Page 119 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

His gaze drops from Halley's, and with that one move, he tells the whole mess hall something extremely important.

He might be declaring his support for me, but it's not me he is submitting to.

He has submitted to Halley.

Halley keeps him under her steady stare and has the audacity to add: "Say why."

There is a collective inhale as everyone expects Zero to finally push back, that she's pushed too far this time.

He doesn't.

"Because Stone is dead," Zero says, but his voice doesn’t waver. "And this fortress needs command. Because Knox has the experience to hold it, he's commanded legions for decades, and knows how to keep fighting when the battle turns ugly. And because Pack Scorch has already done what entire battalions couldn’t do. They stopped the army at the Pass, protected Blackgate, and forced the Humans to retreat."

His eyes move briefly to me before returning to Halley.

"And because any soldier who looks at Omega Specialist Sparks and sees weakness hasn’t been paying attention."

The mess hall absorbs that.

So do I.

I came here to take the first public step toward General, but Halley has just taken control of the room in a way no rank could give her. She challenged a Prime Alpha in front of his troops and made him answer to her with calm, ruthless grace while I stood beside her and let everyone see I would not interfere.

An Alpha can agree to support another Alpha and still test him later.

This is different.

Every soldier in this mess hall has watched Halley place herself on top of this fortress's authority hierarchy. Zero answered to her with no challenge, and I deferred to her. The most respected Alpha and the most dangerous Pack in Blackgate have just shown the fortress where its authority truly lies.

They may put the General’s title on me, and I will carry it because this fortress needs command, order, and a soldier who knows how to run an army.

But after today, none of them will mistake rank for power.

Halley doesn’t smile. She only nods, decisive and unafraid, with a room full of Alphas and Betas waiting on her next word.

"Good," she says. "Then let them also understand this now. If they want me and my Omega Command to join the fight, they get every member of my Pack too."

Chapter Thirty

Shade

Day Two

The Communication Office is the closest thing the Fortress has to a nervous system.

Cables run everywhere, screens glow with maps and frequency graphs, and the air carries that dry, charged smell of overheated electronics that never fully cool down.

I feel right at home. I spent years in and out of an office similar to this before I was deployed with Scorch Squad.

Jason is hunched over a desk with a datapad braced against his forearm, scrolling fast as he skims for keywords.

I set my own datapad down beside his and pull up the folder we've been building piece-by-piece.

With General Stone dead, his personal server is the only place we can go to find plans for the war. It was hidden behind a military-grade firewall, but it took me less than a minute to crack it. Most of the files are obsolete, decades of Stone monitoring squad movements and gathered enemy intel.

The more interesting data is recent.

I have a database detailing all the assets the rebel army possesses. Vehicles, supplies, weapons, and most importantly, personnel. With this data, I now fully understand what the final stand of the Demi-humans might look like.