5. The Blaidd Tech CEO

I curl my hand around the door handle and open it carefully, a welcoming smile on my face as I enter, tablet held in my other hand. I see three men sitting on the other side of the conference table, their laptops open, setting up their presentation for us, the second I enter they jump to their feet. Tristan gives me a raised brow look as he passes me to get them some water.

“Coffee?” He whispers to me, pausing beside me for a second.

“You are a saint.” I grin and nod, continuing into the room, hand outstretched to the men who look at me with startled looks on their faces. I walk around the table and hold out my hand to the first man, he’s tall and blond, his blues eye fix on me with I can only describe surprise. “ Gentlemen, my apologies for being late, I can see Tristan has been taking care of you for me. I’m Willow Doyle, Manager of Organisational Design and lead for this project.”

The blond takes my hand and shakes it and himself. He has a strong grip that keeps hold of my hand as he starts the introductions. “Ah…Please no apologies necessary. It’s a pleasure to meet you Willow, I’m Anders Reuel, CTO of Blaidd Tech, this is our CEO Zale Ryker.”

I let go of Anders hand, having to shake it off for a bit to get him to let go, the look of confusion still on his face, and turn to the next man. He’s even taller than Anders, with dark curly hair, shoulders as broad as my arms are long. Basically he’s huge, one of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life, as I look up at him my professional smile still stretched across my lips, I keep looking up until my eyes meet his stormy grey ones. I hold out my hand to him. “I appreciate you making the effort to come to the office to meet with us today Mr Ryker, I’ll admit I thought I was to meet a Mister Wallace today.”

“Please call me Zale. Mr Wallace was unable to attend today’s meeting, his mat…ah wife just gave birth.” It’s his voice I heard from outside the room, and I conceal the shiver it sends down my spine.

“Zale it is then. Please pass on my congratulations to Mr Wallace and his wife.” I return, holding my hand out still, looking down at it and back up at him pointedly. Are you going to shake my hand buddy?

“I will. What clan are you from?” Zale asks as he finally takes my hand, his expression as confused and curious as Anders.  

“I’m not sure what you mean by clan? My father has Irish heritage, but I couldn’t tell you much more than that.” I move to the last man, leaning around Zale to reach him. He takes my hand, his brown eyes searching for mine carefully.

“I’m Colin Spencer, Lead Account Manager.” I nod with a smile and then gesture for the men to sit back down, moving back to the other side of the table to take my seat and unlocking my tablet to get my project scope notes up for referencing. I feel their combined gaze focused on me, they hesitate for a second before sitting back down. Anders clearing his throat, as if he is about to say something more, but we are saved by Tristan returning with my coffee and their water glasses.

I take a long sip of my coffee, humming softly under my breath as the rich and bitter flavour hits my throat and my eyes close in bliss. For a second I think I hear a rumbling growl across the table. My eyes fly open to meet Zales stare, the scent of citrus, sandalwood, caramel hits my nose again and my brows furrow in bewilderment.

He sniffs the air and I wonder if I have sweat too much with the stress of the morning and now stink. I delicately take a whiff off my arm as I pretend to take a sip of coffee but can’t smell anything wrong.

“Were you able to connect your laptop for the presentation?” Tristan asks breaking the weird silence between us and bringing me back to the purpose of the meeting. I check my notes again as a convenient distraction, this is turning out to be the strangest meeting I have ever had.

“Yes, thank you Tristan, we are ready to proceed, that is if you are.” Anders moves the laptop in front of him, and I turn to the screen as he starts to walk through the product offering. The presentation is simple, to the point, and covers every single requirement we sent them for the system upgrade we need.

I keep my focus on the presentation and Anders even as I feel Zale’s stare stay focused on me. The heat of his glare, burning into the side of my face, my hand clutching my coffee cup to keep from slapping the table at him. His stare is unnerving; the strange scent keeps wafting over to me to the point where I wonder if it’s his cologne. It keeps washing over me, like a pulse of power, dominating and demanding something from me but I’m not sure what.

