Alpha in a Fur Coat (2 page)

“You’re such an idiot,” she said aloud to herself. “Stop playing with fire.”

Still, she allowed herself one last look back at Grant, who was growing smaller and smaller in the distance, but still stood in front of the restaurant. Storm sighed. There was nothing wrong with just looking, right?

Grant Ray stared at the blinking cursor on his computer screen, and swore under his breath. It was nearly noon, and he’d been completely unproductive all day. His list of tasks to complete for the day was long, but he hadn’t been able to focus on work for the last several hours. His mind was a jumble of thoughts, the most prominent of which were his worries over the eye scanners, followed closely by his obsession with Storm Williams.

He hadn’t intended to be so obvious yesterday about his feelings for her. But when she asked him why he’d called her first, he hadn’t been able to hold back the desire flooding his body. He knew she’d understood perfectly what he had meant by his response to her question. The flustered way she’d hightailed it away from him made that clear. For the last twenty-four hours, he’d been obsessing over whether or not to reach out to her about his feelings. He had always been the lone wolf. Or lone bear, if you will. He hated the pressure the clan had put on him to find a mate. From the time he was a little boy, the elders had taken every opportunity they could to remind him that it was his duty to continue on the alpha line. But Grant was stubborn, and he didn’t want anything to do with clan life. Like Storm and his other shifter friends in Chicago, he’d gotten as far away from Alaska as he could the moment he turned eighteen.

But even his stubborn pride wasn’t enough to hold back the feelings stirring in his heart for Storm. Since the first day he met her, his bear had been pining away for her. At first, he’d been able to squash those feelings down. But lately, his bear had become more insistent, and it had become harder and harder to ignore the truth. Storm had captured his heart.

Grant leaned back in his office chair, then pushed it away from his desk so he had room to spin around in circles. He felt antsy, as he often did in this small city office. His dad had warned him that he wouldn’t be able to last long term in an office environment.

“
You can take the bear out of the wilderness, Grant. But you can’t take the wilderness out of the bear.
”

Grant had rolled his eyes at his father at the time—which had earned him a rough slap across the face for being disrespectful. But after seven years of university to get his law degree, and three years of spending every weekday sitting in this law office, Grant was willing to admit that there just might have been a small kernel of wisdom in his dad’s words.

He spun faster and faster trying to somehow spin fast enough to outrun the image of Storm that kept flashing across his mind. A sharp knock on his door brought him back to reality, and he reached out to grab the edge of his desk and abruptly stop the motion of his chair.

“Come in,” he called out, shaking his head slightly to try to get rid of the sensation of dizziness washing over his body.

His secretary, Julia, walked in, pausing for a moment in the doorway to eye him suspiciously.

“Were you spinning around in that damn chair again?” she asked.

“No,” Grant said defensively. He knew guilt was written all over his face. Julia raised an eyebrow in his direction.

“Whatever. It helps me focus,” he said, crossing his arms. The room was finally beginning to feel steady again.

“I swear, Grant, you are the most boyish thirty-something I know,” she said.

“Um…I’ll take that as a compliment?” Grant replied.

Julia grunted, and shook her head slightly. Grant wasn’t sure if she was amused or annoyed.

“Jim’s secretary just called me,” Julia said. “Jim wants you in Conference Room 1A for an emergency meeting.”

Grant sat up straighter. “Jim? Emergency meeting?”

“That’s all I know,” Julia said. “I suggest you get yourself up there a.s.a.p.”

Grant nodded and started reaching for his briefcase. “On my way,” he said, throwing his tablet and phone into the briefcase.

Jim was the managing partner of the law firm’s Chicago office. Grant had only worked with him once before, and almost never spoke directly to the man. Jim was something of a legend, one of those people you admired and feared from afar.

