The Plan
Nine men sit around the matte-black expanse of the boardroom table, which means nine distinct varieties of incompetence are presently occupying the Italian leather.
The air in the Blackwood Council chamber is thick with stagnant ambition, expensive cologne, and the faint, coppery scent of old wolves who mistake wealth for intellect. This room was built to project absolute power—floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking sixty thousand acres of black pine territory, framed by ancestral obsidian plaques detailing three centuries of conquest. Now, it just smells like a nursing home with a hedge fund.
I sit at the head—or rather, three inches to the left of the head, where my father’s empty chair looms like an unburied corpse. My spine is locked. Every vertebra is a cold, precise iron link. I do not lean against the upholstery. Comfort is an indulgence reserved for people who aren’t being measured for a shroud.
Across the polished surface, Benedict swirls a crystal tumbler of bourbon. He sits slouched in his tailored suit, one knee thrown out, projecting the lazy, greasy confidence of a man who believes the world was built solely to serve as his footstool. Beneath his pupils, a spark of sickly amber flares—his wolf, stirring near the surface. A pathetic little flourish. A child waving a wooden blade to prove he remembers which end cuts.
“An Alpha does not need to rattle his saber in polite company, Cassandra,” my father’s voice echoes from the vault of my memory. “A beast growls to cover its fear. A sovereign would simply cut the throat.”
“Let’s be pragmatic, Cassandra,” Elder Silas says, adjusting his silk tie with a heavy, gold-ringed hand. Silas controls our logistics and shipping fleets; he cares about profit margins, not tradition, which makes his betrayal particularly uninspired. “The corporate holdings are bleeding. The border patrols are restless after the winter skirmishes. The war-pack will not take orders from a solitary female, no matter how many degrees you hold or how sharply you look at us.”
“The bylaws are unambiguous,” Elder Thomas chimes in. His voice sounds like two dry stones grinding together in a dry well. He taps a spotted finger against the illuminated screen of his tablet, pulling up the pack codex. “A female without an Alpha mate is a placeholder. Not a sovereign. The old families will not yield their tithes to a house with no male anchor.”
Thomas smiles. It is an appalling sight—a row of yellowed teeth set in graying gums.
“The seat defaults to the senior surviving male line,” Thomas continues smoothly. “Benedict.”
I do not blink. Blinking is a concession. I let my pulse slow, forcing my heart to hammer against my ribs in a steady, rhythmic cadence. One. Two. Three.
“My father held this pack in an iron fist for thirty-two years,” I say, my voice dropping into the quiet, flat register I reserve for dissecting dead tissue. “He raised me to rule. He taught me to balance the territorial ledgers, tax the silver mines, and position the vanguards so our neighbors stayed on their side of the highway. Benedict spent those same thirty-two years learning how to lose at baccarat and contract embarrassing rashes in human nightclubs.”
“Careful, cousin,” Benedict purrs. He sets his glass down with a sharp clack. His eyes flash amber again, brighter this time, a low growl rattling in his throat—a clumsy attempt at Alpha pressure. It washes over me and dies against my ribs. “You are an orphan playing CEO in your dead father’s building. And since your parents went off that mountain road three years ago, you’ve been living on borrowed time.”
What an idiot. He truly has no idea what is going on here. Again, I feel blessed not to know what goes on in that imbecile’s head.
A quiet, ugly silence settles over the room. Three years ago, my parents’ car mysteriously lost its brakes on a sheer cliffside trail, plunging four hundred feet into the ravine below. A tragic mechanical failure, the Council called it. An unfortunate accident. I call it a clumsy assassination executed by men who lacked the courage to bleed my father face-to-face.
I look at Benedict. I look at Silas, then Thomas, and the remaining husks strung along the table.
They think they have built a wall around me. They want to marry me off to some pliable idiot from a vassal pack so Benedict can sit in my father’s chair and run Blackwood into the mud.
They have forgotten who raised me.
“The law demands a male of Alpha lineage,” I say, leaning forward just half an inch, my voice calm yet deliberate. The table groans faintly beneath my palms. “It does not demand a Blackwood male. Nor does it state that the match must be struck in this room.”
Benedict’s smirk stiffens. “What rot are you spewing now?”
“My father was not a foolish man,” I say. “He recognized the greed of his own board. Before his death, he quietly opened negotiations with a distant, high-born house to secure my arranged union.” The words roll off my tongue, smooth and slick as fresh oil. “The paperwork was stalled by his... unfortunate accident, and the mandatory period of mourning. But the contract stands.”
