Chapter 1 - Prologue
Sam
The afternoon sun bathes Xavier’s conference room in a warm but unnerving light. A strange mixture of calm and tension fills the room. A light aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, while the hum of the air conditioning plays a monotonous melody.
It’s a typical Friday afternoon that I spend with Xavier, Aiden and Jean. But today everything is different. Today I have a goal.
You.
She comes in, her footsteps barely audible on the thick carpet. She serves the coffee with elegant precision, without saying a word.
But she smiles at Xavier all the time.
It’s probably some crazy role-playing game between the two of them.
I have to talk to her, absolutely. Preferably in private, away from the prying eyes of my friends, to avoid a confrontation.
Time is slipping through my fingers like fine sand. Every day the danger grows that she will finish the code and sell it to someone. That would be the worst-case scenario.
Maybe I’m already too late?
Perhaps I have gambled everything away through my carelessness?
“You want to tell me why you’re staring at her like you own her?” Xavier’s voice breaks the silence, a deep rumble that tears my thoughts apart. But his provocation doesn’t reach me. My thoughts are trapped in the memory of the code I once saw. A memory that is burned into my mind like a curse.
It’s my own fault. I only helped Aiden so he could keep Xavier’s car. I thought it was just a quick gesture, something simple. I didn’t understand what I was doing. It was nighttime, he got me out of bed and caught me off guard.
I was distracted, only half focused and missed the opportunity. The chance to get an almost finished algorithm that I had never seen in this form before.
She is talented. Even the wolf in me snorts appreciatively.
It’s not that he knows anything about it - he’s my second side, an animal. But he reflects my knowledge.
“Sam? Are you there?” Aiden’s voice brings me back to reality. I look back and forth between the three of them questioningly. “What’s wrong with you?” Aiden’s worried gaze meets mine, but I just shake my head. They wouldn’t understand even if I explained it to them.
“It’s about money,” I finally mutter. Or rather, I let it run out of the office.
“Is it still about the one who ignores your job offer? She’s only human, do you really need her?” Jean’s words are snide and he frowns as he waits for me to answer. Xavier’s mate rolls her eyes, while Xavier, Aiden and I have become quite accustomed to his behavior.
He has hated people ever since we met him.
Actually, all four of us have enough other and more important things to do than sit here together every Friday and discuss our pack matters. Although lately it’s been less about pack matters anyway and more about exchanging ideas.
But none of them are helping me at the moment and I can thankfully do without their advice.
Aiden, my cousin, is just as secretive as I am. Not that we have anything to hide, but we’ve both always been like that, at least when it comes to business. Our deals aren’t planned well in advance. In our business, it’s all about who’s the fastest. We work out our lead. All we need are ideas or simply the right instinct.
And my instinct tells me that I need the developer of this code. But she ignores every one of my emails.
“But it’s like this. But our human whisperer won’t help me,” I say, giving Aiden an annoyed look. He has that certain charm that no one can resist. Whether man or woman.
“I’ve already met her and honestly, I can’t help much. I think she’s crazy,” says Aiden, shrugging his shoulders.
“She really is a beast,” says Xavier, laughing briefly, but his eyes reveal that he’s serious, and he should know.
“Let me talk to her, Xavier, please! You know I’m not planning anything bad with her friend, I just want her to work for me,” I blurt out. The urgency in my voice is unmistakable.
Xavier protects his mate like a raw egg, even from us. Yet she knows everything about our world. He told her and then marked her.
A point that Jean still resents him for, as if he had been in a relationship with him in the past. But at least he pulls himself together lately when she’s around. A fight between the two of them in their wolf form would be hard to hide even from the humans.
“You’re not going to do shit,” Xavier growls at me.
“Don’t you think your mate can decide for herself what she wants to do and what she doesn’t want to do?” Aiden’s words come from my right. He supports me, but that’s no coincidence. Because she’s still standing in the open doorway.
Since Xavier told her about our world, she has been standing in for his assistant on Fridays.
She looks around the corner, straight at Xavier, and she doesn’t have to say it to signal that she’s thinking exactly the same thing as Aiden. She’s stubborn, just like him. Even if she does bring out his youthful, non-business side.
Xavier makes a hand gesture and she grins broadly as she closes the door behind her and sits down at our table.
“Great, people are already sitting at our table,” Jean whispers quietly, but of course we can all hear it and, if I interpret her face correctly, so can she.
“I need your help with your girlfriend. She’s ignoring my emails and I really want her in my company,” I explain to her. I ignore Jean’s disgusted face, it’s not about him.
She is silent, seems to be thinking. “I told you she wouldn’t help you,” says Xavier with a grin.
“Why not, actually? It would make everything much easier,” she suddenly says and Xavier looks at her in confusion.
“What then? I can’t leave her alone in her current state. And I know his company.”
“You know my company?”
She immediately looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Do you think I’m that bad at what I do?”
“People are always so dramatic,” Jean growls quietly and tries to occupy himself with his cell phone.
“If I were you, I’d hold back. Has your frustration management mechanism stopped working or what?” Jean doesn’t respond to Aiden’s provocative question, especially as Xavier is sitting at the head of the table, right between the two of them.
The four of us are the alphas of our packs, basically equally strong. But wolves who protect their family, especially their mates and pups, are even more uncontrollable. If Xavier’s wolf thinks Jean is a danger, he’ll tear him to pieces.
“I don’t care what he says,” she says with a sharp undertone, tossing her hair over her shoulder before turning back to me.
“Your insult was much worse,” she reproaches me. I can’t quite understand Jean’s dislike of humans, but I have to agree with him on some points. They just don’t quite understand us. Can’t understand everything.
“Sorry,” I say, waiting for her to say what she wants to get off her chest. I don’t need to be a human whisperer like Aiden to know that.
She sighs and looks briefly at Xavier. “I’ll talk to her, but I can promise you, if you think it’s going to be easy, believe me, it won’t be. She has demands.”
“She has no training and only works occasionally as a hairdresser for her mother. Her school grades are lousy and she probably only got her A-levels because she was shagging her professor. What can she expect?”
“That was stupid of you,” Aiden whispers to me, his expression mirroring exactly what she tells me. “You want me to help you, you want me to talk to her, and you allow yourself to say something like that? You’re a real ass!”
“But he’s a good boss! You can ask all his employees,” Aiden jumps in for me.
“You mean the employees, most of whom are members of his pack?” she asks, looking at us both skeptically.
“I hate to agree with Aiden, but in this case he’s right,” even Xavier admits. If he knew what I really wanted, he would transform here and now and pounce on me just because his mate would like to.
She has to start with me and I have to gain her trust. Because my target is on this damn old laptop that doesn’t even have cloud access that I could hack.
“As I said, I’ll talk to her, but I can’t promise anything. I’m only doing this anyway because I think a regular routine would help her. But rest assured, if you behave the way you’ve just behaved towards me, she’ll kill you. Wolf or no wolf.”
