47

47

DORIAN'S POV

15 years of service for Lucien had taught me to read his moods, second-guess his tactics, and feel the weight of leadership that informed every decision he made. Yet in all those years, I never once saw him practice braiding hair from YouTube tutorials or burn breakfast with the sort of grim determination he brought to bear on battlefield tactics.

“Your alpha is reading ‘Parenting for Dummies’ right now, and organising a rescue mission,” I filled Reina in over the secure link. “This is what our lives are.”

A laugh crackled over the line. “Mine is writing a collection of letters to her five-year-old daughter who also happens to be an ancient supernatural being. Yours at least is reading parenting books. Mine? Mine only bawls when she believes nobody’s looking.”

It struck me how intimate the conversation was in a casual manner. Two weeks ago, I had considered Reina a potential challenge, her to be Laura’s muscle—just another of whom I would have to vie with for her King Alpha’s loyalty over mine own responsibility to Lucien. Here we were trading tales about our wildly changing leaders, like old chums comparing shared headaches.

“I have a question,” I said, observing Lucien fold Linda’s underwear with military precision. “Does good leadership have to involve so much emotional nakedness? Because old pack theory says that to show weakness is to invite challenge.”

"Most pack doctrine was made up by a bunch of men who believed emotions were strategic weaknesses," Reina commented dryly. “trusting can hold together loyally stronger than any fear based hierarchy. It doesn’t weaken your alpha for him to turn into a dedicated dad — it gives him something worth fighting for beyond political power.”

I thought of her advice as I watched Lucien, who’d long since given up folding laundry instead assisting Linda to practice writing in one of the ancient tongues passed down in her blood. He was attentive, and his patience endless — virtues he’d all too seldom exhibited in pack leadership, yet they came naturally with fatherhood.

“One time he spent three hours rehearsing ‘casual conversation starters’ in my bathroom mirror before a meeting with Laura,” I confessed. “I saw him sitting there delivering lines like ‘That’s an interesting tactical formation you’ve suggested’ and ‘You do have a quite impressive leadership style,’” he said, overacting in the manner of someone prepping for diplomatic negotiations.

Reina's chuckle was a hearty, warm one. “Laura rearranged her whole office because she read somewhere that feng shui creates “positive energy flow” and it might make her better at making decisions. She dedicated an afternoon to rearranging furniture, insisting she was engaging in “strategic environmental optimization.”

"They're disasters."

"Absolutely disasters. But they’re our disasters, and who knows, perhaps they are building something that will actually work.”

The fellowship of common experience was serendipitous, but welcome. For fifteen years, I’d been Lucien’s war general, considering pack cooperation as necessary for strategy rather than true joining. Co-teaching with Reina, however, had lifted the veil on something that I’d overlooked: Strength didn’t only come from personal capacity; it came from webs of trust and mutual empowerment.

"Dorian," Marcus's call came from the intelligence station, and there was an urgency in his voice that set my battle instincts jabbing at each other. "We've got a problem. Did he even look like Lucien's supposed infiltrators? Their behavior, in terms of communication, indicated that they are taking directions from individuals outside.”

I went to his desk, checking the information that was forming an increasingly disturbing pattern. Four of Lucien's guys—newer transfers, all from allied packs—had been placing encrypted phone calls and gathering up the pack's movements.

"For how long has this been going on?"

"At least three months. Perhaps longer, just our monitoring systems do not extend so far ago.

Three months of possible intelligence leakage to vampire handlers. Three months of creaking systems and vulnerable security. That security breach made my stomach clench with professional embarrassment and personal rage.

"Recommendations?" I suspected not, and I turned to Marcus, assuming he could figure it out.

“Standard protocol is to detain them immediately and interrogate them. But. ….If we go in too fast, the vamp army’ll know we’ve found their network and they’ll adapt. We forfeit the benefit of knowing who our enemy’s sources are.”

The strategic calculus was obvious but hard. Allowing known infiltrators to remain threatened the continued flow of intelligence. But elimination would tip the vampires off that we know, and then they’d build fresh intel networks we might not pick up on for a while.

