“Jordan?”
“Jordan left on Friday to become a goat farmer. You signed his farewell card.”
Had she? She vaguely remembered scrawling something about good luck with the goats on a piece of cardstock that someone had shoved under her nose. She’d been in the middle of tracking a potential breach at the time.
“The point is,” Derek continued, pushing off from the doorframe and stepping into her office, “you’re the best candidate. You know these systems inside and out, and the pack needs someone who can build them infrastructure that won’t collapse the moment a determined teenager tries to hack their way into the lodge’s Wi-Fi.”
“Werewolf teenagers hack?”
“Werewolf teenagers do everything human teenagers do, just with more property damage.” Derek took a step closer and she automatically slid her chair back. He came to a halt. “Two months, Harper. Fresh mountain air. Pine trees. Maybe even some socialization with beings who don’t communicate entirely in code.”
“I like code. Code makes sense. Code doesn’t have emotions or hidden agendas or…” She trailed off, thinking about intense golden-brown eyes and a chest that had felt like warm granite under her palms. “…complications.”
Derek’s expression shifted into something far too knowing. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with meeting Adrian, would it?”
“Who?”
“My brother. The Alpha. The one you literally ran into in the hallway this morning.”
Her face flamed. She could feel it happening, the blood rushing to her cheeks like a traitor fleeing a sinking ship. “I don’t remember that.”
Derek was quiet for a long moment. When she risked a glance at him, his expression was thoughtful rather than annoyed.
“The mountains might be good for you,” he said finally. “You’ve been living in this office since you arrived, Harper. The security team has a running bet on whether you actually have an apartment or if you’ve just been showering in the gym and sleeping under your desk.”
“I have an apartment!”
“When’s the last time you spent the night there?”
She opened her mouth to answer, then realized she couldn’t actually remember. There’d been the breach attempt two weeks ago, which had required three consecutive all-nighters. And then the system upgrades. And before that…
“That isn’t why you took this job, is it?” he added.
The words landed somewhere soft and bruised in her chest. He was right. She had thought it was her chance to be different, to be better, to be someone who went outside and made friends and didn’t spend every waking moment hiding from the world behind a screen.
That had lasted approximately one day before she’d discovered TalkToMe’s legacy security systems and fallen into the comfortable rabbit hole of her own expertise.
“Two months,” she said slowly.
“Two months. You’ll have complete autonomy over the project. The pack will provide housing and meals. And if it’s truly unbearable, I’ll send someone to extract you.” Derek smiled. “Though I suspect you might find more there than you expect.”
She doubted that very much. She’d find trees, probably. Dirt. Maybe some hostile werewolves who resented the intrusion of a human into their territory.
But she’d also find distance. Distance from her office, from her desk, from the comfortable patterns that were as much of a trap as a home.
“Fine,” she heard herself say. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter Five
Three days later, Harper was driving up into the mountains, into Moonstone territory, winding through progressively smaller roads until the pavement gave way to gravel and the gravel gave way to something that she suspected was just packed dirt with delusions of grandeur.
Her rental car—a sensible hybrid that the agency had promised was “great for mountain terrain,” which was clearly a lie—shuddered over a particularly aggressive pothole, and she white-knuckled the steering wheel while her laptop bag bounced ominously in the passenger seat.
“This is fine,” she told herself. “This is totally fine. This is character building.”
The trees had closed in about an hour ago, towering pines that blocked out most of the afternoon sun and made the forest feel ancient and watching. She had never been particularly outdoorsy, but even she could admit there was something almost magical about the way the light filtered through the branches, dappling the road with shadows that seemed to move when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
Werewolf territory, she reminded herself.The shadows are probably actual werewolves.
