I Accidentally Hacked Into The Alphas Chat Group And Now He Wants Me As His Mate

My criminal career ended because my mother slapped my ass.

Not metaphorically, by the way, I can still feel the pain.

One second, I was sitting in my room at three in the morning, wearing a hoodie that had not seen daylight since 2019, surrounded by empty energy drink cans, three glowing monitors, and the quiet satisfaction of being the second-best hacker in the world.

The next second, my mother stormed in like a wrathful deity, yanked the headphones off my head, slapped me right on the backside, and shouted, “Elena Novak, get out of this room before I drag you into the sunlight myself.”

I had stared at her, offended on every level.

“I am working.”

“You are committing crimes.”

“Allegedly.”

“You redirected an entire government task force to a retirement home last week.”

I frowned. “That was not my fault. The retirement home was moving that day. Honestly, they could have used the help.”

My mother did not appreciate genius when it wore sweatpants.

To be fair, the retirement home incident had been one of my better moments.

The Pentagon had gotten a little too close to finding me after a job I may or may not have done, so I gave them an address. Technically, it was an address. Technically, people were there. And technically, a hundred armed men bursting into a retirement home was not illegal because I was not the one holding the guns.

From far away, I had watched them storm in like heroes in a very expensive action movie. I laughed my ass off.

By sunset, they were carrying furniture, listening to eighty-year-old women complain about their posture, and getting scolded by grandfathers who had survived actual wars and had no patience for their nonsense.

Beautiful.

Art.

My mother called it “proof I needed a normal job.”

I called it “community service.”

She called me “unemployed.”

I called myself “retired.”

Then she said the one sentence that changed my life. “If you are this smart, use it legally to help people.”

I hated it when she did that, when she made sense.

So, at twenty-one, Elena Novak, known online as The Octopus, world rank two, retired professional nuisance, became an IT security specialist.

Why The Octopus?

Because I hacked like I had eight arms.

At least, that was what people – my fans or enemies – said. Personally, I thought it was because I could type, drink coffee, insult someone, reroute a firewall, delete evidence, and order fries at the same time.

The name stuck.

Three years later, I was still legal.

Mostly.

Legal-adjacent.

Legal enough that my mother stopped threatening to throw my laptop out the window.

I worked for a private cybersecurity firm that rented out specialists to rich clients who had more money than common sense. Banks. Private clinics. Luxury companies. Whatever you could think of. Occasionally, billionaires who thought “password123!” was strong because they had added an exclamation mark.

The job was flexible, paid well, and let me see ridiculous things.

Not monster-ridiculous. At that point, I still believed monsters were fictional...

My interview had been a work of art.

I had arrived in my natural form: hoodie, leggings, sneakers, dark circles under my eyes, hair in a bun that looked structurally unsound, and the expression of someone who had been dragged into society against her will, because that was what happened. Thanks, mom!

The interview room contained six men. All wearing shirts too tight around the ego.

They looked at me the way people looked at children bringing plastic stethoscopes to an operating room.

One of them, blonde, smug, and tragically confident, smiled and said, “Miss Novak, this position is very technical.”

I blinked at him. “That is usually what IT means.”

Another one laughed, not because it was funny, but because he had not decided yet whether I was joking.

The blonde one leaned back. “We need someone capable of handling high-pressure breaches.”

I looked at the table.

I looked at their laptops.

Then, I looked at him.

I smiled like the wicked villainess that I somehow was. No, sorry. That I had been, after all, I had truly reformed.

“You know what? Put your best man against me.”

Silence.

He sat up. “Excuse me?”

“Your best man. Whoever here thinks he’s the chosen prince of cybersecurity. Put him on a system. I’ll race him.”

The room changed.

Men did this thing when they felt challenged. Their shoulders squared and their eyes sharpened. Their mouths curled like they had just been handed a sword before battle.

It would have been intimidating if they had not all looked like they drank protein shakes named Alpha Boss Fuel.

The blonde one accepted.

Poor thing.

They gave us identical laptops and a closed test environment. He started strong. I gave him that. His fingers moved fast, his posture leaned forward, and for the first five minutes, he looked almost confident.

Then I yawned.

Not fake-yawned.

Actually yawned.

I had been awake all night because some idiot in Canada had challenged me on an old forum, and I had accidentally spent six hours proving his router had abandonment issues. Now, he has to connect to another Wi-Fi to download his porn.

