Chapter 22 – Quiet Before the Pushback
1532 Words
The first email hits my inbox before I make it back to my office.
By the time the elevator doors slide open on the executive floor, there are twelve more. Subject lines like:
CONCERNS ABOUT YOUR STATEMENTS
RE: CRESCENT PARTNERSHIP – URGENT
MUTUAL STABILITY AT RISK
Selene slips out beside me, glances at my screen, and grimaces. “You really know how to clear a brunch calendar.”
“They can wait,” I say, tucking the tablet under my arm. “We have one more meeting I actually want to be awake for.”
She hums. “You mean the one you scheduled in my old ritual prep room?”
“It’s a conference room now,” I say. “Mostly.”
The door to what used to be Crescent’s “bond optimization suite” is propped open. The candles are gone. The chalk circles Lyra and Mara scrubbed last year are only faint ghosts on the concrete under the new carpet tiles. A long table has been shoved in, mismatched chairs around it. It smells like coffee and dry‑erase markers now, not incense and fear.
Mara is already there.
She’s sitting backward on a chair at the far end of the table, arms folded along the backrest, boots hooked around the legs. An Outlaw Luna Network hoodie hangs open over a tank top; a silver ring flashes on her thumb when she taps it against the wood.
Beside her, on the table, is a cheap paper box of donuts that absolutely did not come from the Moontrace cafeteria.
“You’re late,” she says.
“We were with Calder,” I say. “He had questions.”
“Good.” She nudges the box with her knuckles. “Brought sugar. You’re going to need it.”
Lyra leans against the whiteboard, arms crossed, tablet in one hand. Finn and Nia sit together halfway down the table, laptops open. Nia’s hair is braided back, a faint shimmer of magic clinging to her fingers like static.
“Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Joint Task Force on Not Screwing Up BONDS,” Finn says. “Working title.”
“Terrible acronym,” Nia mutters. “JTFSUB. Sounds like a sandwich.”
“Name later,” Lyra cuts in. “Cases now.”
She taps her tablet and flicks something toward the wall screen. Three windows pop up: brief profiles, redacted names and locations, keywords highlighted.
“Post‑press‑conference intake,” she says. “One from a border pack near the old highway corridor. One from an urban rogue collective inland. One anonymous but detailed, likely from inside a corporate structure. All mention ‘stabilization offers’ tied directly or indirectly to Crescent’s template.”
Mara scans the summaries, jaw tightening.
“Copycats,” she says.
“Or franchises,” Finn adds. “Crescent might be legally on ice here, but their tech, their staff, and their customers didn’t vanish. Someone will try to pick up the pieces and rebrand. ‘New management, same great control.’”
Nia shudders. “I hate how plausible that sounds.”
Selene moves to the opposite end of the table from Mara, deliberately not taking the head seat.
“We knew this wasn’t just a coastal problem,” she says. “Now we have proof. The question is: where do we hit first?”
“The anonymous one,” Mara says immediately. “If someone inside a company is scared enough to write us, they’re sitting on an active circle. Or about to be.”
Lyra nods. “Agreed. The border pack can probably hold their line a little longer with remote support. The rogues too, if we get them resources. But an internal whistleblower? That’s a lit fuse.”
Finn scrolls. “Message came through the regulator relay,” he says. “Ward scrubbed identifiers, but left enough breadcrumbs for us to trace the structure. Subsidiary of a tech conglomerate two cities over. Lots of ‘wellness’ language. Little bit culty.”
“Of course,” Mara mutters. “Opium of the anxious wolf.”
I lean over Finn’s shoulder to read.
Subject: THEY’RE CALLING IT A RETREAT
Text: mandatory ‘bond reset weekends,’ ‘alignment exercises,’ waiver language that smells like Crescent’s lawyers.
My stomach flips.
“Moontrace ties?” I ask.
“Minor,” Finn says. “Shared vendors, a joint PR campaign once, no direct ownership. We’re not responsible. Yet.”
