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36
DORIAN'S POV

The tactical panel displayed Lucien's men commingling with Laura's in a manner impossible even to imagine a week prior. Pack fighters who’d been raised to see other packs as competition at best, enemies at worst were now swapping information, coordinating patrol routes and developing actual friendships with neighboring territorial borders.

But when I stepped back and observed my Alpha morph from callous pack leader to caring father, I began to wonder whether or not these changes were merely in the pack’s best interest in the long run—or rather just for Lucien.

“The southern perimeter has all clear,” declared one of our lieutenants. "Laura's people are keeping patrol on schedule right to the letter.”

I just accepted the report as I was contemplating the long-term strategy. Lucien had invested much in this collaboration — warriors, assets, political capital — for a child he’d only recently met and a woman who’d spurned him five years ago.

“You’re thinking too loud,” said Marcus, appearing at my side with the kind of timing that made it look like he’d been witnessing me battle within my own head.

“I am here considering if my Alpha is allowing personal feelings to cloud his judgment.”

“Or maybe you’re debating loyalty and what is following orders or protecting your Alpha from himself.”

The observation was uncomfortably accurate. I’d worked with Lucien for more than ten years, watching him grow our pack in strength and strategy. But love had left him open in ways about which I was gravely concerned.

"He's changed," I said quietly. “The man who would have weighed the cost and benefits beforehand has been replaced by this guy reeking of need, willing to risk everything for a kid he barely knows.”

"And that concerns you."

"Shouldn't it? Leaders have to consider their packs first, their feelings second. Lucien's choosing on the basis of fatherhood and...whenever he feels for Laura. That's dangerous."

Marcus went silent for a moment, staring at the tactical display as if he were deliberately weighing his words. “Last year I watched my sister become a mother. Was filled with how it rearranged her priorities, made her fierce in ways she never had been. At first, I thought it made her weak. But then I saw — it wasn’t that she was weaker, but that she was fighting for something more important than herself.”

"This isn't the same situation."

"Isn't it? Lucien has discovered that there is something to protect beyond pack lands and political position. Maybe that makes him a stronger leader, not a weaker one.”

I barely had time to take a breath of air before Reina joined our voice channel and I saw her face projected onto one of the screen. She was tired but stalwart in her resolve to be the strong Beta Laura had taught her to be.

“We have to collaborate on border security,” she said with little more than a fingernail’s resting pause. “I have been warned that vampire agents will seek to take advantage of lapses in our reciprocal patrols.”

"Agreed," I said, opening our deployement maps. "Where are your concerns?"

What happened then was an hour and a half of intense tactical briefing that showed how competent Reina was in planning a complicated military operation. I had expected Laura’s Beta to be more enforcer than strategist, but Reina clearly comprehended synchronised defence grids and resource pooling.

"You've done this before," I noted once we'd set new patrol schedules.

“Not at this scale, but Laura has been training me for years. A good Beta should be able to step in at any time and take over the Alpha’s position,” she explained. Reina's expression softened slightly. “I never actually wanted to test the theory during a supernatural war, but here we are.”

"How are you holding up?"

She appeared taken aback by the personal question but answered truthfully. "Terrified. Exhausted. Having thousands of peoples’ lives hanging on what I decide, hoping to not fuck it up completely. The kind of leadership experience that is typical among candidates?”

I couldn’t help but smile even though we were in a mess. “That’s eerily similar to what I went through.”

“What if that’s why we’re good at this job — having too much of a sense of how badly things could go wrong to want to do anything reckless?”

We hammered out plans for another hour or so, and I began to really respect her talent. She wasn’t just following Laura’s playbook; she was making the playbook, responding with tactical calls that were both incisive and creative.

“Dorian,” she said as we were finishing, “what do you imagine is really going on down there? With Laura and Lucien, Linda?”

"I believe they're up against something none of us fully comprehend. And whatever goes down, I think will change the supernatural world forever.”

"That doesn't scare you?"

"It terrifies me. Yet I’ve worked with Lucien long enough to realize that occasionally the most terrifying changes are also what’s truly needed.”

After signing off I went back to the field of watching our combined operations, and conversing with other pack military leaders. Warriors from rival territories, men and women who had spent their lives eyeing one another as competition if they’d ever even met, drinking coffee together and swapping combat stories like old pals.

"Do you believe the Alphas will accept to work together once the vampire threat is over?” one of Laura's captains asked.

“Assumes they remembered that cooperation worked better than competition,” said another. “But let me say this much — I would rather have these wolves watching my back than being at odds with me.”

The feeling was around the room and it took me until then to understand what should have been clear from the outset. The footsoldiers had worked out long before our leaders were arguing the toss, that inter species supernatural collaboration was not only possible but a matter of life or death.

"We ought to go and make some of these connections," I said. From joint training exercises, synchronised intelligence protocols, to response teams. Invest in infrastructure that lasts beyond the decision-making of individual leaders.

Their enthusiasm, and that of other military leaders for this concept said everything I needed to know. The actual fighters were ahead of the Alphas who proclaimed them.

One of my intelligence officers came over to me as I was preparing the first detailed schedule for joint training, his face set.

"Sir, we have a problem. Some of our warriors have had illegal contact with vampire agents.”

My blood ran cold. "How many?"

"Four confirmed, possibly more than that. They’re being enticed by promises of increased prowess and power outside the pack order.”

The implications were staggering. How could we be sure the vampires had not successfully converted some of Lucien's own warriors? Our entire security system would be in question. Every plan we had, every piece of a coordination we’d put in place—any bit of it could now be compromised for our enemies to view.

“Pinch the suspects without telling anyone else. I need complete interrogations in an hour. Already I was bringing up personnel files, trying to find a pattern that might indicate other warriors were also compromised. "And put me through to Reina, secure channel. If they’re in our pack, there’s a good chance that they’ve done the same to Laura."

As my unit moved to carry out the orders, I learned that threat wasn’t external any longer. We’d been invaded, and now they were turned against us; the enemy had gotten inside our walls, but we were so busy warding off the external threat, we missed the cancer that grew from within.
Lucien needed to know. But he was underground, out of touch, counting on me to keep things together topside while he kept his daughter safe and formed a new family with Laura.

I sit and stare at the tactical holotables where our elaborate defenses are detailed, I couldn’t believe that they were all now compromised. The vampires had been playing a deeper game than we knew, and only now were we starting to learn just how entrenched they were at every level of supernatural society.

Perhaps the war we thought we were fighting was already lost before we knew it had begun.