So I yawned, lifted my left hand theatrically like a queen dismissing a peasant, and continued typing with only my right.

The blonde man began to sweat. Not a cute little sweat droplet. No. Full forehead waterfall.

His fingers hammered the keyboard. Mine tapped lazily. He looked like he wished evolution had given him more limbs.

Honestly, same. Then at least it would not have been so boring.

Three minutes later, I was inside.

Five minutes later, I had admin rights.

Six minutes later, I changed his screen background to a picture of him almost crying in front of his laptop. Yeah, I snapped a picture of him while I hacked his server.

The room went very quiet.

I turned the laptop around.

“Do I get the job, or do you need me to defeat him left-handed, too?" I pondered. "Do you have a blindfold?”

I got the job immediately.

Their faces changed after that. It was almost funny. One moment, I was the sleepy little hoodie girl. Next, I was apparently a mysterious cyber goddess and sleepy little hoodie girl.

One of them stared so intensely that I made a mental note never to share an elevator with him.

Men were weird.

Which was probably why I remained, as my mother liked to phrase it, “tragically single.”

“In my age,” she said often, “I was already pregnant with you.”

“And in your age,” I always replied, “they would have burned me as a witch if I weren’t.”

That usually ended the conversation.

For a few minutes.

My mother had stamina. After all, she was a "Mother"; it is in their blood to annoy their own children.

I did not hate people. That was a misunderstanding. I liked people best through screens, where they came with mute buttons, usernames, and the ability to disappear mid-conversation without making eye contact.

In person, people had smells, expectations, and facial expressions I was expected to interpret.

Horrifying. My body trembled at the thought.

Online, I was alive. Offline, I was a socially awkward goblin.

So, when my boss walked toward my desk one Tuesday afternoon with the smile of a man carrying either bad news or very bad news, I immediately minimized three windows and pretended to be a normal worker who was not about to hack into Netflix to watch the latest unreleased season of my show.

“Elena,” he said.

“No.”

He stopped. “I haven’t said anything yet.”

“You used my name.”

"Then how should I call you?"

"You don't, you just stay in your office."

“I need my best specialist.”

“Flattering. Still no.”

He sighed and sat on the edge of my desk, which was rude because my desk was a sacred ecosystem of coffee cups, cables, and one emergency chocolate bar.

“There’s a private contract. Extremely high profile. One of the best hotel brands in Europe. They’re hosting an international summit.”

I stared at him. “Rich people again?”

“Very rich people.”

“Then, very no.”

“Elena.”

“Rich people are the worst kind of users. They click on a phishing link, then blame me for not warning them not to click on how-i-legally-registered-my-yacht-as-an-emotional-support-animal-and-did-not-have-to-pay-taxes.”

He rubbed his forehead. “The hotel needs full IT security oversight. Infrastructure, network integrity, communications, leaks, surveillance systems. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can reach the public. The client specifically requested our strongest person, and you are the best I know.”

I spun slowly in my chair.

“That sounds like responsibility.”

“It is.”

“I’m allergic.”

“It includes an NDA.”

“I hate those.”

“You’d have to fly.”

“You keep making it worse. Absolutely not.”

He watched me with the patience of a man who knew he had one weapon left—an ace up his sleeve.

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t.”

“The payment is two hundred thousand.”

I stopped spinning.

The office became very quiet in my head.

“Two hundred thousand what — potatoes?”

“Euros.”

My chair squeaked.

“When do I start?”

That was how principles died. Not with a scream or a death rattle.

With a number, everyone had a number.

Two days later, I stood inside a private airport terminal with my laptop bag clutched to my chest like a holy relic, wondering whether airplanes were really necessary. Humanity had invented video calls. We had invented trains. We had invented staying home and chilling on a couch.

Yet here I was, voluntarily entering a metal tube that would launch itself into the sky because rich people had decided their summit needed my physical presence to protect their nudes from the media.

The hotel sent a car after landing.

It was not just a car. It was a black luxury baguette-like thing with windows so tinted it looked like it transported VVIPs.

The ride took us through a European city that looked expensive in an old way. Not glass-tower expensive. Stone-building expensive. Statues on beautiful bridges above mesmerizing rivers. The kind of place where every balcony looked like someone had once dramatically confessed love beneath it and died a tragic death with his lover.

The hotel stood beside a wide river, enormous and elegant, all pale stone, black iron balconies, tall windows, and golden light. It looked less like a hotel and more like a place where diplomats signed treaties and mistresses threw wine bottles at their cheating asses, more expensive than the clothes on my body.

