border. Fear never bothered with precision.

Maya approached briskly from one of the side stations, holding a tablet tightly, her face grim.

“Three more incidents,” she said quietly.

I looked up. “Where?”

“Two rogue-owned businesses vandalized near Gray Hollow territory. One assault outside a border market. The victim survived, but barely.”

A cold pressure settled behind my ribs.

“What did the local Alphas say?”

“Mixed responses.” Maya folded her arms, her expression tightening. “Some condemned it publicly. Some are pretending not to see it.”

Which usually meant they secretly approved of it. Or considered it convenient.

Neither possibility sat well with me.

My fingers curled against the edge of the table.

“Increase monitoring around rogue-heavy districts,” I said.

Maya nodded. “Done.”

“And make sure the reports of harassment are logged separately from Jack-related arrests. I don’t want anyone burying hate crimes beneath our campaign statistics.”

Her expression softened. “Good idea.”

I looked back down at the reports, but before I could refocus, the door opened at the far end of the room.

Cedar. Rain. Home.

Kieran.

The tension in my chest eased instinctively, even before I looked at him.

He entered with Gavin at his shoulder, both of them wearing the kind of exhaustion that came from too many meetings and too little sleep.

Gavin loosened his tie, ran a hand through his slightly mussed hair, and immediately headed to the back of the room, muttering something about needing coffee strong enough to revive the dead.

Kieran came straight to me.

The room shifted around him in the subtle way rooms always did when he entered them.

Conversations did not stop, but they changed shape, sharpening around his presence. He carried authority without raising his voice, and tonight it clung to him more heavily than usual.

His hand brushed against my lower back when he stopped beside me.

“How was the council meeting?” I asked.

His jaw tightened. “They finally stopped pretending Jack’s operation was rumor and coincidence.”

I breathed out slowly. “Good.”

“Good,” he agreed, though nothing in his voice softened.

He handed me a file. “These have been verified.”

I opened it.

Photos.

Shipment manifests.

Financial transfers.

Surveillance captures.

One image showed the exterior of the old auto body shop I had seen inside the puppet’s mind, which was Jack’s main hideout.

The building looked unremarkable in daylight, which somehow made my stomach turn more violently. Monsters always seemed worse when they hid behind ordinary walls.

Another image showed wolfsbane stockpiles hidden beneath false flooring.

Another showed holding spaces so small that my lungs tightened just looking at them.

I closed the file and looked up at Kieran. “When?”

“First thing tomorrow morning.”

I understood why this needed to happen. Jack’s network had grown too large, too violent, too protected by uncertainty.

Waiting would only give him time to scatter assets, shift captives, and bury evidence beneath more bodies.

But once Kieran made the announcement, there would be no pulling the world back from the edge.

“You know what this will do to rogue communities,” I said quietly.

His expression hardened, not with anger at me, but with the weight of a decision he had already measured from every angle.

“We’re not declaring war on rogues,” he said. “We’re declaring war on the people kidnapping civilians, trafficking wolves, peddling wolfsbane, and helping Catherine build monsters in hidden rooms.”

“I know that.”

But not everyone would.

***

An hour later, the announcement went live.

Every major werewolf network carried it simultaneously. Human outlets picked up the criminal evidence minutes later through channels we had already prepared.

I stood in the strategy room while Kieran addressed the public from Nightfang’s main briefing hall, flanked by allied Alphas and representatives from the territories willing to stand on record.

Kieran stood at the center in black, his expression carved from something cold and immovable, his eyes impossibly sharp beneath the lights. Behind him, the gathered evidence rotated across massive digital screens.

The room around me fell silent as Kieran began to speak.

“For years,” he said evenly, “our territories have suffered disappearances, trafficking, illegal imprisonment, and coordinated violence hidden beneath political hesitation, fear, and insufficient proof.”

Images shifted behind him.

Aaron.

The seized transports.

The underground holding sites. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

“We now possess verified evidence connecting these crimes to Rogue Jack Draven and the hostile network operating beneath his protection. We will not permit this to continue. An allied campaign against Jack Draven and his affiliated hostile forces will begin shortly.”

A ripple moved through the room, and the reporters instantly began firing off a dozen questions per second.

Kieran continued, raising his voice above them all.

“This campaign is directed at Jack Draven and those who have participated in trafficking, abduction, illegal experimentation, wolfsbane distribution, and coordinated attacks against civilians. It is not directed at rogues as a people.”

I exhaled slowly, though the tightness in my chest did not ease.

He had said the right words, but would they be enough?

Kieran’s voice deepened slightly.

“Those currently operating under Jack Draven who surrender themselves and provide verifiable cooperation will be treated according to their crimes and their level of involvement. Those who continue to aid him will be considered hostile actors.”

The screens behind him shifted again, showing the evidence trail with clinical precision.

“We are not asking the public to act,” Kieran said. “We are ordering them not to. Civilians are not to harass, punish, detain, or attack anyone under suspicion. This campaign belongs to the allied forces and lawful authorities alone.”

That was Kieran.

Not merely declaring war.

Claiming control over the violence before it spread beyond his hands.

For one brief second, pride cut through my dread.

Then the public reaction began.

Messages flooded the lower feeds almost immediately. Support from allied territories came first, then statements from packs that had been waiting to see which way the wind turned.

Families of missing wolves posted names and old photographs.

Human outlets seized on the trafficking evidence. Werewolf networks replayed the holding-cell images until I wanted to reach through the screen and tear them down.

Support surged.

So did anger.

By midnight, Jack’s name was everywhere.

They called him a destabilizer.

A trafficker.

A terrorist.

A rot that had been allowed to spread too long.

By morning, even those who opposed Kieran dared not say so publicly.

The campaign had become too righteous, too visible, too charged for anyone to condemn without looking as though they were defending traffickers and murderers.

Strategically, it was a victory.

Politically, it was brilliant.

But things were only going to get messier.