“I don’t actually know.” Alannah took a bit of her own cake, and for the first time since I blurted out about the baby, she smiled. “My last heat was about a month and a half ago. Why?”
I nodded as I polished off my cake. “Because it gives me a timeline.” I calculated the time in my head. “Vince isn’t a strong Alpha. And his sense of smell is trash. Do you have a perfume you like to wear?”
She nodded. “I enjoy vanilla enough that I can wear it, but Ternen prefers my natural scent, so I stopped.”
I turned to him. “You are going to have to suffer for a bit.” He nodded.
“I don’t care. I will do whatever I have to do to protect her and our pup.”
“Good.” I held up my fingers. “I have my ‘mating’ ceremony scheduled in four weeks. Even Vince would scent a pup by then. But by personal experience, it will be close. If we can extend the time by covering your scent with vanilla, have you wear baggier clothes and have Rick or I pick you up and drop you off at home, we can do this.” I did the math again and nodded. “We can make it to the mating ceremony.”
“Why the mating ceremony? Are you seriously going to mate him?”
I scoffed. “Absolutely not. But Brandon needed to think he had me hook, line and sinker. So I agreed to the mating ceremony, and because I find it poetic to leave him at the altar like the humans do in the movies.” I snorted.
“Are you going to kill him, then?” Rick leaned in.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’ll let them suffer a bit. But my plan is to uncover everything and then disappear.” I grabbed Rick’s arm and Alannah’s. “Now, I’m just taking a few more people.” I smiled as the server came over the last time. I paid and then turned back to everyone. “So, how does everyone feel about camping?”
When we got back to the office, Ternen turned with a smile, taking the gift bags from around Alannah’s desk. “I’ll be back at the end of the day.” He kissed her and then left us to finish our day.
I settled into my office and started working on another firewall when Rick came in. “Hey are you ready for your next challenge?”
I smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want to see how well you know our systems.” I leaned in, excitement on my face. “I’m going to hide again, but this time, it’s going to be deeper.”
“Okay.” I turned my chair to face him. “What’s the catch?”
He smiled. “This is a training exercise for you to recognize the flaws in your own designs.”
I twirled my hands around each other. “What does that even mean?”
He cackled. “It means you can’t trip the firewall. If you do, you have to start over.”
“Are you insane?” I stood hunched over my computer. “How is that even possible?” I pretended to be upset, but inside I was dancing. He was teaching me how to get around the systems.
He shrugged. “It’s how my teacher taught me.”
“Your teacher…from school? We didn’t learn this in school.” I slammed back into my seat.
Rick shook his head. “Not at school. In my old pack. It’s how I got so good with computers.” He laughed and tossed me a paper. “I’ll give you a head start.” He pointed at the paper. “Read that and start. But.” He held up his finger.
“What?”
“During the mornings, I still expect you to pump out the coding I need. You work until the day’s coding is done, and then you practise this.”
I groaned. “How am I supposed to do that?” I rolled my neck. “I’ll never have time.” Rick just shrugged.
“Then I guess you’ll never become good at this job and you might as well quit now.” I growled, and he smiled. “Good luck.” He turned and left.
“Wait!” I stood and called after him. He came back and lifted a brow.
“What?”
“Can I work on this at home?”
He shook his head. “Nope.” I groaned. “I’m honestly not being spiteful. There is just no way to remote into our system. I created it that way. But if you want, you can bring your laptop in tomorrow and when I have time, I can make a dummy server on it, so you can practice at home.”