I stepped out of the car in my hoodie and sneakers.

A doorman looked at me.

I looked at him.

His expression said, Are you lost?

Mine said, I could increase your mortgage with two clicks.

We understood each other.

Inside, the lobby was absurd. Marble everywhere. Gold everywhere. Flowers so fresh I suspected they had their own staff. The staircase was less a staircase and more a public announcement that poor people should take the elevator. It looked built for dramatic entrances, inherited fortunes, and women who called their fathers “Father.” Even the air smelled expensive. Not good. Expensive.

A woman approached me with fast steps and a forced smile.

She was about my height, with brown hair pulled back and large glasses slipping slightly down her nose. Her blouse was crisp, her business skirt perfectly pressed, but the effect was ruined by the fact that she looked one unanswered email away from a breakdown. A tablet rested against her stomach, a water bottle hung from her fingers, and her eyes were scanning her tablet.

“Elena Novak?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Clara Weiss. Assistant hotel manager and summit coordinator.”

Her smile twitched.

“Welcome.”

That was the first warning.

People who said welcome like that usually meant run.

Clara guided me through the hotel, explaining things as we walked. My office. My access. My small support team. The private server monitoring systems. Emergency contact procedures. Guest confidentiality.

“The guests are very sensitive,” she said.

“Sensitive how?”

“To everything.”

“That is not an answer.”

“You will see soon.”

Interesting.

The hotel had everything. Not in the normal luxury way, like a pool, spa, champagne bar, and towels thick enough to use for tower defense.

No.

It had strange things.

Basement rooms with no windows and no furniture.

Suites kept at exactly fifty degrees Celsius, which converts to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

A side building with chambers built partly into the river, glass walls looking directly into dark, moving water like luxury aquariums.

A room full of beds. Not two. Not four. Dozens.

“Group booking?” I asked.

Clara took a sip of water.

“Something like that.”

There were reinforced doors where reinforced doors did not belong. Hallways that required keycards, I apparently did not need. Mirrors covered in some public areas. Special elevators locked to specific floors.

“What kind of summit is this again?”

“A special one.”

“Yes, I gathered that from the fortress vibes.”

Clara stopped walking and turned to me.

Her forced smile vanished.

“Miss Novak. A few rules.”

Ah.

Rules.

My natural enemy. As a retired professional hacker, the urge to break every single one of them emerged.

“Do not wear strong perfume. Do not stand too close to guests. Do not anger them. Do not watch them eat. Do not try to lie to them. Actually, it is better if you avoid unnecessary conversation entirely. If they behave unusually, do not comment on it. If you hear strange noises after midnight, especially howling, do not investigate. Do not use mirrors in public spaces. Do not accept gifts. Do not thank anyone excessively. And under no circumstances should you sign anything, do not write anything on anything at all.”

I stared.

“Soooo… stay in my room twenty-four seven and be a recluse?”

So, basically, my life.

“Yes.”

She blinked.

“No. Of course not. Enjoy your stay.”

I raised an eyebrow. That sounded like the worst lie ever.

Clara took another sip of water. Her hand was not shaking, exactly. But it was thinking about it.

“Where is the main technical room?” I asked.

“You do not need to go there.”

I laughed.

She did not.

My laugh died alone.

“You’re joking.”

“I am not.”

“Clara, I cannot secure a system if I’m not allowed to inspect the heart of it.”

“It is restricted.”

“So are most interesting things.”

“Elena.”

“If something goes wrong because I didn’t check the technical room, who takes responsibility? You? Me? The hotel? What if someone breaches the server and steals some billionaire’s weird private photos? What if those photos reach the internet? What if the summit becomes a meme? What if a rich guy’s nudes end up on a billboard in Times Square?”

Clara looked genuinely disturbed.

“You’re right,” she said slowly. “The poor hacker would be fed to the wolves.”

I paused.

“Eh, yeah, I guess?”

She handed me a map.

“The technical room is below level minus four. Do not touch anything unnecessarily. And someone will go with you.”

I groaned. Don't need a babysitter.

“Okay. Okay.”

Then she walked away.

I stood there with the map in my hand and a very clear thought in my head.

I was absolutely going to break at least one of her rules.

“Hehehe.”

One of the staff members looked over just in time to catch whatever expression had appeared on my face. He stared at me for a second, then slowly shook his head like a man who already knew paperwork would come out of this.