10. Hauntingly powerful golden eyes

“Ok, I promise, if it escalates – you’ll be the first person I talk to.” He holds my gaze for a second longer be nodding and then gets up to take the rubbish to the kitchen. I hear the tap running and laugh, knowing he’s washing his hands and yell over to him “I tried to warn you they were ripe!”

He barks out a deep laugh, drying his hands on a tea towel and putting the extra beers in the fridge. I watch him walk back into the living room; he leans over the couch and kisses the top of my head. “Thanks for the pizza, I gotta go. I’ve got an early start, and you should go shower and go to bed before you fall asleep on the couch and wake up with a neck ache.”

“You’re right, I’ll get up in five more minutes – don’t want to undo all that hard work you did on my feet.” I murmur, my eyes are already starting to close. I’m probably going to fall asleep on the couch at this rate.

“Five minutes, not a second longer. Night Wills.” He grunts at me and heads to the door, turning back to look at me, and I wave a hand at him, before he closes it firmly. I stay on the couch for roughly five more minutes, maybe ten before I drag myself up to go lock the door, turn on the alarm and then head to stairs, turning off the lights as I go. I grab my bag, slinging it over my shoulder as I slump up the stairs and to my room.

I have a quick shower to wash off the day, trying to ignore the way Zale Rykers stupid handsome face keeps popping into my thoughts, or his orgasm worthy voice plays in my head. I dry off and change into a pair of loose pajama bottoms and a tank top. Rushing through my skin care and brushing my teeth before I flop into bed with a sigh.

Zale

Anders and Colin are both waiting for me in my office when I arrive for the day. Sandy, my omega secretary follows with a hot cup of coffee ready and my schedule printed out for me. When she sees the two of them waiting, she drops both the coffee and schedule on my desk and then turns to go back to her desk, closing the door firmly behind her with a click of the lock. She’s been my secretary long enough to recognize regional or Pack business, and because she is so talented and valuable she is now a parrt of the Clan council.

“What have you got for me on Willow Doyle?” I drop my briefcase on the floor beside me and ease into my chair, lifting my coffee to take a sip. Ander and Colin move to sit in the two chairs opposite the desk, they don’t look happy or confident and I immediately know I will not be happy either.

“Well we didn’t find anything on Willow Doyle in any Regional, Pack, Clan, interregional or ancestry database. Not a single thing.” Anders starts and he looks both frustrated and intrigued – the man loves a puzzle, and it looks like this one has him stumped.

“How is that possible, even banished and rogue wolves are registered somewhere. Is it a fake identity?” I lean back in my chair, and I picture Willow from yesterday, her green and brown eyes, the flash of gold when she shifted them at us in a challenge to my dominance play.

“I don’t think it is,” Colin chimes in, looking at the papers, he’s holding. “She’s not in our databases but she is in the human ones. Her full name is Willow Sage Doyle. Her father is the Fire House Captain at the station on Cooper Street. She was found by him, abandoned outside the station at 3 months of age and fostered by him and his mother before he then adopted her at age 8. Her grandmother died three years ago but stayed with her father to help raise her. She went to university and earned a degree in business. She started working for Drakon Designs part time while she was at university and then got promoted to full time after she graduated, she has worked her way up to her current position. As far as we know she’s single has never been married and lives with her father in his house on Bakkar Rd. She’s squeaky clean, a few parking tickets here and there but that’s it.”

Anders and I can’t believe the amount of information that Colin has managed to get on her when none of our databases has a single thing. This keeps getting stranger and stranger, and I’m starting to get the feeling that it could be leading us to an even bigger issue. “You said she was abandoned as a baby, did you check missing wolf reports from that time?”

“I did, and there’s nothing, no missing female babies for then at all. A few boys and a Luna, but no girls.” Colin replies.

“And her adopted father, he's definitely human?” I boot up my laptop, ready to look up the Fire Station on Cooper Street. I’m finding it hard to believe that a wolf as strong as her has been able to keep herself hidden from her human father. Does he know? Has he been the one keeping her hidden?

“Yep, full blooded human. I have his medical records on file, but interestingly Willows stops at the age of ten. My guess is that’s when she started shifting and her Dad found other ways to get her treatment that wouldn’t go on file or risk raising flags in the system.” Colin hands me a copy of his file and then another one to Anders.

“So he must know what she is then, and he’s kept her protected and hidden all this time.” I mutter as I look over the dates on the pages in front of me. “He’s kept a wolf hidden in my region for twenty four years and none of us, our scouts or any of the community have detected her or known she was here – which means he’s good at it.”

“How did we miss this? An unregistered wolf living right here under our noses all this time – she’s strong, she resisted your commands and and aura, it’s unbelievable no one has picked up on her yet.” Anders says, looking out the window for a moment, his mind turning the information over and over again. He’s my second in command and leads our scout squads. He’s normally the first to know about something, not the last - so I know this has unsettled him as much as it has me.

“We won’t know until we get them here and ask them…which given the way she reacted yesterday, will probably be harder than you think.” Colin sits back in his chair, his accusatory gaze on me mainly – I know I messed up chasing after her like that, grabbing her and trying to command her, but he doesn’t have to point it out.

“Did you get anything from the scouts you put on her?” I ask Anders, hoping to move past Colin’s reprimanding look. I’ve already had a sleepless night, her scent invading my dreams as well as those hauntingly powerful golden eyes of hers.