Chapter 8 8

Zane POV

I have served numerous people in my life. I had hunted werewolves on account of money. I had assisted strong individuals to do horrible things. I was not concerned about any person or thing but survival. But seeing Iris playing with Lyra like this, seeing someone attempting to destroy her soul by compelling her to make a decision between impossible things, something broke in me.

I did not consider the after-effects. I did not compute probabilities and planning. I just moved.

The hybrid that the rogue bite had bestowed upon me was stronger and faster than a full human or a full werewolf. I made use of that strength just now, and bounded myself off at the console Iris was at hand. I took her wrist in my hand, and squeezed it until she screamed.

The button which she was stretching to press was not pressed.

You are wrong, I told her, and I managed to make my voice reveal all the violence and the anger I had been withholding. You believed we should be under your regulations. You imagined we would play at your game. But we are just doing what nobody is going to hurt Lyra.

Iris made an attempt to free herself, and I did not release her. Dane leaped to the controls of the holding cell, and attempted to be puzzled how to open the doors. Ethan was looking in the room to see more guards or traps. And Lyra was searching through the belongings of her mother, at the traces of what her mother actually was.

You are mistaken, a voice answered us behind. We all swiveled round to find Owen standing in the doorway, and by his side Marcus. The old man was slowly bleeding and slowly moving, and yet he was awake and angry. I examined the Council books. Lyra does not even mean that her mother intended to begin a war. Iris doctored all of this. She created false evidence."

"Prove it," Iris snarled. She did not look frightened, in spite of the fact that I was holding her, in spite of the fact that she was caught.

Owen said, The signatures are false. One of the screens had documents that he was looking at. Your mother put a little mark on everything she signed. One of those marks that were private, something that only very close people were aware of. These marks are absent in these signatures. Iris forged all of this."

Something shifted in the air. The prisoners below began to move, and their eyes opened, as they were waking out of a deep sleep. The drugs or magic which had been keeping them weak and helpless was beginning to wear out.

And Lyra gazed at Iris with such an expression as was worse than indignation. It was the expression of a person betrayed by another one whom she wanted to trust, and now that person had nothing to lose.

Put them out, Lyra said to herself. "Or I'll make you."

Iris laughed. It sounded mad, as though someone had at last been shaken. "You don't have it in you. You're too weak. You're too human. That is why your mother and I were not successful and I succeeded.

Lyra stepped forward. Her eyes were already growing silver, and I could sense the power in the room. It was as though one were in the presence of an electrical storm, as though the air was going to burst. This was not her wolf power that she was using only. There was something else, and more dangerous, with which she was using it.

She was operating on her power of bloodline.

The prisoners beneath screamed as they were able to feel her strength. They weren't in pain. They were waking up. Their cell walls began to break. The glass started to break. And in the midst of it all I had understood something dreadful.

Iris was only telling us the truth, not all the truth. Lyra was not only able to make a connection with many mates. She was able to make new werewolves. And prisoners down beneath were not only prisoners. They were humans that the mother of Lyra had transformed to and Iris had been keeping them in the lockup as they were living evidence of what her mother could do.

Iris screamed, even as my grip broke her wrist.-- Your mother made an army, Iris, I said. She had plans of using them to take over the world. I was defending everybody against her.

"By killing her?" Lyra asked. "By lying? By having innocent people in prison?

The initial captive escaped. Then another. Then all of them. They emerged out of their cells as water bursting a dam, and they gazed upon Lyra as on everything. Just as she was their creator, like she was their Alpha, their reason to live.

"What do I do?" one of them asked. A girl perhaps, twenty years old, into whose eyes she had put her desperate hopes. "What do we do now?"

Lyra gazed at them and I could tell that the burden of that responsibility struck her at the same moment. These individuals were there since her mother had brought them into life. They turned to her to find answers. And she did not know what to say to them.

"You're free," she said finally. "You can do whatever you want."

We wish to give you a hand, the young woman said. "We can feel the bond. We're connected to you. We want to help you fight."

Dane grabbed my arm. "We need to get out of here. Now. It is becoming too large, too complex. We are not yet aware of what will happen.

But Lyra wasn't moving. She was glaring at Iris, and her strength was mounting ever higher and higher. The whole building was beginning to tremble. The walls were beginning to show cracks.

"Lyra," I said. "We have to go."

She murdered my mother, Lyra said and her voice was so cold that I am terrified. "She lied about everything. She tried to break me."

"I know," I said. But kill her now, should you choose to allow your powers to become utterly wild, you will bring this entire establishment to the ground. Also you shall slay all these new werewolves. Is that what you want?"

Lyra's eyes locked onto mine. She had such pain in her gaze, so much confusion, and rage, and betrayal all together. And then I felt she could not help herself.

But then she took a breath. And another. And slowly, her power receded.

Put her in a cell, said Lyra of the werewolves that were set free. "Keep her alive. The Council will desire to interrogate her.

Something had happened in the building as the prisoners took Iris with them and pulled her over towards one of the holding cells. The alarms stopped. The guards which were pursuing us vanished. And another voice came in the intercom system.

"Lyra," the voice said. The leader of the Council was a man known as Thorne and he had served a period of more than twenty years. I see that you have found out what is the truth about Iris. I praise you that you prevented her before she could inflict further harm to our organization.

"You're still there?" Ethan asked, confused. Why did you not have more guards?

This, Thorne said, because I wanted to see whether Lyra could manage this by herself. "And she can. Actually, she has achieved something incredible. She has shown that she is prepared to play her actual role in the Council.

"What role?" Lyra asked suspiciously.

There was a pause. We would like to offer you a position. Not as a policeman, but as a member of the Council yourself. We need your power. We need your leadership. We need you to take Iris's seat."

The lights were put off before Lyra could reply. The whole place was blacked out. And I heard something in the darkness that made my blood go cold.

Footsteps. Thousands of them. Entering through the under building.