Chapter 41 Freya's Revelation (Freya POV)
The grimoire practically hums when I place Vivienne's hair sample on the open page.
"Are you sure about this?" Sophie hovers near my shoulder, nervous energy radiating from her. "You said deep seeing spells can be dangerous."
"They can be. Especially with someone whose memories have been suppressed." I trace the symbols on the page, my grandmother's handwriting still clear despite the grimoire being over two hundred years old. "But Vivienne's nightmares are getting worse. If we don't understand what Edmund did to her…what he's still planning…people die."
"What do you need me to do?"
"Keep watch. If I'm under for more than thirty minutes, pull me out. Physically if necessary." I settle into the meditation position, placing Vivienne's hair in the silver bowl between my crossed legs. "And Sophie? If something goes wrong, if I start convulsing or bleeding, call Declan immediately. Not Vivienne. She can't see me like that."
"That's reassuring," Sophie mutters, but she's already positioning herself by the door with her phone ready.
I close my eyes, speaking words that predate English by millennia. The spell my grandmother used to investigate supernatural crimes, to see through memory manipulation and magical suppression. To witness truth no matter how deeply buried.
The transition is immediate and violent.
One moment I'm in my dorm room at Blackthorn Academy. The next I'm standing in a delivery room seventeen years ago, watching a nightmare unfold in real-time.
The vision is so vivid I can smell the blood.
Lyanna Silvermane Ashford lies on a hospital bed, her face contorted in pain that goes beyond normal labor. She's beautiful even in agony, dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, silver eyes wide with terror.
"Something's wrong." The midwife's voice is tight with panic. "Her contractions are erratic. Heart rate spiking. I need to get the doctor…"
"No time." Lyanna's voice comes out strained, wrong somehow. "Edmund, you need to leave. Get Gabriel out of here. Now."
Edmund Ashford, younger than I know him, not yet hardened by seventeen years of hunting, stands frozen near the door. Four-year-old Gabriel clutches a stuffed wolf, his silver eyes already aware of what's coming.
"I'm not leaving you…" Edmund starts.
"NOW!" The word explodes from Lyanna with inhuman force.
And then the transformation begins.
I've seen werewolves shift hundreds of times. Smooth, controlled, practiced. This is none of those things. This is agony. Bones breaking audibly as they reform. Fur erupting through skin that tears to accommodate it. Face elongating into a muzzle while she's still trying to breathe through a human nose.
The midwife screams and runs. Gabriel whimpers but doesn't move, transfixed by his mother's transformation.
"Lyanna?" Edmund's voice is small, terrified. "What's happening to you?"
She can't answer. Her throat is restructuring, vocal cords shifting between human and wolf. All that comes out are sounds that are neither, plaintive whimpers that might be attempting to say "I love you" or "I'm sorry" or "save our baby."
The baby. Vivienne. Still being born while her mother transforms.
I watch as Lyanna's eyes…still recognizably her despite everything else changing…find Edmund's. And in them I see not aggression, not hunger, not the mindless violence Edmund will later claim. Just terror. And pleading. And love.
She reaches for him with hands that are becoming paws, claws extending.
Edmund grabs the silver letter opener from the bedside table. Sterling silver, sharp, a gift from his father.
"Stay back," he warns, his voice shaking. "Don't come closer. Don't…"
But she does come closer. Still trying to communicate through a throat that can't form words. Still reaching for him despite the weapon in his hand.
And I see the moment he decides.
Not decides she's a threat. Decides he's terrified. Decides he can't handle this. Decides that killing her is easier than accepting what she is.
The blade goes into her chest. Left of center. Deep enough to pierce her heart.
She looks at him with infinite sadness. Not surprise. She saw this coming. Knew the risk when she married a human. Knew that love might not be enough.
She collapses, transforming back to human as she dies. Naked and bleeding. The baby's cry fills the room, Vivienne, alive and breathing.
"Mama?" Gabriel's voice, too old for his age. "Mama, wake up. Papa, why won't Mama wake up?"
Edmund stands holding the bloody letter opener, constructing a narrative in real-time. His face cycles through horror, grief, and then... justification.
"She was attacking. She lost control. She would have hurt the baby. I had to. I had to save…"
"You killed her!" Gabriel screams. His eyes flash pure silver. "Monster! You're the monster!"
He runs. Just runs straight out of the delivery room with his stuffed wolf, and Edmund doesn't follow.
Instead, Edmund looks at Vivienne…this tiny infant covered in her mother's blood, and makes a decision.
"You'll never know," he whispers. "Never understand what she was. I'll protect you from this. Whatever it takes."
The scene shifts…
I'm watching memory suppression in progress.
Vivienne is three years old, playing with toys in a room I recognize as Edmund's house. She's laughing, using a stuffed wolf to make growling sounds.
Edmund enters with a woman I don't recognize. Older, severe, carrying a leather bag that radiates dark magic.
"This is the witch?" Edmund asks.
"Yes. She can do what you need." The woman sets her bag on the table. "But I'll warn you again, this level of suppression on a child this young is dangerous. She's Silvermane. The power will push back eventually."
"How long can you give me?"
"Until her late teens. Maybe twenty if we're lucky. After that, the suppression will fail no matter how strong the spells."
"Then that's what I'm paying for. Late teens. Long enough to keep her safe."
"Safe from what?"
"From becoming what her mother was."
The witch pulls out components, silver dust, wolfsbane, crystals that pulse with sickly green light. She begins chanting in a language that makes my skin crawl.
Young Vivienne starts crying. Not normal childhood tears, soul-deep wails of pain as magic tears through her developing consciousness.