Thomas frowns, his cloudy eyes squinting through the gloom. “An Alpha lineage? Which house?”
“My mate is currently en route,” I say, ignoring the question entirely as I push back from the table and rise in a single, fluid motion. I stand as tall as I can in my heels. “He will be arriving within the week to claim his place beside me. Until he treads on Blackwood stone, I suggest you clean the dust off your suits, gentlemen. I would hate for my betrothed to think I rule over a council of beggars.”
I do not wait for a reply. I turn my back on them—a deliberate insult—and sweep out of the chamber.
The moment the heavy frosted-glass doors slide shut behind me, the cold hallway opens up.
Beatrice is waiting by the elevator banks. She stands straight as an iron spike, her graying hair pulled into a faultless, severe twist at the back of her head. Her hands are folded neatly over her dark, pressed skirt, her posture immaculate.
She bows to me before turning to fall into step as the private elevator doors slide open. Her sensible low-heeled shoes click in perfect tandem with my furious pace as the car hurtles toward the penthouse wing.
“Inbred, spineless, slow-witted buffoons,” I spit under my breath once the doors seal us in, my knuckles white as I clench my hands into fists. “Every single one of them. Thomas is barely alive, and Benedict looks at that chair like a dog staring at a fallen sausage. They actually thought I was going to hand them the keys.”
“I take it the meeting was a success, then,” Beatrice says flatly, staring at her own reflection in the brushed-steel elevator wall.
“They are utter fools,” I say, a sharp, terrible smile cutting across my face. “I knocked the wind right out of them. Benedict’s jaw practically hit the carpet when I told him my mate was arriving. They’re terrified, Beatrice. They’re scrambling.”
“You gave them a deadline, My Lady,” Beatrice reminds me quietly. “A week is not a long time.”
“It’s seven days more than they intended to give me,” I snap back. “Let them sweat. Let them spend the next seven days looking over their shoulders.”
We reach the heavy double doors of my private study in the penthouse. Beatrice keys in the security code on the wall pad, pushes the door open, and steps inside behind me. The heavy deadbolt engages with a solid, echoing thud, sealing us away from the rotting corporate fortress outside.
I walk straight to my desk, resting my hands on the polished mahogany, my breath coming fast and hot.
“All right, My Lady,” Beatrice says, standing by the door with her arms crossed over her apron. The deferential housekeeper vanishes, replaced entirely by the strict, unyielding woman who raised me after my mother proved too fragile for the task. “What is the actual plan? Because unless you have an Alpha lord hidden in your coat closet, you just promised nine dangerous men a ghost.”
“I don’t need a real Alpha lord,” I say, turning to face her, my eyes blazing. “I need an actor.”
Beatrice raises a single, severe eyebrow. “An actor.”
“A proxy. A puppet,” I clarify, walking over to a concealed wall safe behind the mahogany shelving. I punch in the code and swing the heavy steel door open. “Benedict thinks he has checked me with the law. So I am going to buy a male. Someone broke. A lowborn stray with enough brute size to play the part, and dumb enough to take my gold without asking questions. I’ll slap a fake noble title on him, forge the lineage papers to satisfy the codex, and write his lines for him.”
Beatrice stares at me for a long, heavy moment.
“You want to hire a stray out of the neutral zone, dress him up, and pass him off to the Elders as high-born Alpha blood.”
“I want a giant, quiet piece of furniture,” I correct her sharply, pulling two heavy leather pouches of silver coins and a silenced 9mm from the safe. I slide the firearm into my thigh holster and carefully adjust my skirts over it. “He will stand behind my shoulder, look terrifying, and keep his tongue behind his teeth. I will run the pack, I will reclaim my birthright, and while my puppet occupies the board, I will find the bastards who tampered with my father’s car.”
Beatrice watches me adjust my weapon with cool, calculating eyes. She doesn’t scold me for the gun. She reaches into her apron pocket and hands me a small, black, encrypted burner phone.
“If he has half a brain, he will try to blackmail you the moment he sees the Blackwood name on the contract,” she warns softly.
“Then I will choose one who has less than half a brain,” I say flatly.
I turn to my coat rack, pull my long, dark trench coat from the hook, and slide it over my shoulders.
“And where do you propose to find this easily manipulated stray, My Lady?”
“In the underground pit fights in the neutral zone,” I say, pulling the collar up to shadow my jaw and snapping the silver buckles shut. “Where desperate men bleed for pocket change. Where all the best bargains are made.”
