Free Call of the Wild by Lucy Kelly

story. Just in case The Society is able to enact any part of their plan and also to cover our own asses if we have to actually kill any of these assholes,” said Laura.
    “If not for my mate’s intelligence, we wouldn’t know this much. We have time to plan, get our people to safety, and prevent needless deaths. Now, let’s get to work. There are no bad ideas here so start thinking up scenarios where we save my former corner of West Virginia,” said Alexander. He was using his alpha voice and every shifter in the room recognized his authority.
    Aaron was an intelligent man. He could easily see what they were up against. They basically had a secret group of people trying to maintain their anonymity against a terrorist force and they couldn’t ask the state police, Homeland Security or the Federal Government for assistance.
    As ideas were bounced around, Aaron didn’t say another word. In his head, he was coming up with a few ideas of his own, so he waited and listened. As he listened, he noticed Marsha was also spending more time using her ears instead of her mouth.
    He watched as a person sitting across from him tapped the surface of the conference table. A section of the table slid back to reveal a screen and keyboard. Aaron tapped the table in front of his own seat and the same thing happened. This was good; he was wondering how he could make some notes. It took a few minutes to familiarize himself with the system, then he went to town.
    Right away he recognized he was working on an operating system and software that must have been designed by his sister. She could give Bill Gates a real run for his money if she wanted to; the functionality was off the charts.
    Now the conversations going on in the room were just background noise. All of his years in Delta Force had given him a lot of knowledge about planning missions. He knew how to use every asset, every advantage, to its full potential. He picked up the stylus next to the screen in front of him and pulled up Laura’s maps. He began to transfer his ideas to the map, making diagrams and listing ideas and contingencies. It was kind of like when sportscasters write on the screen during a replay, except Laura’s system was much more dynamic.
    Aaron could enlarge part of the map with a flick of his fingers, add notes, and then shrink it down again. The notes also reduced in size allowing him room to add more information in another location on the map. First, he quickly reviewed Laura’s intelligence to find out exactly what The Society had planned. Once he had all of his ideas listed in order of difficulty, he pulled up a file called personnel.
    Good, it had a listing of all the shifters recruited for defense. He started reviewing each person’s strengths and weaknesses. He could then assign them tasks they were best suited for. Of course, if this were going to work, he would need more information on the people in West Virginia. People there would have to get involved, too.
    Aaron was so involved in what he was doing—he hadn’t noticed the room had gone quiet. Finally the lack of noise got through and he glanced up.
    “What’d I miss?” he asked, just before he noticed his screen was blown up and spread over the big screens on the wall.
    “I guess it pays to get people with the right experience. Many of the shifters here have served. We don’t tend to stay in for a career, though. It’s hard to keep our animal side under wraps for that long. There’s a lot you could teach us,” said Alexander.
    Like the others, Marsha had been reading over Aaron’s plans. She had been the one to alert Laura to what he was doing. As she reviewed his work, she easily saw where he was going and it was brilliant. She was already figuring out the best area for her team to go in. Like the others in the room, she felt they might be able to pull this off.

Chapter Six

     
    At first, Aaron had participated in the planning simply because it was the right thing to do. He worked