Semua Bab Wolfless Luna Rebirth: The Alpha King's Lethal Queen : Bab 61 - Bab 70

~Lyra's POV~The call lasted forty-one minutes and felt like three hours.Six Alphas were asking questions before Ivan had finished screen-sharing, voices overlapping in the particular way that group calls deteriorate when everyone wants to speak at once and nobody wants to be the one who sounds the most alarmed. The questions were fair. The intelligence reports on their screens were real, dated, detailed, stamped with Xavier's seal, covering the period of Seraphine's operation and the months following the battle.Xavier had withheld them from the full alliance.He had told me why at the time, the reports contained information about compromised pack officials that, if shared broadly, would have warned those officials that they were being investigated. Protecting the investigation meant controlling who saw the intelligence. It was the right call made for the right reason at the right time.None of that came through in a grid of twelve faces that had just watched a dead man present them

~Lyra's POV~Torvi worked through the night.I checked on her twice. The first time, around two in the morning, she had her diagnostic tools spread across the operations room table in a configuration that made no immediate sense until I looked longer. Old-world instruments on the left side, carved bone pieces, a shallow bowl of scrying water, three vials of something I didn't ask about. Modern equipment on the right, a spectrometer she'd modified herself, its casing covered in small carved symbols that she'd cut into the metal with what looked like a pocket knife. Both sets of tools feeding data to her tablet simultaneously.It shouldn't have worked. It looked like it absolutely worked."Go to sleep," she said without looking up. "I'll have something by morning."I went to sleep.-----------She knocked on my door at seven forty-five.I was already awake. Xavier was still in the corridor on a call with Soren about the diplomatic complaint Ivan had filed. I opened the door and Torvi ha

~Lyra's POV~I brought the video to Xavier and Torvi within twenty minutes of receiving it.Neither of them spoke for the first thirty seconds after I played it. Xavier's expression went through its usual contained cycle, recognition, processing, the flat controlled settling that meant he was working. Torvi's reaction was different. It was immediate, and it was sharp."She did it," Torvi said. "She actually performed the rebirth on herself.""You sound surprised," "I'm not surprised she attempted it," Torvi said. "I'm surprised she survived it. The ritual requires a practitioner who can hold the working from inside the process, you performing it on yourself while it's happening, which is like performing surgery on your own brain while you're awake." She was still looking at the screen. "But she did it. Look at her."I looked at the screen.Seraphine in the front row of Ivan's assembly hall, straight-backed, clear-eyed, holding a small child with the easy comfort of someone who had ch

~Lyra's POV~We spent three days preparing and none of it involved weapons.Xavier's team pulled every documented floor plan, entry point, and exit route for Nightshade's urban estate complex, a sprawling facility in the city's northern district that had been converted from an old industrial campus sometime in the last decade. The bones of the place were still factory-era: heavy concrete, wide corridors, loading bays that had been repurposed into vehicle access points. Over the top of all that, Ivan had built something that looked like a modern operational headquarters. Steel and glass facing the street. Climate control, digital security, server infrastructure. Pack underneath. City-facing on the surface.He was very good at that, I had come to understand. The modern surface over something older and less comfortable.Torvi spent two days on the delegation's preparations. Wards on the vehicles. Wards on our clothing, specific ones, layered: detection for dark magic in a twenty-foot rad

~Lyra's POV~The moment Seraphine sat down, the room changed.Not visibly. Ivan was still at the head of the table, still in control of the space, this was his house and every element of it had been designed to communicate that. But Seraphine sitting across from me restructured everyone's attention in the way that genuinely unpredictable variables do. I could feel the shift in how Xavier held himself. I could see Torvi's eyes moving between Seraphine and the room's other occupants with the systematic precision of someone updating a threat map in real time.Mama was watching Seraphine with the expression she used for people she hadn't decided about yet.I looked at Seraphine directly."You were supposed to stay in the northern community. That was the arrangement.""It was a recommendation," Seraphine said. "Not a formal detainment. I was released under no binding terms.""It was an understanding.""Yes," she said. "And I understood it. I also understood that this conversation was alway