SERAPHINA’S POV

By the time we returned to Nightfang, the entire world already knew the truth about Marcus Draven.

We walked into the command center to see screens lit up with clipped footage from every angle of the tribunal square.

There was Marcus emerging from smoke he had no business being near if he were truly uninvolved.

Marcus crossing the battlefield with murder in his eyes. Marcus detonating darkness in the middle of a public execution he had claimed to condemn from a distance.

Marcus vanishing while Jack Draven, his own son, twisted into a nightmare and tore free of every restraint the allied forces had prepared.

Headline after headline crawled across the monitors.

MARCUS DRAVEN EXPOSED AT ROGUE TRIAL.

NEUTRAL ALPHA OR HIDDEN MASTERMIND?

NIGHTFANG CLAIMS VINDICATION AFTER PUBLIC ATTACK.

Even the online boards that had spent the past few days swinging between hating and loving me had shifted their attention.

People who had called me unstable now posted slowed-down clips of Marcus’s entrance, circling the exact moment his mask had dropped.

Others dragged up his previous interview, putting his sanctimonious denials beside footage of him in the middle of Catherine’s altered forces.

’He really thought he could play saint while knee-deep in all this?’ someone wrote beneath a viral clip.

Another comment read, ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks about silver wolves anymore. Marcus Draven is the real monster.’

I stood behind Kieran’s chair, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder while his fingers moved over a tablet Gavin had handed him.

The wound near his ribs and on his temple had already sealed beneath the torn fabric of his shirt, leaving only faint redness and drying blood behind.

My own injuries had faded to a deep ache under my skin, and though exhaustion dragged at my bones, werewolf healing had done what it always did.

Kieran reached up and covered my hand with his. “You’re trembling.”

"I’m angry," I said, my voice brittle, pulse thrumming in my throat.

His thumb brushed over my knuckles. “That too.”

Across the room, Ethan stood with his arms folded, his expression grim, while Logan’s restlessness flickered behind his eyes. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Corin leaned against the edge of the strategy table, pale from maintaining the psychic net for so long, while Alois sat near the monitors with a cup of untouched tea in his hand.

Maya was there too, tucked into one of the chairs near the far wall, unusually quiet.

Maxwell hovered nearby, his expression making it clear he wanted to fuss over his pregnant sister and was only restraining himself because Maya looked ready to bite anyone who crowded her.

“We still lost Jack,” Ethan said at last, frustration roughening his voice. “Whatever Marcus did to him, he’s loose now.”

Kieran’s grip tightened over mine, but before he could answer, I said, “Not completely.”

Every gaze turned toward me.

I drew in a slow breath, feeling the faint silver current that had settled somewhere deeper than my bones since the night by the lake—quiet and vast, a living tide beneath every thought.

“When Jack transformed, I...planted something on him,” I said.

Corin straightened slightly. “A psychic mark?”

“A covert one,” I said. “Buried beneath the darkness so it wouldn’t react immediately. If he keeps rampaging, it may be difficult to read clearly, but once he stabilizes, once the corruption settles enough for him to be moved, contained, recalled, or guided back to wherever Catherine’s real base is, I’ll feel the direction.”

Alois stared at me for a long moment over the rim of his cup. Then he lowered it without drinking. “You marked Catherine’s weapon while it was actively mutating.”

Corin’s mouth curved, not quite into a smile, but into something edged with wonder. “That is not ordinary psychic or silver wolf work, Sera.”

Alois hummed under his breath. “No, it isn’t.”

The room shifted around that quiet statement, and the words spilled out of me before I could think them through.

“The marks are completed,” I said. “I’ve reached Sovereign level.”

Heavy silence blanketed the room as they all looked at me like they were seeing me for the first time.

“I should have told you sooner,” I admitted. My fingers curled against Kieran’s shoulder as guilt pressed beneath my ribs.