A minute later, Grant stepped into the elevator and started the ride up to the conference room, which was five floors above him. Despite the mixture of nerves and excitement at being called in to an important meeting with the most important attorney in the Chicago office, Grant still couldn’t get Storm out of his head. As he stepped off the elevator, he made a split-second decision to send her a text. He had to see her again, or he was going to drive himself crazy.

Dinner tonight?

He didn’t say anything else, figuring it was best to keep things simple. If he started trying to say more, or come up with some sort of excuse for why they should hang out, he was only going to end up sounding ridiculous and tripping over his words. He slipped his phone into his pocket as he entered the conference room, and forced himself to turn his mind back to work.

To Grant’s surprise, Jim wasn’t the only high level partner there. One of the firm’s New York partners was in the room as well, and several senior attorneys who were nearly at the partner level were sitting around the conference table. There were also several men in expensive suits whom Grant didn’t recognize. The only person in the room that was at Grant’s lower level was a mousey girl who had just started working at the firm this year. The girl usually hid in her office, and Grant wasn’t even sure what kind of law she practiced. All he remembered from the official email welcoming her to the firm was that she had moved here from San Francisco.

“Grant, glad you could make it,” Jim said, standing to shake Grant’s hand, and then turning back to the unfamiliar men in suits. “Gentleman, this is Grant, one of the best and brightest young associates at the firm. We’re lucky to have this guy.”

The men shook Grant’s hand and introduced themselves with wide smiles, but Grant had an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Jim had never openly praised him before. It almost seemed like Jim was trying too hard to impress these men. They must be pretty high level clients for Jim to be falling all over himself like that. Grant did his best to look confident and calm, and took his seat at the conference table without saying much more.

Moments after Grant sat down, Jim launched into his presentation.

“Thank you everyone for taking time out of your busy schedules to meet with us today,” Jim said. “This project has been held with the highest level of confidentiality in our firm, so I know that most of you in the room are wondering what this meeting is even about. You’ll be getting a detailed memo about it later today, but I’m going to give you a quick overview now. These men are high-level executives from Hook Labs. Some of you may be aware of this company. It’s a large conglomerate of research facilities at the cutting edge of many scientific breakthroughs. Many of the newest technological advances society enjoys were originally developed by Hook Labs. Their biggest recent breakthrough has been eye scanners. These scanners read the irises of a person’s eye, and use the unique DNA signature in that iris to identify that person. As you know, eye scanners have become the gold standard in security systems, since the irises of an eye are virtually impossible to duplicate or fake, unlike fingerprints. In fact, our firm is in the process of implementing eye scanners into our offices. Hook Labs estimates that within the next five years, fingerprint scanners will become a thing of the past.”

Jim paused for dramatic effect, and Grant felt the uneasy feeling in his stomach growing. Grant knew, from the information he had decoded, that the old scientist trying to wipe out shifters was currently employed by Hook Labs. Somehow, this was all going to tie in to the scanners being developed to detect shifter DNA.

“The reason Hook Labs has come to us as a client is they need our help getting information back from John Astor. I’m sure all of you in this room have heard of Mr. Astor. He is one of Chicago’s wealthiest, most prominent businessmen. Most recently, he was in the news because his condo was raided by some still-unidentified individuals. That raid resulted in the entire condo building going up in flames, and in some proprietary information from Hook Labs being lost. Mr. Astor claims there were no backups of the information, but Hook Labs believes he is lying. We are in the process of preparing legal documents to sue Mr. Astor and force him to turn over the information.”

Jim paused again, and Grant bit his lip to keep from letting out an astonished whistle. His friends and their clan members from back home in Alaska had been the ones to raid Mr. Astor’s condo. Grant was pretty sure that Mr. Astor had not, in fact, had any backups of the information he was safeguarding in his condo. The only backup seemed to be the stolen information Grant had decoded. Grant’s eyes widened as he realized that he was sitting in a room full of businessmen who would probably be willing to kill him for the information he had.

