"You made it through," she said.
"Barely." I dropped into the chair across from her desk. "It was... intense."
"I can imagine." Her eyes lingered on the marks.
"Neal has data."
"Of course he does." She nodded at him. "Show me."
Neal spread his findings across her desk. Charts and graphs and photographs. The timeline of my heat. The corresponding changes in feral behavior. The before and after comparisons that showed improvement across every measurable metric.
Rae studied it all in silence.
"This is remarkable," she said finally. "The correlation is impossible to dismiss."
"It's not correlation." Neal's voice was firm. "It's causation. Lumi's heat triggered a biological response in every feral within range. Their cortisol levels dropped. Their shift stability improved. Gray's neural patterns showed more integration in three days than in the previous three months."
"Gray spoke," I added. "A full sentence."
Rae's eyebrows rose. "What did he say?"
"He asked where I was." The memory made my chest tight. "When Cole came to get Stone, Gray apparently became agitated. He said, 'Where is she? I need her.'"
The room was quiet.
"The council will need to be updated about this," Rae said slowly.
"Twilson's already asking questions." Cole's voice was hard. "I got seventeen messages while we were at the cabin. Demands for explanations, reports, containment protocols."
"Containment?" I sat up straighter. "He wants to contain me?"
"He wants to understand what happened. And control it, if he can." Cole's jaw tightened.
"Let him be scared." James's voice was a growl. "If he comes near her—"
"He won't." Rae held up a hand. "Not yet. The new council isn't Emory's council. They're cautious, yes, but they're not genocidal. They'll want to study this, understand it, before they make any decisions."
"Study her?" Stone had been silent until now, but his voice cut through the room like a blade. "She's not a lab rat."
"No. She's not." Rae met his eyes calmly. "But she is unprecedented. The first confirmed Omega in three decades. With documented, measurable effects on feral wolves. The council will want answers."
"Let them want." I leaned forward. "I'm not hiding what I am. I'm not pretending the heat didn't happen or that the ferals aren't improving because of me. The data speaks for itself."
"It does." Rae nodded slowly. "And that's exactly what worries me."
"Why?"
"Because data can be interpreted in different ways." She folded her hands on her desk. "Twilson will see this and think 'threat to be neutralized.' Others might see 'resource to be exploited.'Very few will see what you actually are—a person, with rights and autonomy, who happens to have abilities that could help our entire species."
"Then we make them see that." I stood. "I'm done hiding. I'm done waiting for permission to exist. The council can accept what I am or they can try to stop me. But they can't pretend this didn't happen."
Rae was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was soft.
"They can try."
The words hung in the air.
"We need to be strategic about this," Cole said. "Twilson is already positioning himself. If we let him control the narrative—"
