Ethan POV

I was furious. Not with the rogues or the Council or even with Marcus. I was furious at myself. I was the Alpha of this pack, and I had allowed all things to go wrong under my charge. People were injured, and I had not considered that. Worse still, I had been mistaken for the people I had the most trust in.

Lyra was in the old house of her family, and she was searching with Dane and Zane. I was meant to help, when I was in fact standing outside the house doing nothing as everything fell into pieces. Owen was there at the healing center with Kira and ensured that no other person was killed.

And I was failing everyone.

My wolf was impatient, and desired to do something, and wanted to mend things. He would be close to Lyra, to take care of her, to show her that I was not the same man that rejected her five years ago. However, I did not know how to establish anything like that and more so when my entire family appeared to be plotting against her.

"Ethan?" a voice called from inside. It was Dane. "You need to see this."

I went inside. This house reeked of dust and recollection that nothing has changed since the day that her parents died. Dane was standing, where Lyra once had a bedroom, and holding in his hand a leather journal.

Zane, reading behind his shoulder, had a serious face with its scarred features. Lyra sat on the bed, with her gaze upon something. As she stared at me, I perceived in her the anguish of feeling in her soul the terrible truths.

Your family maintained records, said Dane as he gave me the journal. Lyra, the history of her bloodline through the generations. The authority has manifested itself earlier. It never failed to appear in women and it always rendered them dangerous.

I picked up the journal and began reading. Handwritten pages covered the history of the family of Lyra. Her grandmother was equally powerful and the Council had attempted to employ her. Her great grandmother possessed one as well, and she had never been employed, hence the interruption of the whole family lineage in the Council during more than a century.

Until Lyra was born.

I read, I read, they have been spying on your family. Waiting to see whether the power was going to come back. The Council determined to strike as soon as you had it, when it was obvious that you had it.

Lyra said something low, but her parents did not catch it. "That's what's in this letter." She was holding a scrap of paper that was aged and yellowed down to the edges. They heard that the Council wanted to make use of me. So they attempted to bring out the truth. And they were killed by the Council because of it.

There was something that Zane was examining on the wall. Old photographs were pinned there and they captured Lyra's parents at various stages of their life. They were in most of the pictures accompanied by other individuals. The same woman with dark hair and sharp features was depicted on one face in a few of the photos.

This woman, Zane said, indicating. "Who is she?"

Lyra got up and observed the picture. Her whole body went rigid. "That's Councilwoman Iris. She was my mother's friend. Or I thought she was. The day before they died, she had come to see my mother.

I realized it all fell into place in my head. Iris. The fifteen years old woman in the Council. The woman who had always appeared older and smarter than all. The woman who had the power to shift the resources and issue orders without anyone doubting her.

The lady who had the power to poison a prisoner in a closed room without being noticed.

The whole time, I said, it was her. This has all been caused by her. It is she who dispatched the scagaways. It is she who was in charge of Marcus. It is she who wished you were taken prisoner.

And she killed my parents, Lyra said and her voice was steady but deadly. Which is that I will kill her.

"Lyra--" I started.

"Don't," she cut me off. Do not tell me to be cool or witty or cautious. Do not say to me to trust the Council to it. The Council is the problem. My parents were killed by the Council and the murder had been hidden. Rogues were sent by the Council to raid my people. I'm done waiting. I'm done being careful."

Dane touched her on the shoulder. You will not do this single-handedly. We're all going with you."

In the capital city there is the headquarters of the Council, Owen said. He had already come in the door, and I had not heard him enter. "It's heavily guarded. It is made to be inimitable. You can not simply walk in and beat up Councilwoman Iris.

"Then we don't walk in," Zane said. "We break in."

That would amount to a declaration of war against the whole Council, I said. "You understand that, right? Attack Council headquarters we shall have hunted all our lives.

Lyra checked me out, and in her eyes I could see the girl who had been loved by me five years ago. I also witnessed the hurt of being rejected and the resilience she had created out of her hurt and the sheer willpower of a person who could not lose anything.

Well, we are going to have a war then, I said.

In the following few hours, we made plans. It was hazardous and most likely impossible, but we had nothing but another option. The Council was a corrupt body and the best way to get them to cease was to bring Iris into the limelight and all the activities that she had engaged in.

Kira had arrived and the rest were asleep. She dragged me aside and told me something in low tones to ensure that no one would hear. "Lyra is making a mistake. She is basing it on emotion and that will lead to people being killed.

"I know," I said.

"Then stop her," Kira said.

"I can't," I said. I lost the right to judge her what to do five years ago when I turned my back on her. It is only something to follow her, to make her live.

Kira looked at my face a bit. Then she shook her head as though she knew something serious. Please, make certain you do that. Keep her alive. Whatever is the case, do not allow her to sacrifice herself.

