Chapter 69 NADIA

Chapter 69 NADIA
Zane stood in front of the cameras and told the truth.

Not all of it though. He didn’t talk about the council, or exactly how his pack operated, but he said enough for them to understand the part that the sixty-second clip revealed.

He confirmed what the footage showed. He said the Crestfall Fangs were a werewolf pack. He said they had lived in this city for thirty years. He said they were citizens, they paid taxes, and played baseball. They were not a threat to anyone who hadn't first been a threat to them. 

He said there were people who wanted to use fear of the supernatural as a political tool, and that he wasn’t going to let his team and his community become that tool.

The room didn't go quiet. It erupted.

Questions came fast, and half of them were shouted over each other. Zane stood at the podium and handled it without panicking. He picked some questions to answer, and the ones he deflected, he did it smartly without any hesitation or visible stress.

I stood at the back of the room, watching him. There was a word for what I was feeling and it took me a second to realize it, because it wasn't something I had a lot of practice naming. 

Pride. That was it. I was really proud of him. 

He'd walked in here knowing what it would cost and he still went ahead with it anyway, because the other option was letting someone else control the story. And that was how Zane always acted. You didn't get to be the Alpha of a pack like this one without knowing that the worst thing you could do was flinch.

The questions went on for twenty minutes. At one point a reporter near the front asked if the pack had been deceiving the public for decades, and Zane looked at her and said, very evenly, "We've been private. That's not the same thing." 

That was exactly what we'd worked on the night before. I smiled.

When it was all done, I slipped out into the hallway before the crowd started moving. He found me a few minutes later. He was still in press conference mode—controlled, eyes sharp, ready for the next thing. But as he walked toward me, I could see him coming down from it. It was subtle, but I'd been watching him long enough to be able to tell.

"It was good," I said.

He exhaled. Just once, just for a second, his composure cracked. Then it was back. "Good good or just good?"

"Good good," I said. "You didn't even flinch once."

He looked at me. I reached over and straightened his collar; a small, pointless gesture that wasn't really about his collar at all. He let me do it, while keeping his eyes on my face.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"Now the whole world knows," I said. "Marcus doesn't have a story anymore, because there's nothing left to expose." I let go of his collar. "The council hearing is in twelve days, Iris is still out there, the third informant we don't know is still out there, our mate bond is still unconfirmed formally, and I still haven't fully figured out what I am." I looked at him. "So there’s a lot."

He smiled. "You're staying."

It wasn't a question. I said it out loud anyway, because I needed to hear myself say it. "I'm staying."

Something in his expression changed, like he’d finally become certain about what he’d been uncertain about.

We stood there in the hallway while the noise from the press conference buzzed behind the closed doors. There were people moving around us—staff, team members, and a few people I didn't recognize—but for a second it felt like none of that was happening.

Then we heard fast footsteps coming from the far end of the hall.

Dex came walking toward us with a strange look on his face, looking like there was something that needed to be dealt with right now. I couldn’t say he was panicking because Dex didn't really do panic, but he was slightly tense. 

"Marcus held his own press conference," he said. "Forty minutes ago."

He held up his phone. On the screen, my father stood in front of a cluster of cameras in a room I didn't recognize. He looked exactly like someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment and had everything lined up before it even arrived. 

He was calm and organized as he talked about safety, transparency, and the right of the public to know what was living in their city. He sounded completely reasonable, which was the most dangerous version of Marcus Cole there was.

I watched the clip. Then I saw her standing just over his left shoulder, visible for just three seconds before the camera cut to a wider shot. It was a woman I recognized, not from the hunter network, or from any file or briefing I'd ever sat through. I actually recognized her from television, campaign signs, and ballots. She was a city council member.

I kept staring at the screen. Then the clip ended.

"He went political," I said.

"Yeah," Dex replied.

I looked at Zane. He was already looking at me. Around us, the hallway was filling up with more people and more noise, and everywhere was looking like something big had been set in motion and we were all standing right at the center of it.

My father didn't just have hunters behind him. He had politicians on his side. Which meant he had access to infrastructure, public opinion, and taxpayers’ money.

Suddenly, this wasn't just about exposure anymore.

"Okay," I said, straightening up. "Let's go figure out what comes next."

Zane was already moving.