“When I introduce you to the pack. We are somehow connected.”
“Are you going to tell them about the twins?” She thought of the wolf she had just seen. A predator like that could do a lot of damage.
Instead of answering, he tucked her against him and headed for the house.
“Mateo, what the hell are we doing?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Right now, we are walking in the woods. Then we’re going to meet some family, and then we’re going to stop your coven from committing half-mass murder.”
“Half mass murder?”
“Well, if they’re only killing the wolves, it’s half.”
She buried her head in his bicep. “What happened to my life? How could I be saying that about my family? How did we get here?”
He tilted her chin up so he could meet her eyes. “Blame is an emotion used to control other people. It is not useful in solving problems. We have to look them clear in the eye.”
“I can’t decide whether your employees love you or hate you.”
He blinked. “I assume it’s both on any given day. It’s hard to say because my wolf really doesn’t care at all.”
She realized he didn’t have any peers. He led his company and his pack, and there was absolutely no one he could really open up to. He could never trust when people opened up to him, either, because they could always be doing it to curry favor or hide mistakes.
“If you weren’t the alpha, what would you be?” she asked him.
“You mean if I were just a man?”
“Or a regular wolf, not at the top of anything?”
“Quantum computing is mostly a dead end.”
She blinked. “Okay, that took a turn.”
“But only mostly.”
“So you would work on quantum computing.”
She did not know how her computer worked. She had never considered it before. She wanted him to respect her, but this was so far outside her world that he was speaking gobbledygook.
“It’s amazing,” he said, and his eyes lit up like she’d never seen before. “All the complex, crazy things that you see online come down to ones and zeros. Everything a computer can do is a binary yes or no question.”
Something in her clenched. “That’s not just computers; that’s life. That’s my talent. It’s just a bunch of yes or no questions.”
“That’s so awesome.”
She smiled. “But a quantum computer is more than that?”
“Zeros and ones are hard-coded in regular computers, but with quantum computers, those zeros and ones aren’t. For most problems, it’s just going to add a bunch of extra expense and time because most decisions don’t needmoreuncertainty.”
She was shocked to realize she understoodthatperfectly. “Like nine times out of ten, you don’t need a divination which.”
“You’re a walking quantum computer,” he said with awe.
She knew he meant that as the highest compliment. “I don’t know what that means, but I’ll take it.”
“For colossal problems with big codes, they’re essential. What they could do in the realm of big numbers is spectacular because you basically multiply every possibility by an order of magnitude.”
“So why aren’t you doing that?” she asked at last.
