Alpha in a Fur Coat
Read Alpha in a Fur Coat Online
Authors: Sloane Meyers
Alpha in a Fur Coat
The Fur Coat Society, Book 2
By Sloane Meyers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.
Storm fidgeted nervously in her seat as she scanned the menu without really reading it. She had arrived at the café fifteen minutes early, and had already deflected several attempts by the waiter to convince her to order a coffee. She didn’t need caffeine. Grant would be here any minute now, and her nervous excitement already had her heart pounding in her chest. No reason to get any more hyped up.
Storm was meeting Grant to discuss what top secret information he had discovered regarding the underground war on shifters, although, to be honest, Storm would take any excuse to meet up with Grant in the middle of the workday. She loved the way he looked in a suit, and his job as a lawyer required him to wear one to the office every day. Something about the suit made Grant really come across as the powerful alpha that he was.
Storm frowned. Grant had grown up in an alpha family back in Alaska, just like her, but he hated to talk about it. His clan had been smaller than Storm’s clan, but his struggles to fit in as “the alpha’s kid” had been similar to hers. Storm would have loved the chance to complain about how everyone always expected too much of them as the “future leaders” of their clans, but Grant never wanted to talk about Alaska. And he hated being labeled as an “alpha,” perhaps because he had given up his chance to lead his clan by moving away to Chicago. But it didn’t matter how far away he moved—alpha genes never went away. Storm knew this from personal experience. No matter how hard she always tried to push down the urge she felt to take command of situations, she was a born leader.
Storm’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Grant’s laughter. She looked up and saw him joking with the hostess, who was leading him toward the table. Storm felt a twinge of jealousy, and immediately hated herself for it. She really had to get her little crush on Grant under control before it got her in trouble. No matter how good he looked in a suit—and, damn, he looked amazing right now—she wasn’t interested in a man. She valued her independence, and there was nothing like getting into a relationship to mess up an independent lifestyle.
“Hey you,” Grant said as he sat down, completely oblivious to the war that was going on inside of Storm’s head at the moment. “Is this restaurant okay? We can go somewhere else if you don’t like it.”
“More than okay, I’d say. Atwood Café is one of my favorite places to eat in the city.”
“Good,” Grant said, then looked down at the electronic menu displayed on the table’s screen. “Let me choose what I want to eat so we can order when the waiter comes back and then get right down to business.”
Storm nodded and fell silent while Grant scanned the menu, swiping quickly through the screens of available dishes. It took less than a minute for their overzealous waiter to show up, but Grant managed to make a quick decision so they could place their food order.
“So,” Storm said, leaning in and lowering her voice. “What is this mystery information you decoded?”
Grant furrowed his brow and looked around to see whether anyone else was paying attention to them. The lunch rush was almost over, so things were pretty quiet right now. Grant reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small tablet. He set the tablet down on the table and started swiping through screens as he spoke.
“The information seems to come from documents that are decades old. It’s all dated from when you and I were just babies. Some of it’s even from before we were born.”
“Really?” Storm asked. “That doesn’t seem like it would be very helpful to us at all, then.”
Grant shrugged as he continued to swipe through documents. “I’m not sure if it’s necessarily helpful to us, but it’s extensive information. It gives you a hint of what kind of people we’re up against. Here, look.”
Grant slid the tablet across the table to Storm, and she started reading the lines of text. Most of it looked like some sort of weird scientific formula, so she looked back up at Grant with a confused, questioning expression on her face.
“Are you sure you decoded this correctly? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Grant rolled his eyes dramatically. “How dare you doubt my decoding skills?” he asked, feigning a hurt look.
Storm rolled her eyes right back at him. “Are you going to sit there acting all theatrical, or are you going to explain to me what the heck these files are?”
“You know all the stories about the scientists who tried to wipe out all bear shifters with a virus decades ago?” Grant asked.
Storm nodded. Every bear shifter in Alaska knew those stories. Before Storm was even born, a group of scientists had tried to develop a lethal virus to specifically target and wipe out bear shifters. According to the elders in Storm’s clan, the scientists had almost succeeded. But all of the shifter clans had come together to fight off the threat, and in the end the scientists had all been killed. Well, all but one of them, but the remaining one had slinked away never to be heard from again.
“These are records from those scientists,” Grant said. “They’re incomplete records, but there’s a lot in here about the different tests they ran and experiments they did to develop the virus that almost wiped us all out.”
“Ok,” Storm said, still feeling confused. “But that was decades ago. Why would anyone care enough about these records anymore to go to all the trouble of encrypting them.”
“The records have extensive information about the unique structure of bear shifter DNA,” Grant said.
Storm felt her blood run cold. Suddenly, she understood.
“They’re trying to use this information to develop the eye scanners, aren’t they?” she asked. Grant just nodded.
Storm leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. The last few weeks had shaken up her comfortable life. It had all started when her best friend, Silver, had discovered that one of Chicago’s most powerful business owners knew shifters existed, and wanted to get rid of them. The mayor was also in on the plan, which involved creating eye scanners that automatically detected whether someone had animal DNA. Eye scanning was relatively new technology, though, so the shifter scanners weren’t working properly yet. But Storm knew it was only a matter of time. The scanners would be perfected, and then the mayor would push to have all of Chicago’s citizens scanned for the “safety” of the city.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Storm said softly, finally opening her eyes. “Every generation of bear shifters has a story about how they were almost wiped out by people who hated them. I thought maybe our generation would be the first to escape that kind of persecution. I thought maybe humanity had progressed far enough by now to accept us despite our differences. But I guess I thought wrong.”
