Chapter 60 The Truth Laid Bare
The moment another scribe stood, I knew something terrible was coming.
There was a shift in the air, subtle, but unmistakable. The kind that presses against your ribs and tells you to brace, even before you understand why. Chains bit into my wrists as I straightened instinctively, my back already aching from hours of standing in the center of the auditorium like a display piece no one could stop staring at.
The scribe was old. I noticed that first. His hair was silver and neatly bound, his spine straight with the kind of discipline that didn’t come from strength but from obligation. He wore the black sash of record-keeping across his chest, the symbol of someone who didn’t take sides, only truth. Or at least, whatever version of truth the Council decided was acceptable.
He bowed first.
Not to me.
He bowed to the raised throne at the center of the semicircle.
To Darius.
Then to the Council members flanking him, twelve cloaked figures whose gazes weighed on me like I was something being measured for disposal. Only after that did the scribe turn toward the audience, toward the hundreds of wolves packed into tiered rows behind me.
I swallowed hard.
“Alpha King Darius,” the scribe said, his voice carrying easily through the massive chamber. “Honored members of the Council. Respected leaders and representatives of the packs.”
Every word echoed, amplified by stone and power.
I felt exposed. Not just because I was chained in the open, but because everyone was looking at me now, not as a person, not as someone they had eaten beside at a celebration days ago, but as the reason they were all here.
The scribe continued, his gaze sweeping the room. It passed briefly over the vampires seated among the wolves, an unsettling sight in itself, then lingered on the figures in lab coats seated opposite the scribes. My stomach twisted at the sight of them.
I remembered white rooms.
Glass walls.
Needles.
“We are convened today,” the scribe said, “in response to a series of unprecedented hybrid attacks that have destabilized our territories, violated ancient accords, and resulted in the deaths, disappearances, and suffering of our people.”
The word hybrid seemed to echo louder than the rest.
My chest tightened.
I didn’t look away. I refused to.
“In the aftermath of these attacks,” he continued, “the Council authorized a formal investigation into three primary areas of concern.”
He raised one finger.
“First: the existence of illegal experimentation involving supernatural genetic manipulation.”
A murmur spread through the audience. I heard sharp inhales, angry whispers, disbelief.
Illegal experimentation.
I tasted metal at the back of my throat.
A second finger rose.
“Second: the disappearance of omegas across multiple packs.”
That one hit harder.
I felt it in my spine, in the base of my skull, like something clicking into place that I hadn’t wanted to see.
Omegas.
Missing.
Taken.
Maybe it wasn’t.
The murmuring grew louder now. Wolves shifted uneasily. Some looked angry. Others looked sick.
The scribe lifted his hand, and the sound died instantly.
“Third,” he said, his voice sharper now, colder, “the identification of any surviving subjects connected to these experiments.”
I felt his eyes on me before he even turned.
It wasn’t a look of accusation.
It was worse.
It was assessment.
“For the duration of this inquiry,” he said, “ Subject L-17 the individual previously addressed as Luna Queen Lyra Soren has been reassessed.”
My heart stumbled.
The word reassessed echoed in my head, hollow and ominous.
“The Council,” he continued, “has determined that, in this context, that title is no longer appropriate.”
A wave of reaction rippled through the chamber. I heard gasps, sharp whispers, the scrape of boots against stone. Someone behind me muttered my name. Someone else spat quietly in disgust.
My fingers clenched around the chains.
Not appropriate.
As if my name were a privilege they could revoke.
“For the purposes of this investigation,” the scribe said, “she will be addressed by her classification.”
I stopped breathing.
Time seemed to slow, stretching thin and fragile as glass.
He paused.
And then—
“Subject L–17. Sole survivor.”
The words slammed into me.
Subject.
Not Lyra.
Not Luna.
Not even wolf.
A number.
A file.
Something catalogued and contained.
My vision blurred instantly. The chamber seemed too large, too loud, too far away. My chest burned as if something had been torn loose inside it.
I heard voices, but they sounded distant.
“That’s what they called the others…”
“Sole survivor?”
“Goddess help us…”
My knees threatened to give out, but the chains held me upright, cruel and unyielding.
They took my name, I thought numbly. They stripped it away like it never mattered.
I had been many things in my life, an orphan, a runaway, a prisoner, a weapon, but never just a number.
Never like this.
My gaze lifted instinctively, searching the only face that mattered.
Darius.
He was frozen in his seat, his body coiled tight like a predator barely holding itself back. His hands were clenched into fists, his jaw locked so hard I could see the muscle twitching beneath his skin.
His eyes were burning.
Not with suspicion.
With fury.
The scribe went on, his voice heavier now, as though even he understood the weight of what he was about to reveal.
“During the course of this investigation,” he said, “an archived case file was unsealed.”
My pulse roared in my ears.
“It had been classified for decades,” he continued, “sealed by authority of the Alpha King’s command at the time.”
A cold dread spread through me.
Decades.
That meant.
“The authorization signature on the file,” the scribe said, “belongs to one individual.”
“The name listed,” he finished, “is Jack Soren.”
My father.
The room spun.
I didn’t hear the gasps this time. I didn’t hear the shouting, the outrage, the sharp intake of breath from someone in the front row.
All I heard was my own heartbeat, loud and erratic, as the world cracked open beneath my feet.
Not as a victim.
As a contributor.
That was the word the scribe used next, but it barely registered.
My father.
The man who tucked me into bed.
Who taught me how to read?
Who died screaming in my arms.
I shook my head, violently, helplessly, as if I could shake the words out of the air.
No.
That’s not true.
That can’t be true.
I felt something inside me unravel, not rage yet, not grief alone, but a raw, destabilizing confusion that made it hard to stay standing.
I had spent my life believing one story.
And now, in front of everyone, wolves, vampires, enemies, and the man I was bound to hate and love all at once, they were rewriting it.
Piece by piece.
With no regard for what it would do to me.
I lifted my head slowly, chains rattling, and for the first time since this trial began, I didn’t feel like a monster.
I felt like a child again.
Standing in the ruins of a truth she had just lost.