Chapter 66 NADIA

Chapter 66 NADIA
We met Iris at a neutral location she chose, which turned out to be a restaurant in the middle of the afternoon when it was too slow for crowd cover and too public for any fast aggression. 

Zane came with me. Iris looked at him for a long moment when he walked in. "You're the Alpha," she said. It wasn’t a question.

"Yes,” he answered.

She looked back at me, then said, "He smells like you." 

There was no judgment in it. It was an observation, the same way you would note the weather. I didn't explain it and Iris didn't ask.

Iris had a file. Paper, printed, no digital trail. She slid it across the table unhurriedly. It contained evidence of Marcus's media reach—three outlets, two podcasts, and one documentary in post-production that painted the supernatural community as a threat to public safety. 

The documentary was filmed partially with covert footage. Some of that footage appeared to include pack members who did not consent to being recorded. Some of it was from Crestfall Pack specifically.

I opened the folder and looked at the frames. My handwriting was visible on a clipboard in one of the images, caught at an angle in the background of a shot that was supposed to be documenting something else entirely. I closed the folder carefully, without any expression on my face, and set it back on the table.

"He had a second crew. Someone else in the facility,” she added.

"Not Dane Ferguson?" I asked.

"No. Someone you never identified. I'm not going to tell you who yet. I will when I know you're actually going to do something about it instead of just reacting." She looked between us with an expression that was not hostile but wasn’t friendly either, like she was still calculating. "I need to know what you're planning."

Zane told her about the council hearing. He briefed her about Sera's idea, not committing either of us to a position we hadn't fully formed. He told her we were still figuring things out.

Iris listened without interrupting, her expression giving nothing away. When he finished she was quiet for a moment, like she was measuring something. Then she spoke. 

"The documentary is set to release in six weeks. If you want to get ahead of it, you have five weeks." She stood up and smoothed her jacket. "I'll be in touch." 

She left the folder on the table and walked out without looking back, the same way she presumably arrived—without being noticed until she was already there.

As we walked back to the car, the afternoon looked light flat, and grey overhead. "Can we trust her?" Zane asked.

I thought about it carefully. I took the question seriously rather than answering quickly. Then I said, "I think she has her own agenda and it happens to align with ours right now. It’s not the same thing as trust, but we can work with that." I looked at him. "She knew my mother. I want to know how."

“We'll ask her next time." He put his hand briefly at the small of my back as we walked, and I didn't pull away from it. I kept walking. 

Neither of us mentioned it. Some things didn’t need to be said aloud to be real, and we were both learning that slowly.



We held a team meeting on a Friday evening that included the full pack, Petra, Elena, and Iris via phone call, which was something I couldn’t have predicted happening two months ago. 

Zane ran it. I sat in the room for the first time not as an observer but as something I didn't have a word for yet—participant, maybe, or just someone who belonged there.

The plan had four parts when it had been fully assembled. First, the council hearing, which was already in motion, targeting Ferguson and stripping Marcus of his legal infrastructure. Secondly, the identification of the second informant in the facility, which Iris was working on from her end, and Dex was running separately from his. Thirdly, securing the documentary footage through legitimate means before Marcus could release it. We had to do it legitimately because Petra believed there was a privacy and consent violation case that could be filed against us in both supernatural and human jurisdictions simultaneously. Fourth, the question of going public, which was tabled but not dismissed.

I was assigned to the third one, working with Petra on the legal approach, because my knowledge of Marcus's media network from my intelligence work was the best source we had. I spent three days in Petra's office going through what I remembered.

Petra and I reached a functional working relationship somewhere around day two, after a disagreement about sourcing that neither of us won but both learned from. Petra was exactly as exacting as I was so we irritated each other almost all the time. 

On the second afternoon, Petra paused over a document and said, without looking up, "You're good at this." 

"Don't sound so surprised,” I replied.

Petra looked up, and something in her expression shifted a bit. After that, things between us were easier.

Zane checked on me each evening, not hovering, just present. Sometimes he brought food. Sometimes he just sat in the chair across from my desk and did his own work in companionable silence. 

Once I looked up from a document and he was asleep in the chair with his head tipped back. I looked at him for a long moment before going back to my work.

Six weeks felt like it was both too long and not long enough. Everything we were trying to hold together required time. And I knew Marcus was not sitting still.

On the fifth day, Dex texted me.

Dex: Found him.

I knew he was referring to the second informant. 

Before I could text back, my phone rang. But it wasn’t Dex. It was an unknown number. I picked up. 

A voice I didn't recognize said, "Stop what you're doing, or we’ll release a version of the footage tonight that doesn't include the parts your lawyer can challenge." 

The call ended. I stared at my phone until the screen went dark. Then I called Zane.