"I went for a run, and it just...happened. I’m still processing. I know that’s not a good excuse, especially after all your help. But I—"

“Sera,” Corin cut in gently, “you ascended into one of the rarest states our kind has ever documented while preparing for a public tribunal, an enemy ambush, and possible war. It would overwhelm anybody. I think we can forgive a delayed announcement.”

Alois’s eyes softened despite the exhaustion lining his face. “You do realize we are happy for you, don’t you?”

The words caught me off guard so sharply that I almost laughed. “Happy?”

“Yes, happy,” he said, as though I had said something absurd. “Concerned, certainly. Alarmed by the scale of what you can now do, absolutely. Already planning several lectures you will hate, without question. But angry?” He shook his head. “No.”

Corin stepped closer, his sea-salt-and-citrus scent cutting through the metallic odor of blood and smoke still clinging to all of us.

“You stabilized, Sera. After everything that power could have done to you, after everything Marcus tried to make the world believe about silver wolves, you stabilized. That matters.”

My throat tightened.

Kieran tilted his head back to look at me, pride and worry mingling in his dark eyes. “They’re right.”

For one fragile second, I let myself absorb it. Not as a weapon gained, not as a burden made heavier, but as something survived. Something earned.

Then my gaze drifted back to Maya, who had not said a word.

Her hand rested low over her abdomen, not dramatically or consciously, but protectively, as though her body already understood a truth her mind was still struggling to hold.

Ethan noticed where I was looking, and his jaw tightened, but he let me cross the room without stopping me.

“Maya,” I said softly, crouching in front of her. “Can we talk?”

Her eyes lifted to mine, bright with too much emotion. For a moment, the wolf who had chased Jack through smoke and fury looked heartbreakingly young.

She nodded.

I led her into the quieter sitting room adjoining the command center. As soon as the door closed, the noise of screens, voices, and strategy dulled into a low murmur.

Maya stood near the window with her arms wrapped around herself.

Outside, Nightfang moved under emergency lights. Warriors crossed the grounds in disciplined streams. Healers guided the injured to the infirmary. Scouts waited for orders that would not come until we understood the full scale of what had happened.

"I should be happy," she whispered, voice quavering, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

“You are allowed to be terrified, too,” I said softly.

Her face crumpled at that, and a small sob tore out of her.

She pressed a hand over her mouth as if the sound that escaped her had embarrassed her. I moved closer, but I did not touch her until she reached for me first.

“I am happy,” she said, her voice breaking. “I swear I am. When Alois said it, for one second, I felt...”

She closed her eyes. “I felt like the whole world stopped, and there was only this tiny heartbeat I couldn’t even hear yet. Mine and Ethan’s. Ours.”

I held her hands between mine.

“But then I thought of Catherine,” she continued. “I thought of Marcus. I thought of Jack tearing through that square, of children hiding while adults argued about monsters, and I couldn’t breathe. How am I supposed to bring a child into this? How do I protect them from a world where people like Catherine and Marcus and Jack exist?”

The ache in my chest deepened because I knew that fear too well. I had carried Daniel through a resentful marriage, threats, kidnappings, prophecy, and war. I had watched danger circle my son before he was old enough to see how many teeth the world had.

“You don’t protect a child by waiting for the world to become harmless,” I said quietly, brushing my thumbs over her knuckles. “You protect them by making sure they are born surrounded by people who will fight like hell to make it better.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

I pulled her into my arms, and she came without resistance, clutching me so tightly that her shoulders shook against mine.

“We will defeat Catherine and Marcus before this child is born,” I whispered into her hair. “I swear it, Maya. Before your baby takes their first breath, we will end this.”

She sobbed once, hard and quiet.

I held her through it, feeling the tremor of her fear and the fragile hope beneath it.

For the first time since Marcus vanished and Jack disappeared into the dark, the war felt less like a battlefield stretching endlessly ahead and more like a deadline written in blood, love, and life.

And I would meet it.

For Maya.

For Daniel and Ava.

For every child who deserved a world where monsters did not get to decide the shape of tomorrow.