Chapter 36: The Hunter's Proposal

POV: Jason

The cafeteria coffee tasted like burnt regret and poor life choices, but I drank it anyway. Anything to stay awake, to keep functioning through the fog of grief and confusion that had become my constant companion since finding Victoria's body.

my fiancée was murdered by a werewolf who'd crashed our engagement party. Since my sister nearly died giving birth to a hybrid baby. Since my entire understanding of reality was shattered like cheap glass.

Martin Cross sat across from me, his distinguished features carved from the same stone as the mountains surrounding Seattle. Victoria's father. The man who'd walked his daughter down the aisle in my imagination a thousand times—now walking alone through a world that had killed her.

"Thank you for meeting me," Martin said, his voice carrying that military precision I'd always admired. Before. When I didn't know what he really was.

Hunter. That's what Luna's pack called him: Hunter with contacts, resources, and a vendetta burning so bright it could incinerate everything in its path.

"You said it was about protecting our families." I set the coffee down, my hands shaking slightly. Exhaustion or fear—probably both. "I'm listening."

Martin pulled out a tablet, its screen showing surveillance photos I didn't want to understand—werewolf compounds, federal operation briefings, classified documents that shouldn't exist outside government servers.

"The Blackthorn Pack is planning a rescue operation," he said, sliding the tablet toward me. "Forty federal agents, two dozen wolves, military equipment. They're going after Viktor Steele's eastern compound within seventy-two hours."

My chest tightened. "How do you—"

"I have connections." Martin's smile held no warmth, just that calculating assessment I'd seen in cross-examination mode when he worked corporate law cases. "Military contacts, federal agents, even a senator who owes me favors. I know about the planning sessions, the strategic briefings, and the weapons modifications. I know everything."

I looked at the photos: tactical maps, wolves in various stages of transformation, and Viktor's facility layout. Intelligence that could win or lose the operation, depending on who controlled it.

"What do I do with this?"

" I'm offering an alliance, Jason. Between our families." Martin leaned forward, and I caught the smell of expensive cologne mixing with something sharper—gun oil, maybe, or the particular scent of obsession. "Your sister married into the supernatural world. My daughter was murdered by it. We both have stakes in how this ends."

My mind raced through implications, searching for traps in his reasonable tone. "What kind of alliance?"

You have access to the pack—their planning, their capabilities, their weaknesses. I have access to resources that could ensure the rescue operation succeeds or fails depending on our goals." His fingers drummed the table, steady as a metronome. "Together, we control the narrative. We decide what happens next."

"Control the narrative," I repeated slowly, tasting the manipulation beneath his corporate speak. "You mean expose them.

"I mean, protect humanity from threats we've been ignorant about for centuries." Martin's composure cracked slightly, pain breaking through his tactical exterior. "Victoria died because we didn't know. Many others have also died, and many will still die. Because your sister's pack is encroaching into human spaces, let supernatural violence spill into our world. How many more people have to die before we acknowledge the danger?"

His logic was poisonous and compelling all at once. I thought about the benefit of being able to finally protect my family.

"You want revenge."

"I want justice. There's a difference." Martin pulled up another file—casualty reports from Viktor's attacks, innocent human members slaughtered, humans caught in supernatural crossfire. "This isn't about one enhanced wolf or one rogue alpha. This is about a secret species living among us, subject to no human laws, accountable to no one except their own Council. That's not coexistence, Jason. That's invasion."

I should have left. But part of me—the part that still saw Victoria's body whenever I closed my eyes—wanted to hear more.

"What exactly are you proposing?"

Martin's smile sharpened. "The rescue operation will expose the supernatural world regardless of the outcome. Federal agents working alongside werewolves shall be exposed to helping these animals. Who decides how the public learns about werewolves?"

He leaned back, giving me space to process. "I have media contacts, government officials, and platforms to tell the story the way it needs to be told. But I need intelligence. I need to know the pack's true capabilities, their numbers, and their next move. "And you want me to spy on my sister's pack. Betray people who've protected my niece."