On the following day we went to the capital city. We drove after dark, we moved through the forest and used our wolf bodies and were covered by a lot more distance than the speed of a car. When we managed to reach the city, the sun was beginning to come up.

Council headquarters consisted of a huge structure of stone and glass designed to appear strong and invincible. At each entrance guards were on duty. Cameras watched every angle. This is where the individuals who regulated the entire werewolf civilization were employed.

And we were about to break in.

We were cowering in the shadows on the other side of the street of the building, when Lyra turned to me. "I need you to know something. Should this fail, should I fail to get out--

"Stop," I said. "You're going to make it out. We all are."

"You don't know that," Lyra said.

"No," I agreed. But I know that I am not losing you again. Not this time. Not ever."

She was about to answer this when an alarm sounded in the building. Lights started flashing. The guards of each entrance all at once became alert, taking weapons and radios.

Somebody somewhere inside the building had heard us coming.

And when the first guard came into sight and drew his weapon, I knew that Iris had made a trap even better than we had thought.

Owen POV

The initial bullet struck the pavement three inches to my foot. I did not stop and attempt to compute the happenings. I simply turned into my wolf-shape and ran. My human mind was screaming to me how bad that was, but my wolf knew how to fight. My wolf knew how to survive.

Zane was already on the move beside me, with his hybrid form that gave him the appearance of a man and a beast. He did not flee away from the guards. He dashed at them, right in the danger as though he had been created to do so. His scratched face was serene, as though death and violence were everyday items on his agenda.

Lyra crashed through a side door which I had not even previously seen, and moved with a kind of speed which should not have been possible. Neither was she fleeing the guards. She was combating them, disarming them without killing them, and was intelligent and mercifully moving despite their desire to have her dead. It was such a treat to see somebody dancing to tunes she could not hear.

"Inside!" Dane called through the door. The security system goes offline for half a minute. Move now!"

We had perhaps a minute to pass the out defence and get into the building. Then we would be locked down and there we would be. I transformed back and ran as quickly as my human legs could run. Ethan stood close beside me and his face was dark with anger and determination.

And with Owen, I thought to myself; and we ran through the door. "Help me navigate. You have been with Council systems before.

I had dealt with them, though not in this way. I had been working with them as a person who was trusted, as an inside person. That knowledge was now helping me to break in and attack, and the irony of it was not lost on me. I was out to guard Lyra, and now I cared to give my life to her.

Iris will be in the command center, I said, and my head was racing through the structure of the whole place. "It's on the top floor. The simplest process is via the elevator, which is the main one, and is locked with several locks.

Then we go through the stairs, Zane said. And we ruin everything on our path.

We passed rapidly along the corridors. It was not a good thing because the building was not as full as I expected it to be. Had Iris known we were in the offing, why were there not more guards? Why was not this place absolutely locked up?

That was when I understood.

It is a trap, I said abruptly. "She let us in. She wanted us to come here."

Lyra didn't stop moving. "Then we move faster. We will find her and finish this."

We went to the staircase and began to climb. My heart was a-thumping and my wolf was struggling to escape, wanting to save Lyra, wanting to be useful in this struggle. But I forced her down. I had to think. I must have recollected all I remembered about the building and about Iris.

Iris had a fifteen-year term of Council. She had backed all the decisions which were detrimental to the outer packs. She had voted on resource cuts. She had also suggested imposers such as Lyra to be considered as a means rather than a human being. She had smiled at me during meetings and secretly delivered people to kill the parents of Lyra.

And I had not the least idea.

We flew up the door into the executive floor, and the first sight I encountered was Marcus. He stood in the hall-way, and he looked old and weary and melancholy.

Stop, you have to stop, Marcus said, with his hands up. You are not even aware of what you are doing.

Your niece dishonored you, said Lyra, with her wolf eyes. "You know about it, don't you? You know about Iris."

"Yes," Marcus said quietly. And that is why I must make you come to a halt.

He was quicker than I had imagined an old gentleman to be. He changed into his wolfish appearance and hurled himself at Lyra. But Lyra was quicker, more powerful, and wittier. She avoided his attack and struck him in sufficient ways to cause him to crash against the wall. He didn't get up.

I did not wish to hurt him, Lyra said; it was not as though I were hesitant. She was no longer concerned with saving those who saved Iris.

We kept moving. The door of the command center was ahead. I was able to look inside through the glass walls and saw Iris standing at one of the consoles, staring at screens that displayed security feeds of all the areas within the building. At the same moment she saw us she saw us seeing her.

And she smiled.

Welcome, said Iris, as we broke through the door. She spoke in a quiet tone, as though it was what she had been anticipating. You have been waiting in my presence.

