Twenty Eight

Twenty Eight
LAURA'S POV

The silence in my private office was nearly stifling compared to the constant hustle and bustle of the command center. I had been hunkered down here for a fewal hours of stolen time with Linda’s work, needing to get back to the elemental truth about why I had fought so hard to figure out how lead despite mothering.

There was a knock on my door, disbanding my maternal emotion. “Enter, “I said as I quickly stacked Linda’s artworks in a pile.

Alexander and Lucien walked in side by side, and you could cut the tension between them with a knife. They had the tentative wariness of predators dividing domicile space, each acutely aware of the other’s location and attitude. But primarily they looked nothing like when I’d first known them.

There was none of Alexander's characteristic cocksure swagger, replaced with heartfelt concern and determination to the task at hand. His golden amber eyes were full of depths that I’d never seen before, and it told me that his feelings for me had grown from mere attraction into something deeper. He managed to seem less arrogant and more genuinely confident, the confidence that comes from having something real to lose.

Lucien appeared older, more worn down by recent experiences, and somehow also more approachable. The cocksure Alpha who had rejected me five years ago was now a man that seemed to carry himself with muted hesitancy, like someone who'd lost his right to control every room he walked into. There was a softness to his golden gaze that I’d never witnessed before, like becoming a father had completely altered how he looked at the world.

“Thank you both for being here,” I said, waving at the seats located around my conference table. “I know this is getting tangled up in some personal history, but we need to work together to keep Linda safe.”

"Yes," replied Lucien, without his former tone of command. All my means are hers. Whatever Linda wants, whatever you want.”

“Ditto,” Alexander said, and I heard the subtle hint of an accent he put on ‘you’. “A network of my spies have pinpointed the key positions of many vampires, ones which might all fall under assault at once.”

No sooner had they started sketching out what each did and how clever it was, I realized that I was having to mediate teleurstellling between their strategies. Alexander's ideas were cleverly sly and unpredictable, based on misdirection and psychological warfare that played to vampire arrogance and millennia-old grudges. Methodical and thorough were Lucien's tactics in the past, pressing with utterly overwhelming force at points where pressure would be most effective and letting none of his power accomplish less than leading a showing of tactical use that had made him such a legend among the pack leaders.

“Imagine if we did the two together?” I opined when they first started to butt heads on resource allocation. " Along with Alexander's subterfuge to cloud Lucien's underlying raid of the compound to make triage of vampire attention?"

Both men pondered the argument and I could see one man after another slowly suppressing their competitive spirits as each realized the tactical advantages inherent in mutually-reinforcing tactics. It was compelling to watch them maneuver out of real-time envy, ego giving way to tactical necessity.

The underground tunnel system could be useful in that regard to both, Lucien commented, his gaze glued to the tactical display as sensibly focused as I remembered from our meetings. “Fast-moving harassment groups and slower, heavier assault units taking different routes to beat Kamanovsky’s reconnaissance.”

“And my agents could feed intelligence to both sides as it happens,” Alexander continued, his thoughts already fingers-deep pressing through communication protocols. “Time it such that the diversions land while the parent forces have reached their objectives. The vampires will be looking for single-vector strikes, riding on traditional pack dogma.”

“They’re not going to expect species,” I thought, watching the improbable way their knowledge combined to turn into things neither could have done alone. “Vampires count on predictability, on centuries of experience when it comes to werewolf warfare. If we can surprise them..."

Seeing them work side by side despite their personal enmity made me remember why I’d fallen in love with each of them at different times and for different reasons. Lucien’s steadfast competence and his natural authority provided the stability, whilst Alexander’s originality of mind, along with his openness to experimenting and taking full advantage of chances that came their way, were the spark that made a good plan a great idea. In so many ways, they were the perfect foils for one another, something neither likely wanted to admit.

But it was the way they both bowed to my ultimate authority that really showed just how much had changed. The Lucien I’d met five years ago would never have taken orders from anybody, certainly not another man he had once dismissed. The Alexander that I had originally known would have been too arrogant to admit the superior strategic thinking by anyone, let alone a werewolf Alpha King.

“Then there’s something else we have to talk about,” I said, after we’d finished comparing notes on what we were going to do right this minute. “The political pressure by the other gangs is growing stronger. The Alpha Council is up in arms. Some of the council members are questioning my leadership and that I have become too personally involved in this case, so it's clouding my judgment."

