Chapter 145: The Message No One Wanted
“Roxanne… you need to come see this.”
Ethan’s voice carried across the war room just after sunrise. It wasn’t loud, but something about the way he said it made my stomach drop immediately.
I looked up from the map we’d been building all night. The war room looked worse than it had yesterday—coffee cups everywhere, papers stacked in uneven piles, the large digital board glowing with names and locations tied to the Creed’s operations.
Something had changed.
I could feel it before Ethan even turned his laptop around.
“What is it?” Aidan asked, stepping closer.
Ethan didn’t answer immediately. He rubbed his face like someone trying to wake up from a nightmare that hadn’t ended.
Then he turned the screen.
“It came in three minutes ago,” he said quietly. “Encrypted. Routed through about twelve ghost servers. Whoever sent this did not want to be traced.”
The screen showed a single video file.
No name.
No sender.
Just a timestamp.
Elena leaned over my shoulder. “Okay… that’s already creepy.”
“Play it,” Echo said.
Ethan hesitated for half a second.
Then he pressed the key.
\---
The video started with static.
The screen flickered like an old security camera feed struggling to focus.
Then the image sharpened.
It was a room.
Concrete walls.
Dim lighting.
Industrial pipes running along the ceiling.
And in the middle of the room—
Someone sitting in a metal chair.
Their hands were tied behind their back.
Their head hung forward.
For a second my brain refused to process what I was seeing.
Then the person slowly lifted their head.
My breath left my lungs.
“...No.”
Aidan stepped closer to the screen.
His face drained of color.
“That’s impossible,” he whispered.
Because the person tied to the chair was Dominic.
\---
Dominic.
The man we had buried.
The man who had died saving us.
The man whose grave we had stood beside only months ago.
Yet there he was.
Alive.
Bruised.
Blood running from a cut near his eyebrow.
But breathing.
Alive.
“No…” Elena whispered.
“That’s not possible.”
The video zoomed slightly closer.
Dominic looked straight into the camera.
And then he spoke.
“Roxanne… if you’re seeing this, it means they finally sent the message.”
My heart started pounding.
“They?” I whispered.
Dominic continued.
“I don’t have much time. They’re watching. But you need to know the truth before it’s too late.”
Behind me I heard someone drop a glass.
But no one moved.
No one breathed.
Because Dominic leaned closer to the camera and said the one sentence that shattered everything we thought we knew.
“I never died.”
The room went completely silent.
\---
Dominic closed his eyes for a moment before continuing.
“They faked my death.”
My hands trembled.
“Who?” Aidan demanded at the screen like Dominic could hear him.
Dominic looked straight at the camera again.
“The Creed.”
Ethan swore under his breath.
Dominic continued speaking quickly now.
“They needed everyone to believe I was gone. Selene especially. They couldn’t risk her finding out what I knew.”
“What you knew about what?” I whispered.
Dominic’s eyes hardened.
“About Roxanne.”
The room felt smaller suddenly.
Everyone turned toward me.
Dominic’s voice lowered.
“You’re not just the Harbinger, Roxanne.”
My heart began to pound so hard I could hear it in my ears.
“You’re the first successful hybrid the Creed ever created.”
The words hit like a bomb.
“No,” I said immediately.
“That’s not true.”
Dominic kept talking.
“They didn’t create the Harbinger prophecy.”
My blood ran cold.
“They created you.”
\---
The video glitched briefly.
Then Dominic continued.
“You were their first experiment with cross-species adaptation. Human genetics fused with ancient wolf bloodlines.”
My hands clenched.
“That’s a lie,” I whispered.
But no one in the room said anything.
Because somewhere deep inside me…
Something about those words felt terrifyingly familiar.
Dominic kept speaking.
“They wanted to build a weapon strong enough to control the supernatural world. Someone who could command both wolves and humans.”
He looked directly into the camera again.
“But they lost control of the project.”
My chest tightened.
“Your parents didn’t die in an accident,” Dominic said quietly.
“They stole you from the Creed.”
The room exploded with reactions.
“What?!” Elena shouted.
“That’s insane!” Callum said.
But Dominic wasn’t finished.
“They ran. They hid you. They raised you as normal as they could.”
His voice broke slightly.
“But the Creed never stopped searching.”
Ethan leaned closer to the screen.
“That means…”
“Yes,” Dominic said.
“The Creed has been hunting Roxanne since she was a child.”
My vision blurred.
All those years.
All those attacks.
All those strange moments where danger seemed to follow me.
It hadn’t been random.
It had been planned.
Dominic continued.
“And Selene didn’t start this war.”
He looked exhausted now.
“The Creed did.”
Aidan whispered, “Why?”
Dominic answered.
“Because if Roxanne fully awakens what they built into her…”
The video flickered again.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“She could destroy every supernatural bloodline on Earth.”
The screen suddenly glitched violently.
Then the camera jerked sideways.
Voices shouted in the background.
Dominic turned quickly.
“They’re coming—”
The feed cut.
Black screen.
\---
The room stayed silent for a long time.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Finally Elena whispered the question everyone was thinking.
“So… Dominic is alive.”
Ethan nodded slowly.
“And the Creed has him.”
Aidan’s jaw tightened.
“We’re getting him back.”
But I barely heard them.
Because my mind was stuck on the one sentence that wouldn’t leave my head.
They created you.
Rhea slowly looked up from the journal in her hands.
Her voice was barely audible.
“There’s something else,” she said.
Everyone turned toward her.
She flipped the page toward us.
Her finger pointed to a line in the ancient text we had been studying for weeks.
A line none of us had fully understood before.
Now it made horrifying sense.
She read it aloud.
> “The Harbinger will not be born of prophecy…
She will be made by the hands of men who seek to control the end.”
My blood ran cold.
Because the prophecy hadn’t predicted me.
It had warned about me.
And somewhere out there…
The Creed was holding Dominic.
Which meant one thing.
The war we thought we were fighting…
Had only just begun.