Chapter 188 The Council's Interest
Ryder POV
Week 24
Luna, who arrived recently from Nightshade, delivers the intelligence in the command room at seven in the morning, and I know it's bad before she finishes the first sentence because she came in person rather than over comms, which she only does when the information is too sensitive to risk being intercepted.
"Council loyalists," she says, tablet face-down on the table, voice measured. "Not the dissolved Council—the ones who didn't accept the Accord. I have four confirmed sources across three packs." She pauses. "They're watching the pregnancy."
The room is quiet. Cass is to my left. Doc is in the corner, already not moving. Knox stands near the door with the particular stillness of a man deciding how angry to be.
"Define watching," I say.
"Surveillance. Intelligence gathering, they know gestational age, approximate due date, approximate power development based on compound monitoring we didn't know they had." Luna looks at me directly. "They believe the pregnancy proves divine abilities can be passed hereditarily. The Accord killed their official program, but some of them are already working on a new framework. One they'd call voluntary. Willing divine subjects and collaborative breeding."
The word breeding lands in the room like something thrown.
"They want to study her," Luna continues. "The birth, the ability inheritance, whether her power levels exceed Jolie's or complement them. They want data. And then" she sets the tablet down, "they want to apply that data."
"They want to use our child," I say, and my voice comes out very level, which is how I know Shadow is close to the surface.
"They want to use the information she represents," Luna says, which is a careful distinction that doesn't make me any calmer. "Whether they'd pursue contact directly, I don't know yet. But the surveillance and their interest is real."
The pack meeting is that afternoon. I lay it out plainly—the intelligence, the loyalists, the surveillance, what it means and what we're doing about it. Knox proposes increased perimeter patrols and weapons redistribution within the hour, which is already in motion before the meeting ends. Phoenix is already mapping the monitoring equipment they found, tracing source signals, looking for adjacent networks. Mara's expression during the briefing is the particular cold flatness she gets before she starts making plans, which I let go for now because channel the energy productively.
"We go offensive," Mara says. "Take the fight to them. They shouldn't be comfortable watching us."
"No," I say, and she starts to argue, and I cut across it, not harshly. "Jolie is twenty-four weeks. And if we move first, we're aggressive. We're exactly what they'd tell the undecided packs we are." I look around the table. "We lock down the territory. Minimum outside traffic. Phoenix runs counter-surveillance. We're defensive until after the birth, and then we address the loyalists from a position of strength."
The meeting ends with security on lockdown protocol and me carrying the particular weight of information I haven't delivered yet.
I find Jolie in the healing center reviewing session notes, or I find her there and she knows immediately from my face that something is wrong—the mate bond leaves very little room for performance—and she sets down the tablet. "Tell me," she says.
I told her. She listens without interrupting, which is not always her natural mode but which she does when she knows the information requires full reception before response. When I finish she's quiet for a moment, one hand resting on the curve of her belly, jaw set in a way I know well.
"How long have you known?" she asks.
"Six hours."
"And you called the pack meeting first."
"I wanted protocols in place before"
"Before you told me." Her voice is even, controlled, which with Jolie means the feeling underneath it is significant. "You made decisions about a threat to my child without telling me first."
"I was protecting you"
"You were treating me like I'm weak again." She stands. The silver-blue glow at her edges sharpens into the crisper silver I know from intensity. "Ryder. I have faced a Council of seven Elders alone, i have brought enforcers to their knees with empathy. I burned the old system down from the inside. I am six months pregnant and I am not fragile and I need you to stop deciding what I can handle."
The silence between us has weight. I hold it—hold the space for being told something true that I didn't want to hear."I know you're not fragile," I say, finally. "I have never once thought you were fragile. I'm terrified for our daughter. And when I'm terrified, I move first and think second, and sometimes moving first means doing it alone." I hold her eyes. "That was wrong. I should have told you as soon as Luna finished briefing me."
She reads my face the way she always does—looking for the actual thing underneath the words, the version of me that doesn't perform. "Okay," she says. "But going forward"
"Honesty. Regardless of what it is." I crossed the room to her. "I trust you to handle the truth but I need you to trust me to keep you safe."
She considers that for a long moment, head tilted slightly, and then she nods once.
Later on she calls her own meeting an hour later. Not the pack leadership meeting—the whole compound. Everyone in the yard, afternoon light, her standing at the front with her belly and her glow and the absolute stillness of someone who has already decided what they're going to say.
"There are people who want what our daughter represents," she says, voice carrying without effort. "They want to study her, use her, turn what we built into another kind of program. I need you to know that." She pauses. "I also need them to know this—because word travels through territories and I want it to travel clearly: if they come for my daughter, they won't face our perimeter or our security or our weapons first." Her silver light brightens, steady and enormous, the full Moonfire Luna blazing in the afternoon sun, six months pregnant and completely undiminished. "They'll face me."
The sound that comes back from the gathered wolves is something between a roar and a declaration, physical and immediate—Shadow surging in my chest in response, every wolf's instinct answering what's been claimed.
I stand at the edge of the crowd and watch her, and I think about the girl who ran from Nightshade with nothing and the woman who just told loyalists across three territories to come find her if they want to try.
That night she couldn't sleep. I feel her moving before she's out of bed—the restlessness through the bond, that particular quality of wakefulness that comes from a mind that won't slow down. I lie still and let her go, because she needs the air and the movement and the space that isn't anyone else's anxiety to manage.
I dress quietly and follow at enough distance that she has her solitude. She walks the perimeter path, one hand on her belly, glow soft in the dark, flowers opening faintly where she passes. She pauses at the north fence and stands looking out at the treeline, thinking things I can't fully read. She knows I'm behind her but doesn't turn around.
I stop where I am and stay. She walks, i follow. Two people protecting the same thing in their own ways, working out how to hold that without collision.
Somewhere around the third circuit, she slows and waits for me to catch up, and I fall into step beside her, and we finish the perimeter together in the dark without talking.
Our daughter kicks twice on the east side of the fence, where the trees are thickest, as if she's announcing her own assessment of the territory.
"Strong opinions," Jolie says quietly.
"She gets that from her mother," I say.