Page 74 of Guarded By The Alpha

NOVA

I said yes before Caleb finished explaining what the inquiry would require.

Not impulsive. Deliberate. The kind of clarity that comes from seven years of walking into crime scenes and understanding, down to the bone, what it means to be the only person who saw what happened. I wasn't the victim in this record. I was the evidence.

That difference mattered to me.

Caleb took my answer with the economy of a man who'd expected it. He didn't thank me—I noted that and respected it. Gratitude would have been managing me. Instead, he gave me the shape of the inquiry, what the board had the authority to do, the framework that made the bloodline witness's in-person testimony the cornerstone of the case rather than a supporting piece.

Then he left me with the secure file and the understanding that the next thirty-six hours belonged to the work.

Roan was already in the room when Caleb left. Not standing between me and the door, not angled to catch my reaction. Just present in the way he'd been present since the repair began—steady, not managing, the specific quality of attention that didn't try to shape what it was watching.

I looked at him across the table.

"I already said yes," I told him.

"I know." A beat. "I wanted to be here when you did."

I looked back at the file. The bond in my chest was warm and specific, and I let it be there.

The preparation began immediately.

Gideon built the testimony from my memory with the methodical precision of a man who treated handling information as a moral responsibility. My crime scene work at Drake's site. The bloodline evidence Tara had put together across two weeks. The footage Gideon's own network had gathered. And the six hours of steady observation I'd done inside the Council's holding facility while being underestimated by people who'd made the consistent, career-ending mistake of reading composure as passivity.

What came out of it was the most complete picture of Council operations the oversight bodies had ever received.

I was the thread that held it together. Not because I'd been placed there. Because I'd spent those six hours using every minute.

Halfway through, Gideon caught a pre-hearing motion filed by the Council's lawyer—a formal challenge to my standing as a bloodline witness, on the grounds that what was waking in my blood hadn't been formally confirmed by a recognized authority.

The motion was technically correct, well-timed, and built to force the board to delay everything pending a review.

Gideon read it twice, set it on the table between us, and said: "They're trying to shut you out before you speak."

I looked at the motion a moment. Then I looked at Tara.

Tara was already pulling the bloodline records.

"How long do we have to answer it?" I asked.

Gideon checked the timestamp. "Fourteen hours."

"Then we answer in twelve."

I went back to my testimony notes. Tara and Gideon exchanged one look—brief, professional—and turned to it without a word.

The counter-filing, built from Tara's lab work, the markers confirmed across several tests, and the historical bloodline records Gideon had surfaced during the investigation, went in eleven hours and forty-seven minutes later.

The board acknowledged receipt at 0215. The motion was held for consideration, which meant it wasn't granted.

Which meant I testified.

Roan's disclosure came in the middle of the prep day.

Not as a grand gesture but as a piece of information delivered the way he'd been operating since the repair began—quiet, direct, unmanaged. He appeared in the doorway of the room where I was working with Gideon, waited until I looked up, and asked if he could have three minutes.

I followed him into the corridor.