Chapter 37
title: "Bloodline and Betrayal" wordCount: 3062
Lyra's smile is all teeth. "Your father died trying to save people who did not deserve saving. Are you going to make the same mistake?"
I should pull my hand back. Should walk away from whatever trap she is setting. But my fingers close around hers anyway, and her grip is cold, precise, the handshake of someone who has made a thousand deals and broken half of them.
"Show me," I say.
She releases my hand and reaches into her jacket. The movement is smooth, practiced, and I catch Declan shifting his weight in my peripheral vision, ready to move if she pulls a weapon. But what she produces is a photograph, edges worn soft from handling, and she places it face-up on the coffee table between us.
My father stares back at me.
He is younger in this picture. Maybe five years before he died. He sits at a conference table with four other people I do not recognize, all of them leaning forward like they are sharing secrets, and spread across the table between them are documents with a header I can read even in the photograph's grain: Omega Abolition Proposal.
"That was taken six weeks before the massacre," Lyra says. She taps one of the other faces in the photo. "Marcus Thorne. Declan's grandfather. He was the swing vote your father needed."
Declan moves closer, and I feel the heat of him at my shoulder before I see him crouch beside me. His breath catches. Just once. But I hear it.
"I do not understand," he says, and his voice has gone very quiet, the way it does when he is trying to hold something together. "My grandfather died opposing reform. Everyone knows that."
"Everyone knows what Garrett Voss wanted them to know." Lyra produces another photograph. This one shows my father and Marcus Thorne shaking hands outside what looks like a courthouse. "Your grandfather was going to vote yes. He was going to help dismantle the omega designation entirely, give them full pack rights, eliminate the hierarchy that has kept our kind divided for three hundred years."
My nails dig into my palms. "Then why—"
"Because Garrett Voss was hired to stop it." Lyra's smile vanishes. "Not by one person. By a coalition. Twelve alphas who stood to lose everything if the reforms passed. They paid him to make sure the vote never happened, and he delivered. He killed your father. He killed Marcus Thorne. He killed everyone who might have carried the proposal forward, and he made it look like a pack war so no one would ask the right questions."
The room tilts. I grip the edge of the coffee table, and the wood is solid under my fingers, real, the only thing keeping me from floating away into the implications of what she is saying.
"My father was not just an alpha," I say slowly. "He was trying to change everything."
"He had the votes. He had the support. He had six months until the Conclave convened, and then it would have been done." Lyra's eyes are dark, fathomless. "Garrett took a contract to commit genocide, and he has spent the last three years making sure no one ever connects the dots."
Mira speaks from the doorway, her voice sharp. "If this is true, why has no one else figured it out?"
"Because everyone who knew is dead." Lyra does not look at her. "Except me. I was omega-born, you see. Your father—" she nods at me "—was the only alpha who ever treated me like I had a brain in my head. He hired me as a researcher. Paid me what he paid his betas. Let me sit at tables where omegas were supposed to serve drinks and keep their mouths shut."
Something in her voice cracks, just slightly, and I see the wound beneath the armor.
"I want to watch the system that made me burn," she says. "And you are the match."
Iris brings coffee. No one drinks it. We sit in her living room like we are attending a funeral, and maybe we are—the funeral for the version of my father I thought I knew, the one who was just a good alpha trying to protect his pack.
He was so much more than that.
He was trying to save everyone.
"Where are the records?" Declan asks. His voice is steady, but he has touched his left wrist three times in the last five minutes, and I know what that means. He is trying to hold something back. Trying not to let us see how much this has shaken him.
Lyra pulls out her phone and swipes through screens. "Your father kept everything in a safety deposit box. Bank of the Pacific, downtown Seattle branch. Box 447. He gave me a key three days before he died and told me if anything happened to him, I should wait for his daughter to come looking."
"You have been sitting on this for three years," I say.
"I have been waiting for you to be ready." She meets my eyes. "You were not ready before. You were too busy running. Too busy surviving. But now you are here, and you are angry, and anger is the only thing that will carry you through what comes next."
"What comes next is I get the records and I challenge Garrett." My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Flat. Distant. Like I am listening to someone else speak.
"What comes next is you walk into a trap." Lyra's smile returns, sharp and humorless. "Garrett has been watching that bank for three years. He knows about the box. He knows someone will come for it eventually. He has people inside the bank, people on the street, people everywhere that matters."
