Julia's baby, Bk 1 - Oh, Baby! Watty Awards 2012!

Chapter 23- Decisions made and plans drawn up.

"The situation." David stared around the room at everyone. The wall was cleared off, cleared, and he'd actually put a white board there. Oliver wasn't sure when they'd got one- it probably wasn't apart of the original boat's design- but David always seemed to like having one around. It had the three top roles already there- three empty circles.

"Twenty eight adults is now down to twenty adults and the two of us." He scribbled up sixteen circles under the three empty circles. David wrote Oliver's name and his own name in two of the three circles. "That leaves one Beta position free. Marianne was ...she was at the Pack Estate. We're not certain about her. Six kids are okay. We got them all out." He added them as little crosses on the side- included, but not apart of the tally. That wasn't so unusual. Kids and teenagers weren't usually included in the Pack ranking system till they matured into werewolves and their positions determined.

"Fuckers." Randy muttered. No one corrected him. Marianne was a ballsy woman to have continued the role of female Beta into her seventies, determined to wait for Julia to grow up, when no one would have blamed her if she'd retired years back. 

"Do you all agree to join our Pack now?" David's attention was on the dozen Desert Pack. 

"We've sworn allegiance to the Alpha, yes." One of the women spoke up. She glanced to Oliver.

"Making sure. Then that's..."

"Twelve. Your Pack picked up four teenagers. Two kids. One of our pregnant women and three babies."

Twelve survivors and ten kids out of a pack that was well over sixty, seventy with the kids. Oliver shut his eyes a moment. 

"No one expected there to be a betrayal from inside." David said softer. "That kind of cowardly behavior is the lowest any wolf can get."

There were murmers of agreement there. Fang to Fang was normal. Sneaky murder wasn't. That was something humans did, something most werewolves prided themselves on having no interest in doing. 

"Thirty two adults then. Thirty one able to fight. One of our Pack fighters is still down." David marked it up on the board, one circle for each adult, and then put a line across Levi's role. "Levi will have to be counted as one of the teenagers till we know what he can do with that leg. And of course, Yasmine."

Eyes went to where Yasmine sat. She counted as a seperate Pack still, still the Alpha, but she smiled weakly as he marked her as a seperate group. There was still hope that she'd have some power over her Grassland Pack.

"Introductions, I suppose, and we'll move on."

They did it quickly, names flashing past, some sticking in Oliver's mind and some not. That was fine- no one was going to really remember it for a while. But there was that 'psychic' kind of connection there now, that bond that satisfied him as Alpha that they would behave as new Pack. 

"What happened exactly?" The woman asked. Susie? He thought that was her name. 

"Oliver?"

Oliver stepped forward from where he'd been standing silently. "There's still some confusion over it. The witnesses were panicked. It seems that a group of Desert Pack turned on their own pack and ten minutes later, the two cars with Northern Pack showed up and helped them finish the job. The kids that escaped the attack, the teenagers, said that the adults and some of the older teenagers stayed to defend them while they ran. Trusted the baby and the little kids to them. We don't think they all escaped. David picked them up."

"No. We had more little ones." Susie agreed quietly. She sat down. 

"They may not have harmed them if they were young." David reminded her. Young was guliable. Easily brainwashed.