Storm fell silent as their waiter arrived with their food. The steaming hot plates gave off an enticing aroma, but Storm had suddenly lost her appetite. She hated feeling like she had to hide a part of herself from the world, but full humans seemed to have a hard time understanding that shifters weren’t dangerous. They were just different. Storm stared out the window and watched the hovercars outside zooming by. So many people out there were just going about their normal day, while her world felt like it was starting to crumble at the edges.
“I know what you mean,” Grant said, when their waiter had finally left them alone again. “I guess this is going to be our generation’s big battle. But there’s one more really interesting piece of information in all this data.”
Grant’s voice trailed off as he spoke, and Storm turned her gaze from the window back to him. His eyes had darkened, and he had an intense look on his face that Storm had never seen before.
“Oh?” Storm prompted him.
“Remember how the elders told us that there was one scientist who managed to escape decades ago, when they killed off all the other scientists who were trying to wipe out the bear shifters with a virus?”
Storm nodded slowly.
“Well,” Grant continued. “Turns out that scientist is the same old man in charge of developing the shifter-detecting scanners today.”
Storm sat up straighter in her chair, and her eyes widened. “No way,” she said. “Everyone thought that guy must have been dead by now. Or that he would at least have slunk away into hiding for the rest of his life. Are you sure it’s him?”
Grant nodded. “Turns out, the guy didn’t learn his lesson about messing with shifters the first time. His name and bio is in a lot of these files I decoded. It’s him, alright. The very same guy that’s been hovering in the lab where Juno works, pushing to get the scanners completed.”
Juno was another one of their shifter friends. She had almost completed her PhD in biology, and worked as a research assistant in the university lab. A few weeks ago, Juno had been called in to help with a “top-secret” project. That project turned out to be the shifter-detector scanners. No one at the lab knew that Juno herself was a shifter, and Juno had been secretly doing everything she could to slow down the project. Juno had told Storm and the others several stories about the crazy old scientist who seemed to be in charge and came in regularly to check on the scanners, but no one had suspected that the old scientist was the same man who had worked on another scheme to destroy shifters decades ago.
Storm shuddered. “We have to tell Juno,” she said.
Grant narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, we have to tell Juno. But we also need to figure out a plan for getting rid of this guy. He nearly destroyed our clans, and he’s going to pay for it.”
The fierceness in Grant’s expression nearly took Storm’s breath away. She felt a stirring deep within her, and she blushed at the intensity of the feeling. She looked down at her food, trying to hide her emotions and regain her composure.
Get a grip, Storm
, she said to herself. But that was hard to do when the most gorgeous man she had ever known was sitting across from her, his face lit up by the fire in his deep violet-colored eyes. She glanced up at him, unable to keep her eyes off of his handsome face for more than a few moments. His chiseled jawbone was clenched, and he had just a hint of stubble on his tanned face. His dark hair was cropped short in a neat, businesslike cut, and Storm unexpectedly felt the urge to run her fingers through it.
Thankfully, Grant was staring off into the distance and seemed unaware of Storm’s internal struggle. Storm took a long sip of her water while Grant mulled over whatever thoughts were running through his head. She desperately willed her racing heart to slow down, and refused to even entertain the thought of taking on a relationship. She didn’t want to be responsible to anyone other than herself for anything. The last thing she wanted was to have some overprotective boyfriend always wanting to know where she was and what she was doing. And Storm knew that Grant was the overprotective type. He was an alpha. It was in his blood.
The two of them would never go well together. They both had too much fire in their blood. The thought of dating another alpha shifter cracked Storm up, and she actually laughed out loud. Grant looked over at her with a raised eyebrow, and she quickly schooled her features. He was waiting for an explanation, no doubt wondering why she was laughing in the middle of hearing news that definitely wasn’t funny. But Storm kept her mouth shut and just shrugged.
Grant gave her a funny look, but then let it go. “Well, anyway,” he said. “I’m going to call Juno when I get home from work tonight and tell her to watch out for that guy. And then we all need to make a plan to figure out how to deal with him. But right now I have to get back to work. I’m supposed to have a research memo in to one of the senior attorneys by the end of the day, and I’m really far behind on it.”
Storm nodded, and didn’t try to argue when Grant insisted on paying the entire bill himself. He was the kind of man who never let a woman pay for her own meal, even if the meal was just as friends. Storm sighed internally as they got up to leave. Grant really was a catch. Some lucky lady was going to be very happy with him one day. But Storm knew better than to daydream about that lucky lady being her. Their personalities were too strong to mesh well together. Better to keep things simple and friendly between them.
Still, she couldn’t resist staring at him for just a beat too long as they walked out of the restaurant together.
“What?” Grant asked, raising an eyebrow at her again. “You’re acting really strange today.”
“Nothing,” Storm said quickly. She looked away and pulled out her phone to request a hovertaxi. Moments later, a self-driven hovertaxi pulled up to a stop in front of the restaurant. Storm made a beeline for the vehicle, hoping to get away from Grant before she said or did something stupid. But she couldn’t resist turning around to ask him one more question before she climbed into the hovertaxi.
“Why did you call me about the decoded files before anyone else?” Storm asked. “Why me over any of our other shifter friends?”
Grant looked at her with such an intense gaze that Storm could hardly breathe. The desire in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Come on, Storm, isn’t it obvious?” he asked.
Storm bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t asked the question and trying to come up with some sort of reasonable response. But her words failed her, and she finally decided that her best option was to get out of there as quickly as possible.
“I have to go,” she said, then hopped into the hovertaxi and quickly barked out her address to the computer.
As the hovertaxi zoomed up into the sky and away from Grant, Storm finally let out the breath she’d been holding.