"Then how am I supposed to—"
"You are not supposed to avoid the trap. You are supposed to spring it." She leans forward, and her eyes gleam with something that might be excitement or might be madness. "You go to the bank. You get the records. You let him see you do it. And then you use those records to challenge him in front of the Conclave, where he cannot simply kill you and walk away."
Mira makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a curse. "That is the worst plan I have ever heard."
"It is the only plan that works." Lyra stands, smoothing her jacket. "Garrett wants you dead, but he wants you discredited more. If you die before the challenge, you are a martyr. If you challenge him and lose, you are just another pretender who overreached. He will let you get the records because he thinks he can destroy you with them."
"Can he?" I ask.
"That depends on you." She walks to the door, then pauses with her hand on the knob. "Your father believed people could change. Believed the system could be fixed from within. He was wrong. The system killed him for trying." She looks back at me, and her expression is unreadable. "Do not make his mistake. When you have the power to burn it all down, do not hesitate."
The door closes behind her with a soft click.
No one speaks for a long time after she leaves. Iris stares at her untouched coffee. Mira paces the length of the living room, her footsteps silent on the hardwood. Declan sits very still beside me, and I can feel the tension radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
"It is a trap," he says finally.
"Yeah. It is."
"We should find another way."
"There is no other way." Mira stops pacing and turns to face us. "We have less than three days. We need proof of her bloodline, and we need it to be ironclad. This is the only option."
"Then I will go." Iris sets down her coffee cup with a sharp clink. "I can get in and out without being noticed. I have contacts at that bank. I can—"
"No." The word comes out harder than I intend, and she flinches. I soften my voice. "This is my fight. My father's legacy. I am not going to hide behind someone else."
"You are going to get yourself killed," Declan says, and there is something raw in his voice now, something he is not quite managing to hide. "You are going to walk into Garrett's trap and he is going to—"
"He is going to let me get the records." I turn to face him fully, and his eyes are storm-gray, turbulent. "Because Lyra is right. He wants to destroy me publicly. He wants to prove I am nothing, that my father was nothing, that everything they tried to build was a lie. He will not kill me before I challenge him."
"You do not know that."
"No. But I know I cannot win without those records." My hand finds his, and his fingers close around mine automatically, like his body knows what to do even when his mind is arguing. "I know I cannot walk into that challenge with nothing but my word and expect the Conclave to believe me. I need proof. I need documentation. I need everything my father left behind."
"Then we go together," he says.
"Declan—"
"Together." His grip tightens. "You do not get to shut me out of this. Not after everything. Not when—" He stops, and something crosses his face that I cannot read. "Not when I have already lost too much to this fight."
I think about his grandfather in that photograph. About Marcus Thorne shaking my father's hand, agreeing to vote yes, signing his own death warrant without knowing it.
"Your grandfather was trying to help," I say quietly.
"My grandfather got himself killed." Declan's voice is bitter. "And my father spent the rest of his life believing it was pack politics, believing Garrett's lies, believing—" He stops again, and this time I see the grief beneath the anger. "I grew up thinking my grandfather died for nothing. That he was just another casualty of pack violence. But he died trying to change everything, and no one even knew."
"We know now."
"Yes. We know now." He releases my hand and stands, moving to the window. The streetlight outside casts his shadow long across the floor. "And we are going to finish what they started."
It is past midnight when Mira and Iris finally leave, when the apartment falls quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic. Declan and I sit on opposite ends of the couch, the space between us feeling wider than it should.
"I am not fighting for revenge anymore," I say into the silence.
He turns his head to look at me. Waiting.
"I thought—" I stop, trying to find the right words. "When I came back, when I decided to challenge Garrett, I thought it was about making him pay. About getting justice for my pack. For my father. For everyone he killed."
"That is not why you are fighting now."
"No." I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. "Now I am fighting to finish what my father started. To dismantle the system that made the massacre possible in the first place. To make sure no one else has to—" My voice cracks, and I have to stop, have to breathe, have to push past the tightness in my throat. "To make sure no one else has to watch their family die because some alphas decided reform was too dangerous."
Declan is quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks, his voice is careful, measured. "That is a much larger fight than revenge."
"I know."
"That is the kind of fight that does not end. That follows you for the rest of your life. That makes you enemies you cannot count and allies you cannot trust."
"I know that too."
He shifts closer, and the couch cushion dips under his weight. "Are you ready to be that person?"
The question hangs between us, heavy with implications. Am I ready to be a revolutionary? A leader? Someone who carries the weight of a movement on her shoulders?
"No," I say honestly. "But I am ready to try."