"The spells will layer," the witch explains over Vivienne's screams. "One to suppress transformation abilities. One to block ancestral memories. One to dampen enhanced senses. One to make her human consciousness dominant. And one…" she pulls out a syringe filled with silver-laced serum, "…to physically prevent shifting for as long as possible."
"Will it hurt her?"
"The injections? Yes. But the alternative is letting her wolf wake up naturally. And you said you couldn't handle that."
Edmund's face hardens. "Do it."
The witch injects three-year-old Vivienne with silver serum while she screams and thrashes. Edmund holds her down, his expression carved from stone.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry. But I can't watch you become a monster too."
The scene shifts again…
Years compressed. I watch Edmund inject Vivienne monthly until she's ten. I watch him hire tutors who know nothing about her real nature. I watch him isolate her, control her, shape her into someone who believes she's fully human.
But I also watch the spells crack.
Little moments. Vivienne running faster than she should at age seven. Her eyes flashing silver when she's angry at eleven. Healing from a broken arm in days instead of weeks at thirteen.
And Edmund, always watching, always afraid, always tightening control.
Until she's seventeen and he sends her to Blackthorn Academy.
The vision shifts to something current…
I'm watching Edmund in his hotel room. Recent. Maybe yesterday.
He's staring at tactical maps of the Subterranean Pitch. Red X's mark exit points. Blue circles show UV cannon positions. Green dots indicate silver gas dispersal systems.
His phone rings. Marcus.
"Status?" Edmund asks.
"All equipment positioned. Network arrives tomorrow. We're ready to execute on schedule."
"And the Silvermane situation?"
"Priority one. She goes down first, before she can access her full abilities. Silver rounds to the head, multiple shooters, no chances."
Edmund's hand shakes as he makes a note. "Understood."
"You're still committed? Because if you hesitate…"
"I won't hesitate. She's not my daughter anymore. She's the enemy."
The lie is so obvious I want to reach through the vision and shake him. But I can't. I can only watch as he confirms the date. December 21st. Three weeks.
The vision zooms out, showing me the full scope of Edmund's plan:
Twenty-three hunters positioned around Blackthorn Academy. Equipment caches hidden in the woods. Silver gas ready to deploy through modified ventilation systems. UV cannons powerful enough to burn werewolf skin in seconds. Snipers with silver ammunition at every exit point.
And contingency plans. So many contingency plans.
If Vivienne doesn't attend the tournament, they hunt her separately. If the pack escapes early, they have backup positions. If anything goes wrong, they have enough firepower to level the entire underground facility.
Fifty werewolves. All targeted for extermination.
But Vivienne is priority one. Always priority one.
Because Edmund can't accept what she's become. Can't live with the reminder of what he did to Lyanna. Can't let his daughter be the monster he created when he murdered her mother.
The vision fractures…
I'm pulled back to my dorm room so violently I actually vomit into the silver bowl, contaminating Vivienne's hair sample with bile and tears.
"Freya!" Sophie's beside me immediately, holding my shoulders. "What happened? You were only under for ten minutes but you were crying and shaking and…"
"Edmund's going to kill them all." My voice is raw. "Three weeks. December twenty-first. He has twenty-three hunters, military-grade weapons, and a trap that's been eighteen months in the planning."
"You saw this?"
"I saw everything. The murder. The suppression. The operation he's coordinating." I wipe my mouth with a shaking hand. "Sophie, he's going to execute his own daughter. He's convinced himself it's protection, but it's murder. Just like it was murder when he killed Lyanna."
"We have to warn them. Declan, Vivienne, the pack…"
"They know Edmund is planning something. But they don't know the scale. Don't know he has two dozen hunters with equipment designed specifically to massacre werewolves in enclosed spaces." I stand on unsteady legs. "We need to tell them everything. Now."
"It's midnight. Can't this wait until morning?"
"No. Because Edmund's hunters arrive tomorrow. Which means we have three weeks minus one day to prevent a massacre." I grab my coat. "Call Declan. Tell him to meet us at Greyfang Hollow in thirty minutes. And tell him to bring Callum—we're going to need strategic planning immediately."
Sophie makes the call while I transcribe everything I saw into my grimoire. The murder. The suppression spells. The tactical plans. All of it documented in case something happens to me.
Because revealing this makes me a target. I've seen Edmund's contingencies. I know his methods. I understand the scope of his operation.
And he cannot afford to let that information reach the packs.
"Declan's on his way," Sophie confirms. "He sounded... tense."
"He's about to learn that his mate's father plans to kill fifty werewolves in three weeks, with her as priority one target. Tense is appropriate." I close the grimoire, tucking it under my arm. "Come on. We have a war to prevent."
"Or prepare for," Sophie says quietly.
"Or prepare for," I agree.
Because the vision showed me something else. Something I haven't told Sophie yet because I'm still processing it myself.
Edmund's plan has a fatal flaw.
He's accounted for werewolves. For pack dynamics. For territorial instincts. For supernatural abilities he's documented over seventeen years of hunting.
But he hasn't accounted for Silvermane ancestral power.
He doesn't know that Vivienne can force transformations. That she can create new werewolves. That her howl carried enough authority to make every supernatural in Yorkshire instinctively submit.
He thinks he's fighting his daughter.
He doesn't realize he's fighting three thousand years of accumulated werewolf royalty.
And that miscalculation might be the only thing that saves everyone.
If we can teach Vivienne to access her full abilities in three weeks.
If we can convince the other packs to work together instead of competing.
If we can turn Edmund's trap into our advantage.
If, if, if.
Too many variables. Not enough time.
But it's what we have.
So we walk through the midnight cold toward Greyfang Hollow, where I'll tell an Alpha that his mate is going to die in three weeks unless we can stop her own father from executing her.
And hope that the truth, however devastating, is enough to save them all.