“That’s our proposal, now what questions can we answer for you?” Anders finishes speaking and then turns to me expectantly. Thankfully I had been taking notes and had some ready to ask so I won’t look like a total idiot.

“Can you take me through the backup procedure again; I want to understand your redundancy and restoration process a bit more. We have legal obligations to our clients to ensure critical failure can be restored within a four-hour timeline.” I inquire, still ignoring Zale’s stare, taking a sip of my mostly cold coffee.

“We have four back up centers, two that are cloud based and two on premise in secured locations. They have a backup timeline of every two hours, so your four-hour obligation won’t be a problem for us.”  Zale responds, jumping in before Anders can, forcing me to look at him. That same intense look in his eyes and the fragrance rolling over me in another cloud making me frown for a second, before I remember where I am. I smooth out my expression and replace it with a congenial smile.

“Great. What about the licensing scale, if we were planning to expand our operations to another office, maybe interstate?” Tristan probes, he knows me well enough to have seen the change in my expression, giving me time to compose myself again as Colin starts to take him through the pricing scheme.

I glance at Anders, his eyes are on me, his nose moving as he’s sniffing something, his nostrils flaring and twitching. I cock my head to the side, arching a single brow at him. He catches me watching him and he immediately stops.

What the hell is going on?

This meeting needs to end now.

“Well gentlemen, we appreciate your time and presentation. We have a few other vendors to review before we come back to you with potential next steps, hopefully by the end of next week. If you will excuse me, I have another meeting to attend to. Tristan will give you my details if you need to contact me in the meantime.” I get up from the table, give them all a farewell nod and smile and leave the room quickly. The scent was starting to get me, making my head ache a little.

I manage to make it all the way to the stairwell before a large hand grabs my wrist, pulling me to a stop. I look at the large tanned hand curled around my arm, then up at Zale, he looks anxious. Pulling my arm free and turn to face him. “Is there something else I can help you with Zale?”

“Yes, you can tell me what clan you are from.” He says quietly and with urgency, stepping close.

“I already told you; my father is a Doyle, he has Irish heritage.” I step back.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You are in my territory, what clan were you banished from?” He asks again, his tone going even deeper as he steps forward again. I have no idea what he’s talking about and have had enough of this weird and very inappropriate behaviour.

“Ok, I don’t know what you are talking about, but you are making me uncomfortable and need to step back.” I straighten my back, look him dead in the eye and put my hand up between up between us warding him off – I wait for him to move. I’m ten seconds away from calling security on him and having him escorted from the building.

I see a hand clap onto his shoulder and pull him back two steps as Anders laughs awkwardly over his shoulder. “I apologise on Zale’s behalf, it seemed like you might be a related to us, a distant relative maybe, hence the slightly obscure questions, we can see now that we were clearly mistaken. We will leave you to your day and look forward to hearing the outcome to our proposal.”

Zale’s stays tense, his eyes narrow on me for a second, he takes a loud, deep inhale through his nose. Holds his breath for a beat and then exhales just as loudly. My brows raise at this very obvious and outrageous demonstration of dominance and intimidation.

Does he think he can scare me?

I know I shouldn’t. I have never, in the fourteen years since my first shift done anything reckless. I know my Dad would kill me if he knew what I was about to do, but for some strange reason I feel the need to rise to his challenge in dominance. I let my eyes shift from their normal green and green-brown to the startling gold of my wolf for a split second. It’s just a flash a gold, blink and you would miss it but both men take a single step back in surprise. The a single step forward, shock showing on their face. “That’s ok, everyone makes mistakes, most of the time they are forgivable…as long as they are not repeated.”

I don’t give them another chance to retort, or another second of my time. I turn and descend the stairs back down into the main offices, scanning my security pass to enter and closing the door firmly behind me with a loud clock.

Where they can’t follow.