"That's absurd," Alexander said at once, his flares of protectiveness surprising us all. “You are managing a very challenging crisis with extraordinary skill in extremely difficult circumstances. Let any leader who can do better come forward.”

“Competence is not always rewarded in politics,” Lucien remarked grimly, the resignation of dealing with pack hierarchies in his voice. "They most like are trying to find a way to challenge your legitimacy, using the vampire situation as an excuse for any doubts they've held since you took control.”

“And that brings me to our long-term strategy,” I said, thanking them for all their support “out here on the road” but knowing full well that politics were more complicated than they seemed. "Even if we save Linda and stop the vampire menace, I'm still going to have to deal with the political fallout. "They fear the other Alphas who have never worked with a Female Alpha King, much less a young one as I was when I rose to power.”

The confession was bitter, but it was the truth. I had been in that pack proving myself, over and over again, for five years, and there were still pack leaders who saw my gender on the one hand and my age on the other as fundamental weaknesses rather than sources of different kinds of strength.

“We will be there for you,” Lucien replied without a second thought, with absolute surety in his voice. "The Council listens to the weight of my pack's backing. Cause if anyone suggests you don know how to do your job, they have to answer to me"

“And I can give intelligence on which packleaders would be most like to cause trouble,” Alexander added, his network suddenly having a political dimension as well as a military one. When you use information the right way, it can be a powerful political tool. How interesting that even so many valued Alphas have the kind of skeletons in their closet they dread getting out.

Their split-second ready offers of help and support immediately warmed something inside my chest I’d kept very carefully shielded for years. For so long, I’d done absolutely everything on my own that the concept of having real allies — and two in particular — felt foreign.

"Thank you. Both of you. I know that this throws you into tough posi tions politically and personally, so I appreciate —”

There was a brisk tap at the door, and before I could answer, Reina came straight in. Her lips were pinched as she held a sealed envelope with the red wax stamp of the Crimson Council — the secret society that ruled over all supernatural beings in North America.

“This came via emergency courier,” she said, handing me the envelope with evident distaste. He said the messenger indicated it was something you needed right away and waited for word that he'd delivered it.

I opened the envelope more and more apprehensively, reading through the euphemisms which did little to hide the menace. The words danced in my sight, fixed themselves into smoke on fire as I continued reading.No charge of destabilizing supernatural order by use of personal vendetta.Persecution for putting inter-species relations at risk through careless actionAlpha King Laura is hereby ordered to appear before the Crimson Council within forty-eight hours.

"What's the consequence for refusing?" Alexander was reading the tension in my body.

“United pack attacked my territory,” I growled, keeping my voice steady by sheer force of will. "Basically they would war against us just trying to deal with the vampire flagration for after all. They're trying to force me to leave Linda to respond to their political accusations.”

"What's the timeframe?" Lucien’s military brain was processing the logistics.

"Forty-eight hours. Which would give me less than two days to save my daughter, kill an undead queen, and craft a proposal that worked with a council of people who have no business in the supernatural if I was going to remain Master of The City. I laid the letter aside gently, my hands not as unsteady as I imagined. “They picked the absolute worst time to do this.”

“Unless of course, they meant that," Lucien said softly, his active duty tactical knowledge telling him it was an organized attack. “Make you choose between protecting your daughter and saving your career. Classic pressure tactics."

It was like being turned on with ice water. The timing was no accident — someone had engineered this crisis that would ruin me politically at my most vulnerable moment personally. The vampire treachery and the political problem were intertwined, part of a grand plot to unseat me at my most vulnerable.

“We’ve got to figure out who’s doing this,” I said, my mind already starting to move into strategy mode. "They need someone with knowledge of vampire intelligence, and the Council itself. Somebody has a great time watching me fall."

“Mahout will look into potential links between Council members and the interests of the vampires,” Alexander suggested. "I have a few interesting information brokers in my network."

"And I’ll talk to my friends on the Council," Lucien said. “Look at who’s been pushing this hearing and what kind of support they’ve got.”

As we began to pull together plans for responding, at the back of your mind you think: This is going to be a hellish couple of years.But I thought: We get one shot at this.I felt some kind of grim pride. Not an hour ago the two men had been circling each other like rival predators staking out territory. Now they were working with equal determination to keep me and my place safe as they had in planning Linda's rescue.

Perhaps there was hope for us yet — all of us, in whatever arrangement that future might take.