Cast Aside by My Alpha, Crowned by the Enemy Pack

CHAPTER 9: Mobilizing for War

The war room Kade led her to was nothing like the council hall, smaller, more private, a single table covered in maps weighted down with river stones and small carved markers denoting patrol routes on both sides of the border.

"Show me everything," Kade said, already pulling out a chair for her without seeming to think about the gesture. "Every patrol schedule you remember. Every weakness in the eastern wall. Everything your father ever let slip in front of you that he assumed you were too disinterested in politics to remember."

Freya sat, studying the map with a focus she hadn't allowed herself in years, the same sharp mind she'd been trained to hide behind pleasant smiles and agreeable silence finally given permission to work openly. "The eastern border patrol rotates every six hours, but there's a gap during the shift change, here." She pointed to a stretch of wall near a narrow ravine. "It's the same gap that's existed for years. My father always meant to fix it and never prioritized the funding."

"That matches what we've already mapped." Sable, who had joined them at the table, leaned forward with new interest, some of her earlier hostility replaced by grudging attention. "How large is the gap window?"

"Fifteen minutes, sometimes twenty if the outgoing patrol is running late, which happens more often than my father would like to admit." Freya kept her voice steady, focused entirely on the information rather than what providing it actually meant. "There's also a second weakness. My father keeps his most experienced enforcers stationed along the southern border facing the Marsh territory, because that alliance was always meant to be defensive against a third pack, not Duskwood. The eastern wall facing you is staffed by younger, less experienced patrols."

"He's been arrogant." Kade studied the map with new intensity. "Assuming Duskwood would never move against him directly because he holds numbers we don't."

"He's not entirely wrong to assume that." Sable's tone carried a warning. "We don't have the numbers for a direct confrontation, Kade. Not against the Cross pack's full strength, even accounting for this gap she's describing."

"I'm not proposing a direct confrontation." Kade's finger traced a line along the ravine Freya had indicated. "I'm proposing we use the same tactic Reeves has spent eleven years using against smaller threats. Strategic pressure, applied precisely enough to make continuing this alliance costlier than abandoning it."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Freya asked.

"Meaning we don't need to win a war outright. We need to make Alpha Reeves believe the cost of the Marsh alliance outweighs its benefit." Kade looked up from the map, meeting her eyes directly. "Your father built this alliance to end fifteen years of border tension with the Marsh pack. If I can demonstrate that provoking Duskwood costs him more than that tension ever did, the alliance becomes a liability instead of a solution. Political pressure from his own council might do what an army never could."

"You want to make me the reason the whole thing collapses without a single battle." Freya said it slowly, testing the shape of the plan against everything she understood about her father's political instincts. "That could actually work. My father cares more about optics with the regional council than he lets on publicly. If the Marsh alliance starts costing him standing with the other pack Alphas instead of gaining it, Marsh's father will start asking uncomfortable questions about whether the arrangement still serves his own interests."

"Exactly." Something like genuine respect flickered across Kade's expression. "You understand your father's political calculations better than any spy I could have sent in over years of watching from outside."

"I grew up watching him make those calculations at every family dinner." Freya's voice hardened slightly. "I just never thought I'd be the one using that knowledge against him."

Sable studied Freya for a long moment, something shifting behind her earlier suspicion. "You really do hate them, don't you. Not just Damien. All of them."

"I don't know if I hate them." Freya considered the question honestly, surprised by how much thought it actually required. "I think I'm still working out what I feel toward people who spent twenty three years teaching me that love and duty were the same thing, and then proved with a single sentence that duty always wins when it actually matters."

The hall fell quiet for a moment, the weight of that admission settling over all three of them differently. Kade opened his mouth to respond, but a sharp knock interrupted him before he could speak, and a young pack member pushed through the door, breathless from running.

"Alpha. Riders spotted at the eastern ravine, moving in formation. At least a dozen Cross enforcers, and they're not staying on their side of the border."

Kade was on his feet instantly, the war room's careful strategy session collapsing into immediate urgency. "How far?"

"Twenty minutes out, maybe less." The young wolf's eyes flicked nervously toward Freya. "Alpha, there's something else. The lead rider is flying Cross colors, but he's carrying a formal parley banner. He's asking specifically for the woman who fled with you last night."

Freya's stomach dropped. "That's not a war party."

"No." Kade's expression had gone hard, calculating. "That's your father, deciding he'd rather negotiate for you directly than wait the three days he originally Promised.”