My parents were killed by you, said Lyra, shaking with anger.

"I did," Iris admitted. She did not attempt to deny it and excuse herself. She simply confessed like it was something that she had already accepted. Your mother had been going to tell it all. She was to ruin the plans of the Council. I had no choice."

Always you had a choice, Lyra said.

"Did I?" Iris asked. She flicked a button on her console and as if by magic, the screens became illuminated all round us. They showed images of people. Hundreds of people. Thousands of people. You are aware of what that bloodline of your mother can do unless it is regulated? What sort of power would she have made of herself had she accepted it on a full diet?

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Iris was gazing at me as though I were a child who had not understood something obvious. Your Luna does not simply possess the ability to hook up with more than one mate. She is capable of manipulating minds. She can make new werewolves. She can transform the structure of our world. Your mother discovered this. She would destroy the Council with it and establish a new world order.

Lyra moved aside as though struck. "That's not true."

"Isn't it?" Iris asked. Why, then, was she having all these people? How did she manage to have the werewolves of all the different packs coming together in undisclosed places? Why did she even make arrangements of overthrowing not only the Council, but all the Alphas in the world?

You are lying, it's not true, Lyra said but I could tell she was doubtful.

"Come," Iris said. She went to a file on her desk and opened it. Photographs and documents inside were all of Lyra, the mother. They exhibited meetings with werewolves in other packs. They showed plans for war. They revealed a map of a world in which the mother was the ruler of Lyra as opposed to the Council.

Your mother was not victimized, Iris said. "She was a revolutionary. And I would have to put a stop to her with the killing of thousands of people in a war that would have ruined all we had created.

Since I had known Lyra, I had never seen her hesitate. I saw doubt cross her face. And during this hesitation Iris did something that I had not anticipated.

She pushed another button and the floor below us began to move. We were on to a sort of platform, and it was stooping into the ground. I was able to see what was below through the glass floor.

It was a holding cell. And there were no less than a hundred werewolves in the cell, all in human shape, all in reinforced glass. They were feeble and ill, as though they had long been put to prison.

Those are the followers of your mother, Iris said. The ones that were itching to engage in a war. I have kept them here in the lock-up, so that they cannot harm anyone. And I have been saving the world the confusion your mother was out to make.

Lyra's face was white. "What have you done?"

"What I had to do," Iris said. "Now, you have a choice. You may accompany me and I will show you all. I would demonstrate the truth to you concerning your mother, and you would finally come to realize that what I did was required. Or you may fight me and I will set all these prisoners at once. They will pour into the world and thousands of innocent individuals will perish in the anarchy that ensues.

Dane reached for Lyra's hand. "Don't listen to her. This is a trick."

But Lyra was looking down upon the prisoners, and all her emotions were visible in her face. Rage, betrayal, confusion, and something. Something that resembled the necessity to know the truth, at whatever price.

To which Lyra replied slowly, "You will leave them to it should I come with you?

I will keep them here, where they are safe, Iris said. And we will see how to manage your power in such a manner that it does not destroy the world.

It is not what she said, you growl, Zane, said. "She said she'd release them."

"Does it matter?" Iris asked. She was about to touch the other button with her hand. "Either way, you lose. Either will your Luna with me, or I shall destroy you all and bear her with me in my unconsciousness.

I knew at this point that Iris had made this all work out. She had known we would come. She had let us in. She had even made us think that we had a chance. Yet she had been playing us along all the time to this particular point.

And now, when it was a matter of a hundred lives, Lyra needed to make a decision which will determine everything.

Zane POV

I have served numerous people in my life. I had hunted werewolves on account of money. I had assisted strong individuals to do horrible things. I was not concerned about any person or thing but survival. But seeing Iris playing with Lyra like this, seeing someone attempting to destroy her soul by compelling her to make a decision between impossible things, something broke in me.

I did not consider the after-effects. I did not compute probabilities and planning. I just moved.

The hybrid that the rogue bite had bestowed upon me was stronger and faster than a full human or a full werewolf. I made use of that strength just now, and bounded myself off at the console Iris was at hand. I took her wrist in my hand, and squeezed it until she screamed.

The button which she was stretching to press was not pressed.

You are wrong, I told her, and I managed to make my voice reveal all the violence and the anger I had been withholding. You believed we should be under your regulations. You imagined we would play at your game. But we are just doing what nobody is going to hurt Lyra.

Iris made an attempt to free herself, and I did not release her. Dane leaped to the controls of the holding cell, and attempted to be puzzled how to open the doors. Ethan was looking in the room to see more guards or traps. And Lyra was searching through the belongings of her mother, at the traces of what her mother actually was.