"I want you to protect your family." Martin's voice gentled, father to almost-son-in-law. "Nova is half-human, Jason. What happens when she's old enough to shift? When she's caught between species like your sister? Don't you want her growing up in a world where humans have legal recourse against supernatural violence? Where we're not helpless prey hoping wolves choose mercy?"

I ask even if all the werewolves are gone, which is not possible because there are many more packs which we don’t know about, and what of Nova and Luna, they are werewolves themselves, and what will be their fate?

The argument wormed into my exhausted brain, finding purchase in grief-raw places. I thought about Nova in that incubator, so impossibly small and vulnerable. About Luna in a coma, poisoned by Viktor's enhanced weapons.

"I need time to think." For as much as I wanted them gone, I cant still wrap my head around Luna and Nova with my dad. My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.

"Time is a luxury we don't have." Martin stood, leaving the tablet on the table. "The rescue operation launches in three days maximum. Whatever decision you make, make it knowing that Victoria died asking one question: Are werewolves worth the risk to human safety? She never got to answer. But you can."

"Call me when you've decided. And Jason? If you choose not to help, stay out of the way. This is going to happen with or without your cooperation. I'd prefer it to be with."

Martin left, his footsteps steady and determined. I sat alone with surveillance photos and poisonous logic, Victoria's ghost sitting heavy on my chest.

I thought about Victoria's death. About Martin's resources. About the cold calculus of protecting my niece, even if it meant betraying my sister's chosen family.

I thought about what Victoria would tell me if she were here. Sharp, pragmatic Victoria, who cut through my anxiety with brutal honesty.

Sometimes you don't have to understand something to do the right thing.

But what was the right thing? Protecting humanity from supernatural threats? Or protecting the supernatural beings who'd become family?

The cafeteria's fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in that harsh, unforgiving glow. I picked up Martin's business card, feeling its weight like an anchor.

Three days until the rescue operation. Three days to decide if I was willing to betray my sister's pack to protect what remained of our human family.

I stood, leaving the tablet on the table—couldn't bear to carry that intelligence, that temptation—and walked toward the NICU. Nova was awake, her amber-gold eyes tracking movement with that unsettling awareness. Rebecca adjusted monitors while maintaining her professional mask, but I saw how her hands lingered, how her voice gentled.

Another wolf hiding in plain sight. How many more were there? How deeply had supernatural beings infiltrated human society?

"Uncle Jason." Rebecca's voice pulled me from spiraling thoughts. "You look terrible. When's the last time you slept?"

"Don't remember." I approached the incubator, and Nova's tiny hand opened, reaching toward me through the glass. That unconscious gesture—so achingly human despite the pointed ears and miniature claws—cracked something inside my chest.

She was family. Impossible, terrifying family.

"Tell me honestly," I said, keeping my voice low enough that only Rebecca's enhanced hearing would catch it. "Can humans and werewolves actually coexist? Or is it right that this ends in war?"

Rebecca was quiet for a long moment, her expression cycling through emotions too fast to name. Finally: "I don't know. My pack tried coexistence. We stayed hidden, harmed no one, and lived peacefully for generations. Viktor's rogues still destroyed us. Killed my alpha, scattered my family, murdered my three-month-old daughter." Her voice cracked. "So maybe it right. Maybe we're too dangerous to exist alongside humans."

"But you're here. Working in a human hospital. Protecting human babies."

"Because the alternative is giving up. Is accepting that my daughter died for nothing." Rebecca's hands stilled on the monitors. "I choose to believe coexistence is possible. Even when evidence suggests otherwise.

Nova made a small sound—not distress, just acknowledgment that we were talking near her. I pressed my palm to the incubator glass, and her tiny hand aligned with mine through the barrier.

"Hope's not a strategy," I whispered.

"No," Rebecca agreed. "But sometimes it's all we have."

I thought about Martin's proposal, about betraying the pack for resources and control. About the cold satisfaction of revenge disguised as justice. About Victoria's memory being weaponized into genocide.

I thought about Nova growing up in a world where her existence was criminal,