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.

Lyra POV

The darkness was complete. I could not see anything, even the outlines of the bodies of my mates beside me. My wolf was striding about impatiently, trying to determine what had occurred. Footsteps became more distinct and I knew that there was something under the Council headquarters of which we were ignorant.

Something big. Something they had always covered up.

Emergency lights, Owen said, in a search to discover back-up systems. A couple of seconds later, weak red lamps were switched on. They produced no more than enough light to expose the surface beneath our feet and the features of the people surrounding us.

And to have the opening in the floor astern.

Werewolves came cropping through the opening. Not prisoners or guards. Soldiers. They were armed and equipped, and of the type of organization which indicated that they had had a thorough training. One looked with an expression of respect and of terror at the same time on Lyra.

"What is this?" Dane said, and his hand reached to his side, where his weapon was.

The soldier who had arrived on the top of the stair climbed down and bowed. Actually bowed. To me.

Hello, Moon-beam," the soldier said. "We've been waiting for you."

"Waiting for me for what?" I said, and I was not trying to be brave, but my heart was beating.

The soldier said that in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. When the Council found out what your blood-line was capable of, fifteen years ago, they began to train us. They were aware that sometime one day, a Luna would arrive with your power. And when she did she would have needed an army that was loyal to her only.

The voice of Thorne reached through the intercom. I am sorry I deceived you, Lyra. But we were not able to tell the truth. It was necessary that we should see you sturdy enough to meet what follows.

"And what comes next?" I demanded.

"War," Thorne said simply. The battle that will change not only the whole world of the werewolves. There is something the Council has been concealing to the whole packs. It is something that makes Iris and her conspiracy look like a child game. And you alone can prevent it.

"Stop what?" I asked.

There was a long pause. And then did Thorne say in which all changed. Did you ever ask yourself how come that some werewolves are born to be powerful and others are born to be normal? Have you ever thought why the Council has to rule everything? We have been concealing the truth to all of you because the truth will ruin everything.

"What truth?" I inquired, though I knew I was not going to be pleased by the answer.

There are creatures of the world, Thorne said. Creatures that are not werewolves. Older and more dangerous creatures. And they are just beginning to wake up. Centuries have been passing and they've been sleeping, in the places which we believed to be safe. But the barriers are failing. And they will not be concerned with the werewolf society or the human civilization once they have completely woken up. They'll consume everything."

The men who surrounded us began to stir about. The way they made a clearance to a huge door, which I had not before realized was there. Beyond the door I had the stairs down into darkness deeper and colder than anything I had ever experienced.

Thorne said, we need you to go down there. We cannot get by without you knowing what we are dealing with. And we want you to make your decision whether you are willing to be the head of the war that is coming.

"No," Zane said, grabbing my arm. "This is another trap. We don't go down there. We don't trust any of this."

"I agree," Owen said. Thorne has already demonstrated that he can manipulate and be deceptive. Nothing that he says can be relied upon.

But Ethan was staring at the soldiers, at their armor and weapons and the horror-stricken reverence of their eyes. "What if it's true?" he asked. What in case there are creatures and the Council has been concealing it?

Then shall not going down there still be the solution, said Dane. "We find another way."

I looked at my four mates. I saw the hundreds of freed werewolves who were looking at me in order to be guided. I looked upon the soldiers who were awaiting my decision. And I noticed that it was the first time in a long time that I was here since I returned to the scene that I saw how my strength was.

It was not concerned with control or dominance or superiority over the rest. It was about choice. The decision I would take would bring impact to all these individuals. It would depend on my decision.

"I want proof," I said to Thorne. I want to have evidence to prove that these creatures exist, before I descend down there, before I think any of this.

"Of course," Thorne said. "That's reasonable."

The lights went out again. And this time, as they returned on, there was something standing in the clearing where the command center had been.

It was massive. It was composed of an appearance that resembled scales and bone and shadow blended. It had too many limbs and too many eyes and it hurt my brain only to look at it, my brain did not even know how to understand something like this. It was liquefied horror, and as I looked at it I was sure that all that Thorne had told me was the truth.

These creatures were real. They were coming. And the war the werewolf world was soon to experience was going to be one that they had never witnessed before.

The animal opened what could have been a mouth and there came a sound that was not words but was of earlier origin. Something that caused all the people in the room to scream without any intention.

And that is when I realized that it was practice to fight Iris. The actual fight was yet to be started.