Page 4 of The Wolf Prince's Fated Heart

The moment they do, I activate the elevator override system and force the elevator to come straight to the top floor. I need to talk to him as soon as possible, and I'm in no mood to wait.

No doubt feeling the jerk of the box, Grayden is aware of what I just did. He looks at the camera and nods. His groomed stubble makes him look older than his thirty-two years. Hell, I'm only two years younger than him, but thanks to my clean-shaven appearance, I look like a baby compared to him.

Grayden makes his way straight to my office. Though Harper hasn't met any of my brothers, the family resemblance will be too strong for her to interfere.

We Grey wolves are known for our dark eyes, black hair, lean physiques, and towering heights. Among our kind, we are one of the most powerful royal families. In fact, not one, but two of my brothers are kings. One by birth and the other by marriage.

Grayden and I are the only ones who have paved our way away from the royalty, though Grayden decided to serve in his own way as a peace ambassador. I had no interest in limiting myself, not when the world was my oyster and there were so many bright minds to help me advance my technology.

While the two other witches, the rest of my brothers and friends, serve in roles of significance, I'm more the lone wolf. I prefer my solitude while designing software.

I remain seated while a smiling Grayden enters. Fear seeps deep into me when I recognize that his smile is forced.

"How bad is it?" I ask, getting straight to the point.

Grayden's nostrils flare. "You know about the attack?"

I nod. The answer to his question is yes, but not nearly enough.

"I need your help," I say through gritted teeth. It's hard for me to admit it, but considering that I helped Grayden save his wife from her murderous twin sister, he owes me. "We're going to share information, but I need you to keep quiet about what I'm about to tell you."

Grayden looks surprised.

He is not used to me asking for help.

In an unusual turn of events, he pulls out a chair and sits in it. The thing creaks under the weight of him.

"You can trust me," he assures me. "Is it about the software?"

Nodding, I take a deep breath. "I've uncovered evidence of a foreign party hack. I'm trying to find out who is behind it. I don't have much to go on, and I'm afraid that I'm going to have to catch them in the act in order to get more information."

He leans back.

"The attacks were done by the radicals," Grayden says. "We don't know which species form it, except that they’re not happy with the treaty. The rumors are that they don't want us mingling. They don't want wolves and witches to have kids together. It's unprecedented. The unknown always seemed to scare the weak and angry."

I chuckle bitterly, understanding their fears too well.

"I've spoken to the human government to assure them that the software is still safe to use," I tell him, referring to the leaders of human societies and the higher-up members of the military. There will always be certain groups that are aware of the existence of various species. It's the only way of keeping the peace. "Since I shared F-Rec with them, we've saved countless lives. I don't want that same software to be responsible for doing bad things."

My intentions for creating the software were pure. But as the humans like to say, no good deed goes unpunished.

"You try to find the leak on your end and figure out who's behind the hack," Grayden tells me and I nod. "I will talk to Garren and Gavin to see if their courts know something we don't. I'll also make sure that the Wolf-Witch Task Force doubles their hours. We have to stop the radicals before they cause too much damage."

"Do we have a death count?" I ask and hold my breath. The information is not necessary for my task, but if my software is responsible for the loss of the lives of innocent people, I need to know what that number is.

Why do you do this to yourself? my wolf asks. It's not like you're killing them yourself.

That doesn't make me any less responsible for their deaths, I reply. The person putting the knife in another person's hands is just as guilty of the damage it does as the person wielding it.

You can be so dramatic, my wolf says, but I sense his agreement and growing anger.

"It's unclear," Grayden replies, but the way he says it makes me think he knows but doesn't want to tell me. "Couldn't we use F-Rec to track the attackers instead?"

"I tried," I admit with barely controlled annoyance. As if that wasn't the first thing I did.

F-Rec is used to get access to the street and surveillance cameras all around the world. If individual businesses and normal people upload their countless videos anywhere on the web, F-Rec finds a way to access them.

It's not always entirely legal and sometimes on the verge of unethical, which is why only a handful of people know about everything it can do. Sometimes the law needs to be bent a little bit to prevent bigger crimes. But still, the fact that the radicals manage to fly under the radar, makes it clear that they have a person on the inside who covers their tracks.

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