His hand finds mine in the darkness, and his palm is warm, solid, real. "Then I will be there when you fall, and I will help you stand back up."
It is not forgiveness. Not absolution for the lies he told or the trust he broke. But it is something. A truce. A promise. A foundation we can maybe build on if we both survive what comes next.
"We leave for Seattle in the morning," I say.
"I know."
"Garrett will be waiting."
"I know that too." His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand, and the gesture is so gentle it makes my chest ache. "But we are not going to let him win. Not this time. Not ever again."
I lean my head against his shoulder, and he does not pull away. We sit like that for a long time, two people who have lost too much and are trying to figure out how to stop losing, how to start winning, how to survive long enough to see the world change.
Outside, the city sleeps. Inside, we plan for war.
Morning comes too fast and not fast enough. I wake on Iris's couch with a crick in my neck and Declan's jacket draped over me like a blanket. He is already awake, standing by the window with his phone pressed to his ear, speaking in low tones I cannot quite make out.
Mira appears from the kitchen with two travel mugs of coffee. "Iris is pulling together everything we know about the bank's security. Declan is calling in favors with people who owe him. And I—" she hands me one of the mugs "—am trying to figure out how we get you out of Seattle alive once you have the records."
"One problem at a time," I say, but my stomach twists anyway.
"Sloane." She sits beside me, and her expression is serious. "What Lyra said last night. About burning down the system. Did she mean—"
"She meant exactly what she said." I take a sip of coffee. It is too hot, and it burns going down, but I welcome the pain. It keeps me focused. "She wants me to destroy the pack hierarchy. Eliminate the alpha-beta-omega structure entirely. Start over from nothing."
"That is not possible."
"My father thought it was."
"Your father is dead."
The words land like a punch, and I flinch. But Mira does not apologize, does not soften them. She just watches me with those sharp eyes, waiting to see how I will respond.
"Yeah," I say finally. "He is. But his work does not have to be."
Declan ends his call and crosses to us. "We have a window. Two hours, maybe three, before Garrett's people realize we are in Seattle. We go in fast, get the records, and get out."
"And if they are waiting inside the bank?" Mira asks.
"Then we improvise." He looks at me. "Are you ready?"
No. Not even close. But I stand anyway, setting down the coffee mug, and I feel the weight of what I am about to do settle over my shoulders like a cloak.
"Let me talk to everyone first," I say.
They gather in Iris's living room—Declan, Mira, Iris, and two of Iris's pack members whose names I have not learned yet but who have been helping us anyway. They look at me with expressions ranging from curiosity to concern to something that might be hope, and I realize with a jolt that they are waiting for me to lead them.
I have never led anyone. Have spent three years running, hiding, surviving alone. But my father led people. My father built coalitions and changed minds and died trying to save everyone.
Maybe I can do this. Maybe I have to.
"Lyra gave us a location," I say. "Records that prove my bloodline and my father's reform agenda. We are going to Seattle to get them, and Garrett Voss is going to try to stop us."
"So we fight," one of Iris's pack members says.
"No. We do not fight. Not yet." I take a breath, and the words come easier than I expect. "We get the records. We bring them back. We use them to challenge Garrett in front of the Conclave, where he cannot just kill us and walk away. And then—" I pause, because this is the part that changes everything, the part that will make me enemies I cannot count. "And then we use those records to finish what my father started. We dismantle the system that made the massacre possible."
Silence. Heavy and absolute.
Iris breaks it first. "You are talking about abolishing the omega designation."
"I am talking about abolishing all of it. Alpha, beta, omega. The whole hierarchy. The whole structure that lets people like Garrett Voss commit genocide and call it pack politics."
"That is—" Mira stops, shakes her head. "That is not a challenge. That is a revolution."
"Yeah. It is."
Declan is watching me with an expression I cannot read, something between pride and fear and resignation. "You understand what you are saying. You understand that if you do this, there is no going back. Every alpha in the country will want you dead. Every pack that benefits from the current system will see you as a threat. You will be fighting for the rest of your life."
"I know." My voice is steady. Certain. "But I am not fighting for revenge anymore. I am fighting to dismantle the system that made the massacre possible. I am fighting so no one else has to lose their family because some alphas decided change was too dangerous. I am fighting to finish my father's work."
Iris's eyes widen, and when she speaks, her voice is barely a whisper. "You are going to start a war."
I meet her gaze, and I do not look away, do not flinch, do not let her see the fear that is coiled tight in my chest.
"Yeah," I say. "I am."