Chapter  375

XENOIS "That sounds healthy and emotionally intelligent," Lumina said approvingly. "I have my moments," I said. My phone buzzed again. Another message. I braced myself for more bad news. But this time it was from Alpha Chen. Not withdrawing, but explaining. His elder council had pressured him to leave the coalition, but he'd managed to negotiate a compromise. He would maintain informal cooperation----sharing intelligence, coordinating on specific threats----without formal coalition membership. It was something. Not as good as full membership, but better than complete isolation. I showed Lumina the message. "Maybe we can salvage this. Convert formal coalition into informal networks. Cooperation without official structure. Harder to target that way." "Harder to coordinate too," she pointed out. "Better than nothing," I said. Over the next hour, three more alphas reached out with similar compromises. They couldn't maintain public coalition membership without elder council revolt, but they