“Give it a month,” Mara says dryly. “Someone will try to sell them your crest as an upgrade.”
Nia looks between us. “So we hit them preemptively?”
“Not hit,” Lyra says. “Assess. Document. Offer alternatives. If we roll in screaming ‘abuse’ before we’re sure, we make it easier for the real abusers to paint us as hysterical.”
She glances at Mara. “And some of us already have that reputation.”
Mara salutes with half a donut. “You’re welcome.”
Selene’s phone buzzes. She checks it, grimaces.
“Draven’s board is ‘concerned about our overreaction,’” she says. “And three minor Alphas just withdrew support from the coastal alliance initiative.”
“Because you told them they couldn’t hollow out their wolves without paperwork,” Mara says. “Tragic.”
“Point is,” Selene says, “we’re bleeding political capital. Fast. We need a win that proves this isn’t just us tilting at windmills.”
“A rescued circle victim in another company,” Finn says. “Backed by Ward’s office. Public enough to deter, quiet enough to protect the wolf. That would count.”
All eyes shift to me.
“Then that’s our priority,” I say. “Finn, Mara, Nia—you go. Not as Moontrace, not as Outlaw alone. As the joint task force. Ward can badge you as advisors if that helps.”
Mara lifts a brow. “‘You go’? You’re not coming?”
“I can’t show up as the Moontrace Alpha at someone else’s HR ‘wellness retreat’ without turning it into a turf war,” I say. “They’ll shut down or bury the evidence before you get near the circle. You three can move quieter than I can right now.”
She studies me for a long second.
“You’re learning to let other people break things for you,” she says. “I approve.”
Nia grins. “Road trip with minimal Alpha supervision. Best task force ever.”
Lyra throws a marker at her. “You still report to me.”
The marker stops mid‑air, caught by a flick of Nia’s magic, and floats back to Lyra’s hand.
Mara watches the exchange, something like pride flickering across her face.
“This is going to piss off pretty much everyone who likes their wolves predictable,” she says.
“Good,” Selene says. “They’ve had the field for long enough.”
I look around the stolen ritual room: mismatched chairs, whiteboard scrawled with terms like INFORMED CONSENT and EXIT PLAN, Outlaw Luna hoodie draped over the back of a corporate swivel seat.
For a heartbeat, I see the old version overlaid—candles, chalk, a young heir on his knees in the center, saying yes to something he didn’t understand because everyone he trusted called it duty.
Then it blinks away, replaced by this:
A circle of people I chose.
“Get what you need,” I tell Mara and Finn. “Resources, documents, pre‑approved statements Ward can live with. I’ll handle the fallout with the alliance and whatever Aric thinks he can salvage.”
Mara stands, stretching her shoulders.
“You’re enjoying this,” she accuses.
“The part where I get to tell old men they can’t wire fear into kids and call it loyalty?” I say. “A little.”
She shakes her head, amused despite herself.
“Careful, Varyn. You keep this up, and I might start believing you.”
She claps Nia on the shoulder, nods once at Selene and Lyra, and heads for the door with Finn at her side.
When they’re gone, Selene exhales slowly.
“This is the easy part,” she says. “The ones who were always wrong. The copycats, the obvious monsters.”
“I know,” I say.
She looks at me.
“It’ll be harder,” she says softly, “when it’s someone you love who can’t let go of the circles.”
I think of Ronan in the Alpha Unit, of old Alphas in other cities, of wolves who genuinely believe their packs won’t survive without chains.
“I know,” I repeat.
Lyra caps her marker with a sharp click. “Then let’s make sure that when that fight comes,” she says, “we’ve got more lines on paper, more lines in blood, and more kids like Calder standing with us than against us.”
The room hums in quiet agreement.
Outside the window, the harbor glints under a pale sun.
Somewhere beyond it, a different “retreat center” is setting up candles for a weekend session.
We’re coming.
- Writer
