Becoming The War Baddie

CHAPTER 4: BECOMING THE WAR STRATEGIST

Yesterday ended with a win, but today I'll still have to show that I deserve a spot at the table. The table where the generals plan where to attack my ex.

Wolves that believe that a human woman has nothing to contribute except bear children.

Jackson is already at the table, having breakfast.

"The war committee meets at ten," he says before I sit down.

"I'll be there," My hands tremble on the tea cup I'm holding…

"The generals are not happy about the arrangement," he frowned.

I pour coffee. "Are they going to make it a problem?"

"They already have." He sets down what he is reading. "General Holt has called a formal objection. He says a human woman has no business in a military strategy session."

"What did you say?" I stopped drinking my tea now, little doubt creeping in that I wouldn't be able to achieve my plans.

"I told them she brought the intelligence that

Gives us an attacking strategy and if he has a better resource, he is welcome to produce it."

I look at him over my cup.

He picks up his reading again.

By 10 in the morning, we're gathered in the little four-corner room shaped like a tent; there are four of them.

Seated around a table that was clearly built for wolves.

Maps spread across the surface, each sporting the confidence of men who have been in rooms like this many times and consider it their natural habitat.

They look at me when I walk in.

Then they look away. All four of them. Back to the maps, back to each other, back to the conversation that resumed the moment I sat down as though the sitting down had not happened.

Jackson takes his place at the head of the table while Nico stands at the wall. I sit where there is a chair and I fold my hands and wait.

General Holt, the oldest, speaks without looking at me. The signs are obvious.

"The strategy is as follows. We target the junction officials he bribes simultaneously. All seven, same night, coordinated removal of their operational capacity. Without the officials, the routes open within forty-eight hours."

The other three generals nod. Maps pointed at and timestamps are discussed. I watch and listen and say nothing.

"Questions?" Holt says. He is looking at Jackson.

I raise my hand.

Then he laughs. Not loudly. Just enough.

"By all means," he says, with the tone of a man granting a child permission to speak at the adult table.

I put my hand down.

"Your plan will not work," I say.

The room goes to the quiet I was expecting.

"The junction officials are not the real problem," I continue. "They are replaceable. Derek will have new ones paid and operational within a week of you removing the current ones. You will win the night and lose the month."

Holt's jaw tightens. "And you would know this because…"

"Because I lived there for more than a year," I say smugly.

Real silence this time, the kind that means something has landed.

"The target," I say, "is how he pays all seven junction payments. Derek cannot replace them because there's no money that pays them. You do not just gain the junctions. He loses the ability to buy them back.”

Of course, everyone knows my plan is better without saying it.

No one gives gratitude to a human female.

“I know his bank…and I'm willing to say it,” I continue.

“The Lunar pack has very few warehouses, so I can show you where your beloved supplies are probably being held,” I smiled.

The focus they're paying me is a picture to be framed.

I stood up, walking to the map on the table pointing out the locations.

"Here. Here. And here."

The room is completely still.

One of the younger generals, late forties, and quick eyes, leans forward. "If the warehouses are intact…"

"The people outside your gates eat tonight," I declared. "Not in a week. Tonight."

My shoulders are back. My chin is level. My hands are steady on the edge of the table.

Derek said I stood behind his shadow, he'd find out I was made for the spotlight.

Holt finds me in the corridor twenty minutes later.

He does not apologize. I did not expect him to. Wolves of his generation do not apologize, and definitely not to me.

"The holding account," he says. "If Derek moves the funds before we attack it —"

"He won't," I say. "As long as you go for the account first, before any action against the officials, he has no reason to move the funds. He doesn't know we know it exists."

How long did you work for Derek Caine?"

"More than a year"

"And he let you go."

It is not quite a question, but I answer it anyway.

"He thought I wasn't valuable," I say. "He was wrong." I find it strange I can speak about Derek like someone I knew months ago.

Probably a good thing nobody here knows how close we were.

“I think you're very important around here. Have a good day, Miss Abigail.”

He walks away without another word.

I have been walking inside Jackson's house, enjoying the sights and checking the rooms.

I hear them before I reach the door.

Not the words, the tone.

"She cannot stay in the main house," Holt's voice. "It is irregular. The pack will talk. A human woman in the Alpha's residence without formal status undermines the structure we are trying to project."

"She stays." Jackson's voice

"There is accommodation on the east boundary," Holt requests again.

"She stays in this house."

"Jackson. The generals are unanimous, it is not appropriate for…"

"She gave us the warehouse locations, the bank location and the flaw in your strategy before the meeting was an hour old."

"She is the most valuable intelligence asset this pack has had in eight months. I will not put her on the east boundary like surplus equipment. She stays here where I can reach her and where her work is not disrupted."

A pause.

"It is a question of appearances…"

"My pack is hungry," Jackson says. "When they eat tonight because of the warehouses she found, appearances will take care of themselves. We are done."

The footsteps get closer, so I step back from the door.

The generals file out and Holt passes me in the corridor where I hid behind a door.

I find Jackson in the courtyard after dinner.

He is standing where he was standing this morning, same wall, same posture, the compound settling around him into the quiet of a pack that is, tonight, preparing for something rather than enduring something.

"Thank you," I say. "For the room, for the committee. For what you said to the generals."

He looks at me. "It is not charity."

"I know."

"You are useful here. Keeping you comfortable and close is a practical decision."

"I know that too."

"You said in the meeting that Derek did not value you anymore. What did you mean?”

"Something temporary," I say. "Something that ends when the weather changes."

Jackson is quiet.

"He was wrong, you're no longer the scared girl I drove home two days ago. Anyway, prepare yourself, we hit the Lunar pack bank tomorrow," he replies and goes back inside.

I sat outside in the courtyard, allowing the feeling of fear and expectation to run through me.