Drama At The War Council

Five days after Kai rode out of Voss territory, my father called a war council, and I invited myself.

"This isn't a place for you," he said, when I appeared in the doorway of the map room, already dressed as someone who intended to stay.

"I've been studying border laws since twelve," I replied. "You used to be proud of that."

"I'm still proud of it. I'm also aware that pride doesn't earn you a seat at a war council."

"Then let me sit somewhere that isn't a seat."

"Selene." He rubbed his hand over his face, it was obvious that he was exhausted. My guess was that he had already lost one argument with me this month and didn't want to argue again, so as not to lose a second time. "This isn't a game. Men will be making decisions in this room that could cost lives.

"I understand that better than you think."

"Do you." It wasn't really a question. He studied me for a moment, some of the fear I'd noticed since my refusal flickering behind his eyes again, quickly suppressed. "You've been different since the proposal. Sharper. I don't know whether to be proud of that or worried by it."

"Can't it be both?"

That almost got a smile out of him, the ghost of the father I remembered from before any of this, before either of us understood what the world was about to ask of us.

He didn't have a good answer for that, mostly because he didn't have time to find one before his captains started filling in, and throwing his own daughter out of there in front of them would have cost him more than letting me stay quietly by the wall ever could. I took the opening and didn't apologize for it.

The map room smelled like ink and tallow, and the border map itself was old enough that someone had patched a tear in the western territory with a strip of newer parchment, slightly the wrong shade. I remembered that patch. I remembered a lot of things about this room that I had no business remembering yet, and I stood very still and let the captains talk around me like I was furniture.

"Scouts report nothing unusual along the western ridge," one of them said. "Quiet for the third week running."

"Quiet's not nothing," said a woman near the door, young, dressed in scout leather that had seen real use. "Quiet's what you get right before someone decides quiet's useful."

"That's not a report, Vance. That's a feeling."

"I've had feelings that kept me alive longer than most people's reports have," she said, and there was a ripple of stifled amusement around the room, quickly smothered when my father's eyes swept the group. She caught me watching and gave me the smallest, most unbothered shrug I'd ever seen a scout give an Alpha's daughter, like my presence there was no stranger than the tear in the map.

I ignored her. I had bigger things to worry about than a scout with a mouth on her.

"The Ashwood pack has been testing our southern fence line," my father said, moving on. "Nothing concealed. Territorial posturing, most likely, in response to the Nightfang proposal falling through."

"It's not the Ashwood you should be watching," I said.

Every head in the room turned toward me at once, which was, admittedly, not the quiet entrance I'd planned.

"Selene." My father's voice went flat. This was what he did when he wanted to correct me without the audience seeing him do it. "This isn't the place."

"You said it yourself. The proposal falling through changed how every pack around us reads our strength. Ashwood is testing the fence because it's safe to test. The real risk isn't the pack posturing at the border you're already watching. It's the one you're not."

"And which pack would that be?"

I hesitated, because the true answer, the one burned into a memory from a life I'd already lived once, was Ashfall, a name that meant nothing to anyone in this room yet, a pack that hadn't mattered enough in my first life to leave a mark on it. I couldn't say that. I had no scholarly reason to know it.

"I don't have a name," I admitted. "I have a pattern. Every incursion in the last three generations that actually cost this pack territory came within a season of a broken alliance, and it never came from the direction anyone was watching. Ashwood is loud because Ashwood wants you distracted."

The Captain who'd dismissed the scout's feeling a minute earlier looked at me like I'd grown a second head. My father looked at me like he was trying to decide whether to be embarrassed or to be afraid, and settling, as usual, somewhere in between.

"That's not evidence," he said. "That's a theory built on old records and worst timing."

"Then let the scouts widen the watch. If I'm wrong, you've lost nothing but a few extra patrols."

"And if you're right?"

"Then you'll have caught it before it cost you anything."

"With respect, Alpha Voss." The captain who'd dismissed the scout's feeling folded his arms, clearly unwilling to let the matter drop just because his Alpha seemed to be wavering. "We can't reassign half the eastern watch on your daughter's reading habits. My scouts are stretched thin enough as it is."

"Half the watch," I said. "Not a full reassignment. Move two patrols from the southern fence, where Ashwood's already announced itself loudly that no one's sneaking through it undetected, and put them somewhere quieter instead."

"You'd have us undermanned on a confirmed threat to chase a theory."

"I'd have you smart enough to know the difference between a threat that wants to be seen and one that doesn't."

He studied me for a long moment, weighing I think, not whether I was right, but it meant that I sounded so certain about something I had no actual authority to be certain about. In the end it was the scout, Vance, who broke the silence.

"For what It's what," she said. "I'll take a girl's theory over Ashwood's noise. At least her guess comes with a reason."

"No one asked you, Vance."

"No one ever does. I offer anyway. It's a gift."

My father exhaled through his nose, the closest thing to a laugh he'd allowed himself in days, and gave the order to widen the eastern watch, not because he believed me, I don't think he did, but because it cost him little to be cautious and a great deal to be wrong twice in one season.

I lingered near the door as the council broke apart, watching as captains left in twos and threes, already arguing amongst themselves about patrol schedules and who would draw the worst shift. The scout the captain had called Vance removed herself from the group and fell into step beside me without asking, the way I'd later learn was simply how she Inserted herself into things.

"You realize you just made yourself a dozen new enemies in there," she said, starting the conversation, like she was commenting on the weather. "Nobody likes being told their reports missed something. Especially not by someone who isn't even supposed to be in the room."

"I noticed."

"Good. It means you're paying attention." She glanced sideways at me, assessing me differently, from the way everyone else in my life assessed me, no politics in it at all. "For what it's worth, I don't care whether you had a reason or a feeling. Feelings has kept me alive plenty of time reports never could."

"Is that your professional opinion, scout?"

"It's my only opinion. I don't really do the other kind." She moved toward the barracks with a lazy salute that wasn't quite mockery and wasn't quite respect either, something comfortably in between. "Try not to get yourself thrown out of the next council before you're proven right again. Would hate to miss the show."

The watch found the first signs three nights later. Not Ashwood. A scouting party moving under cover from the east, testing the exact stretch of fence line I'd pointed toward with nothing but a pattern and a hope that history hadn't changed as much as I feared it had.

My father summoned me to his study once the report came in, and this time he didn't tell me it wasn't a place for me

"They were exactly where you said they'd be," he said, without preamble, the ledger of the scouting report still open on his desk. "Three nights early, coming from a direction none of the captains were watching."

"I'm glad the watch caught them."

"I'm glad they did too." He paused. " I thought you were going to be wrong. To be honest, I was anxious as I made a decision like that. I was thinking of several damage control measures to be taken. I underestimated you, that I'm sure of. But you've been different these days. Your actions, your questions, the way you carry yourself. Don't think I haven't been noticing. Did you visit a witch?"

I was shocked at the question.

"A witch?," I asked. "Why would you ask me such a question?"

"You know what I mean. Don't pretend. Nobody changes the way you did. Since you knew about the proposal you've been excited. You wanted it. Then one morning, you suddenly change. There was so much joy on your face as I can recall. But then you refused the proposal, you keep pestering me about your mother, and now at my war council you know than I do."

"Where is this getting to?"

"Okay, let me make it plain for you to understand," he sighed. "How did you know?"