"Third alternative," I replied, getting an idea as I looked at the patterns of communication. "We turn them. "Your suggestion is we feed them incorrect information, use them to misguide vampire planning, make their people effectively our assets without even its handlers knowing they're compromised.”

There was gratitude and there was worry on Marcus' face. "That's high-risk. The vampires-and if the same information was simply false.And assuming we've caught them or the vamps believe it was bogus..."

“Then we’ve bought ourselves time and possibly fed our enemies disinformation that dilutes their planning. The question is whether the potential gain is worth taking the security risk.”

Now I considered Lucien, and how he used power as a young male not only to show off his masculinity, but to lead in new ways – ways that did not lead as readily to total destruction, but rather hinted at encountering unplanned-for opportunities. Would it hay been the old Lucien he approved this scheme? Doubtful — he’d squash the threat within minutes using overwhelming force.

But the new Lucien — the one who could braid hair and read bedtime stories, and who was learning that power came in other forms than pure dominance — might enjoy the strategic creativity.

"Implement it," I decided. "But carefully monitor everything. First indication that our double agents are blown or playing both sides, we shut it down hard.”

While Marcus went off to carry out the plan, my covert phone buzzed at me with a vampire intercept. The warning was short but chilling: "Primary target en route to Council position. Assassination team in position. It's around werewolf leader meeting time, and timing-wise it would work. Execute on signal."

Primary target. With the setting and timing as it was, that could only be Lucien.

I looked up his most recent whereabouts and estimated travel times to the Crimson Council session. He’d be showing up at just the time when the vampire hordes happened to mass for maximum bloodletting. The coincidence was too convenient — someone had tipped off the assassin to his travel plans, guaranteeing he would walk into an assassination attempt.

My fingers tensed over the communication device that would allow me to alert him, but some hesitation checked my hand. Breaking through the radio silence would also give away our presence and that of Seraphine's forces, which could cause the vampires to make changes or speed things up. But silence brought Lucien closer to a place of incarceration meant to be his tomb.

"Dorian?" It was Reina's voice through the shared frequency. "There's some strange activity around the Council site here. Security patterns which are met in an abnormal manner.”

"I know. I overheard some vampire talk of an assassination. Lucien's walking into it."

"Can you warn him?"

"Not without telling them that we've broken their communications. They would adapt, and we’d lose our advantage in intelligence.”

The silence that filled the gap was close to unbearable. Professional protocol was to keep my Operations Security, hold our intelligence advantage, and rely on Lucien's fighting skills to see him through whatever trap lay in wait.

But personal loyalty — the kind forged over fifteen years of shared campaigns and mutual trust—compelled me to alert him with no regard for tactical implications.

"What would Laura do?" I was asking Reina to see what she thought honestly.

"She'd warn him. Every time. Laura explains that tactical benefits don’t count for much if you are willing to lose the people you’re fighting to protect.” Reina spoke with the conviction that only comes from years serving a leader who valued people over pure technique. “But I can say that, because it’s not my alpha walking into the trap.”

I had looked at the communicator, visualized the tactical display and Lucien's planned path, intelligence reports describing a coincident vampire attack. Fifteen years of service had taught me to perform a clinical calculus about costs and benefits. But five years of watching Laura build something else — something built on trust and real care for her people — had showed me that sometimes, the best leadership meant choosing people over tactical advantage.

"Shit," I cursed, grabbing the communicator. “Lucien’s going to tease the ever-loving hell out of me for going soft.”

“He’ll thank you for keeping him alive,” Reina corrected. “And then laugh at you for going soft, likely.”

I opened the emergency channel, breaking radio silence with a message that would let the vampires know we had intel but might save my alpha's life. "Lucien. Abort Council approach. Confirmed assassination team in position. Route compromised. Respond immediately."

I had to wait four corners, but it felt like an eternity, seconds stretching to minutes as I waited for the confirmation that my warning got their just in time.