You are mistaken, a voice answered us behind. We all swiveled round to find Owen standing in the doorway, and by his side Marcus. The old man was slowly bleeding and slowly moving, and yet he was awake and angry. I examined the Council books. Lyra does not even mean that her mother intended to begin a war. Iris doctored all of this. She created false evidence."

"Prove it," Iris snarled. She did not look frightened, in spite of the fact that I was holding her, in spite of the fact that she was caught.

Owen said, The signatures are false. One of the screens had documents that he was looking at. Your mother put a little mark on everything she signed. One of those marks that were private, something that only very close people were aware of. These marks are absent in these signatures. Iris forged all of this."

Something shifted in the air. The prisoners below began to move, and their eyes opened, as they were waking out of a deep sleep. The drugs or magic which had been keeping them weak and helpless was beginning to wear out.

And Lyra gazed at Iris with such an expression as was worse than indignation. It was the expression of a person betrayed by another one whom she wanted to trust, and now that person had nothing to lose.

Put them out, Lyra said to herself. "Or I'll make you."

Iris laughed. It sounded mad, as though someone had at last been shaken. "You don't have it in you. You're too weak. You're too human. That is why your mother and I were not successful and I succeeded.

Lyra stepped forward. Her eyes were already growing silver, and I could sense the power in the room. It was as though one were in the presence of an electrical storm, as though the air was going to burst. This was not her wolf power that she was using only. There was something else, and more dangerous, with which she was using it.

She was operating on her power of bloodline.

The prisoners beneath screamed as they were able to feel her strength. They weren't in pain. They were waking up. Their cell walls began to break. The glass started to break. And in the midst of it all I had understood something dreadful.

Iris was only telling us the truth, not all the truth. Lyra was not only able to make a connection with many mates. She was able to make new werewolves. And prisoners down beneath were not only prisoners. They were humans that the mother of Lyra had transformed to and Iris had been keeping them in the lockup as they were living evidence of what her mother could do.

Iris screamed, even as my grip broke her wrist.-- Your mother made an army, Iris, I said. She had plans of using them to take over the world. I was defending everybody against her.

"By killing her?" Lyra asked. "By lying? By having innocent people in prison?

The initial captive escaped. Then another. Then all of them. They emerged out of their cells as water bursting a dam, and they gazed upon Lyra as on everything. Just as she was their creator, like she was their Alpha, their reason to live.

"What do I do?" one of them asked. A girl perhaps, twenty years old, into whose eyes she had put her desperate hopes. "What do we do now?"

Lyra gazed at them and I could tell that the burden of that responsibility struck her at the same moment. These individuals were there since her mother had brought them into life. They turned to her to find answers. And she did not know what to say to them.

"You're free," she said finally. "You can do whatever you want."

We wish to give you a hand, the young woman said. "We can feel the bond. We're connected to you. We want to help you fight."

Dane grabbed my arm. "We need to get out of here. Now. It is becoming too large, too complex. We are not yet aware of what will happen.

But Lyra wasn't moving. She was glaring at Iris, and her strength was mounting ever higher and higher. The whole building was beginning to tremble. The walls were beginning to show cracks.

"Lyra," I said. "We have to go."

She murdered my mother, Lyra said and her voice was so cold that I am terrified. "She lied about everything. She tried to break me."

"I know," I said. But kill her now, should you choose to allow your powers to become utterly wild, you will bring this entire establishment to the ground. Also you shall slay all these new werewolves. Is that what you want?"

Lyra's eyes locked onto mine. She had such pain in her gaze, so much confusion, and rage, and betrayal all together. And then I felt she could not help herself.

But then she took a breath. And another. And slowly, her power receded.

Put her in a cell, said Lyra of the werewolves that were set free. "Keep her alive. The Council will desire to interrogate her.

Something had happened in the building as the prisoners took Iris with them and pulled her over towards one of the holding cells. The alarms stopped. The guards which were pursuing us vanished. And another voice came in the intercom system.

"Lyra," the voice said. The leader of the Council was a man known as Thorne and he had served a period of more than twenty years. I see that you have found out what is the truth about Iris. I praise you that you prevented her before she could inflict further harm to our organization.

"You're still there?" Ethan asked, confused. Why did you not have more guards?

This, Thorne said, because I wanted to see whether Lyra could manage this by herself. "And she can. Actually, she has achieved something incredible. She has shown that she is prepared to play her actual role in the Council.

"What role?" Lyra asked suspiciously.

There was a pause. We would like to offer you a position. Not as a policeman, but as a member of the Council yourself. We need your power. We need your leadership. We need you to take Iris's seat."

The lights were put off before Lyra could reply. The whole place was blacked out. And I heard something in the darkness that made my blood go cold.

Footsteps. Thousands of them. Entering through the under building.