Chapter 65 NADIA

Chapter 65 NADIA
I found Iris before Dex did. I wasn't entirely sure how. I had been following a pull I couldn't fully explain—part instinct, part my new subconscious that I was still learning to trust—and it led me to a parking lot on the south side of the city on a Thursday afternoon where a woman was sitting in the front seat of a grey car, watching me walk across the concrete floor with a look that was more curious than hostile.

Iris was younger than I expected. Late thirties, maybe. Dark-haired, lean, with a quality of attention I recognized because I had it too. She rolled down the window without hurry, or any sign that my arrival was a surprise to her.

"You moved Dex's car,” I began without any preamble.

"I wanted to see how fast they would move." She looked at me with a steady, measuring expression. "You’re not what Marcus raised."

“No. I'm figuring out what I am instead,” I replied.

"I know what you are. I knew your mother." She said it simply, without any weight, like a fact she had been saving for the right moment. I went very still.

I maintained the stillness and didn't let anything cross my face. I was good at this. I had been trained to be good at this, and the training was the one thing from that time I didn't regret, because it gave me somewhere to put what I was feeling while I decided how to respond. 

I didn't ask the next question yet. I filed it in a corner of my mind for later. I let Iris speak first.

Iris said she was not aligned with Marcus and hadn’t been for eight years. She didn't explain why she had separated from the hunter network, and I didn't ask yet because there would be time for that later, or there wouldn’t be, but I knew that pushing now would close doors I wanted to keep open. 

She said she had been watching the Crestfall situation for six months, not because she wanted to destroy the pack and not because she wanted to protect it, but because Marcus was moving toward something larger than Crestfall. 

The Crestfall operation was not his endgame. It was proof of how he operated. He intended to use his approach publicly to bring the hunter movement into the open, so the supernatural community would be well aware of him. There would be no more covert raids. He wanted full exposure, on his terms, headed by him.

I stared at her, then said, "He'll get people killed."

"He believes that's the point,” Iris answered.

I stood there in the parking lot with the smell of cold concrete around me and the sound of distant traffic, and let that sink in. Then I asked, "What do you want from me?"

Iris said, "Nothing yet." She started the car. "But keep my number. The council review isn't going to be enough." She drove past me and out of the parking lot, unhurried, the grey car vanishing around the turn of the ramp as though it was never present.

I stood there for a moment with the silence that followed, doing and saying nothing. 

I knew your mother, Iris had said. There was a version of myself that would have grabbed the door handle and demanded answers before the car could move. But I wasn’t that version anymore, or at least I was learning not to be. 

I breathed in and out. Then I called Zane. 

My first words were, "I found her." I paused, then added, "It's bigger than we thought. Come get me."

ZANE

The war council that evening was the most crowded the room had been. Me, Dex, Nadia, Sera, Coach Reeves, Petra, and now Elena, whom Nadia called because if Iris's information was correct, Elena's history with Marcus went back far enough to add context that none of us had. 

Elena sat at the far end of the table looking tired even though I could tell she was not surprised by any of this. I thought she looked like someone who had been waiting for this particular conversation for a long time.

I let Nadia walk us through what Iris told her, which she did in an organized manner. I watched her speak and thought, not for the first time, that she was one of the sharpest people I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. 

I also thought that she looked like someone who had finally stopped waiting for something to go wrong and was just letting herself live fully in the present. The distinction mattered to me.

Elena confirmed some of the information. She said Marcus had been building toward public exposure for years. The Crestfall operation was about establishing himself. He planned to take down the most visible pack, in a way that could be documented and disseminated, and use it as the beginning of a public anti-supernatural campaign. 

He had media contacts. He had political contacts. And he had money from sources that were not connected to the hunter network.

Petra said the council's existing jurisdiction did not cover political or media operations. Only supernatural ones, which meant they could shut him down in the field and not stop what he was building in the background.

The room was quiet for a moment. Then Sera said, "So we need to go public first." Everyone looked at her. Then she added, "I know, I know, but hear me out. If the pack makes a public statement about the threat before Marcus can frame the narrative, he loses the founding story. He needs to be the one who exposes something. If there's nothing left to expose—"

"Sera,” I said, but what I meant was “be careful.”

She went on anyway. "I know it's enormous. I know what it means to say it. I'm just saying somebody had to, and it wasn't going to be any of you."

Nobody argued with her, which meant she might actually be right. I looked at Nadia. She was already thinking it through, I could see it in her face. 

She met my eyes and said, "It could work. But we can’t make that move yet. Not until we know what Iris knows." She paused. "And I think we have to go back to Iris together."