Jim must have caught Grant’s eyes widening and mistaken his surprise for interest in the current legal battle. “Pretty crazy, isn’t it, Grant? But it’s about to get crazier. This proprietary information had to do with one of Hook Labs’ most confidential projects ever. A project that could quite literally save humanity.”

The room was completely silent as the other attorneys focused their complete attention on Jim, waiting for him to explain what this epic-scale project could possibly be. Meanwhile, Grant groaned internally. He already knew, and he couldn’t believe that, out of all the law firms and lawyers in this city, he had somehow been called on to work on this assignment.

Instead of continuing his speech, however, Jim reached down to pull up the computer screen on the conference table’s surface. Immediately, the conference table started displaying the same document in front of every seat. Grant started scanning, and saw that it was some sort of non-disclosure agreement.

“As you know,” Jim said. “We always hold our clients’ information with the highest level of confidentiality. But this project is intense, and might be upsetting for some. The client is asking for an additional non-disclosure agreement, which you should now see displayed in front of you. Before we go any further, you’ll need to read and sign this. If, after this meeting, you don’t feel comfortable on this project, you may choose to step down from it with no hard feelings. Truly. I know many of you want to impress the firm and always do whatever is asked of you. But this project is not for everyone and we understand that. However, by signing this non-disclosure agreement, you are agreeing that you will not share anything you learn in this room today outside of the room. You will face severe legal penalties if you do so. Please take a moment to review the document and sign.”

Grant looked around the room, and saw all of the attorneys eagerly skimming the document. He knew no one would turn down the project. It was clear that Jim considered this important, and any attorney at the firm who wanted to be promoted would kill for an opportunity to impress Jim. Grant scanned the agreement and used his finger to sign on the screen. It didn’t matter that much what the document said. Grant was already in over his head, and he knew it.

Once everyone had signed, Jim started in on the really juicy stuff.

“Okay, everyone. Here is the deal. Hook Labs discovered the existence of shifters a year ago. Some of you are probably now thinking to yourself, ‘What the heck are shifters?’ Allow me to explain. Shifters are basically half-human, half-animal. It’s a genetic mutation that allows a human to shift back and forth between human and animal form. Hence the name ‘shifter.’ For example, a bear shifter can shift back and forth between a human body and a bear body at will. I know some of you are probably thinking that I’ve lost my mind right now, and I don’t blame you. When Hook Labs first explained this to me, I thought I had become the victim of some sort of corporate prank. But shifters are real, I can assure you. Hook Labs is trying to develop an eye scanner that can detect whether a human is hiding a shifter side. Essentially, the scanner would detect shifter DNA in the iris of the individual. Sounds simple enough, right? Just scan for animal DNA. But it’s not that simple, because shifter DNA isn’t straight animal DNA. It’s different, and difficult to detect via the current scanning methods. I’m going to show you a video now of actual, documented shifter appearances. Watch your screens carefully. None of this is edited or has any special effects added. It’s all real.”

Grant glanced down at the tabletop screen in front of him again. In place of the non-disclosure document, the screen was now showing a video. The short clip was a compilation of shifters turning into bears and back to humans. There were a few wolves in there, too, and even a panther. The videos were mostly things that security surveillance cameras had captured, so the video quality wasn’t always the best. But it was clear from the compilation that shifters existed.

As the video finished, Jim paused again and looked around. He seemed to be gauging the room’s reaction , and trying to make sure that everyone in the room was still with him. On the outside, the attorneys all looked reasonably calm. No one wanted to admit to Jim that they were shocked or frightened by the information they had just heard. But Grant’s bear nose could smell the fear in the room. He let out an imperceptible sigh. He had spent his whole life watching full humans react in fear when they discovered that shifters existed. It didn’t matter that shifters were pretty much all just trying to live their lives in peace. Full humans reacted in fear, thinking that shifters were violent or had some sort of supernatural powers. But neither of those things were true. Shifters didn’t have any more violent tendencies than the human population at large, and they certainly didn’t have any supernatural powers. It was all genetics, plain and simple.