Page 56 of An Unexpected Claim

“I’ve got this,” Tanner assured me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Peyton

He did not just say that to me.

‘Don’t wander off’ was a little better than ‘stay.’ But it was like graduating from dog to toddler.

Honestly, how did he think I’d survived for over thirty-two years without accidentally maiming myself?

I wanted to run off just to be defiant, but then I reminded myself I wasn’t a rebellious teenager.

Fine, if he wants me to be safe, I get it. I’ll just stay home.

An hour later I was bored out of my mind. I’d also been out of touch with my life for too long. Nathan had told me he’d been in contact with Sam shortly after I arrived here, so I knew he wasn’t worrying about me. But had Linette had the baby? I’d promised to be there. I hadn’t had a chance to erase my record from the hospital and police records yet, either. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been separated from my laptop for so long. And without even my phone, I’d had no contact with the outside world. If Nathan had had his way, I wouldn’t have even met Samantha.

As I wandered around the house, I wondered what Samantha was doing today. Nathan had his home phone, but I didn’t know anyone’s phone numbers.I ended up standing in the doorway to Nathan’s study. He’d said I had free rein of the house, that nowhere was off limits. But I hadn’t ventured in this room because it had felt a little like violating his privacy.

Thinking about the events of the morning, particularly before he left for work, I snorted. At this point, he’d spent plenty of time invading my “privacy.”With that rationale to back me up, I stepped into the office and snooped around. The room reminded me of him—masculine and a little old-fashioned with the dark colors and beautifully carved wooden furniture and bookshelves. I ran my fingers along the cool, shiny surfaces and looked over his book collection. It was an interesting mixture of fiction and non-fiction. He clearly had eclectic tastes. As I approached the desk, I realized his computer sat on the desktop.

I hurried around and plopped into his big, leather chair. I rolled my eyes when my feet didn’t touch the ground and the chair nearly swallowed me whole. Grabbing the desktop, I hauled the chair forward, then opened the laptop and waited for it to turn on.

When the screen lit up and the sign-in screen popped up, I hit a few commands to bypass it, but it didn’t work.Encryption. How cute.

I dug into the encryption and with every layer, I became both more impressed and more wary. Whoever had done the security for this laptop was incredibly good. But what I really wanted to know was why Nathan needed security like this. They kept the heavy-duty Council files in a SCIF room at the HQ. I knew because I’d built the encryption system for it. Not that anyone knew that because I’d done that work under my hacker persona. I had layers upon layers of bullshit between me and that “person.” It went so deep that I almost felt like if they managed to get through it all and connect me to my alter ego, I freaking deserved to be caught.

I tried another bit of fancy finger work and hit yet another layer of security. Would pack files and records really need this level of protection? Something wasn’t sitting right. I sat back and stared at the blinking black end screen and tried to decide if it was worth it to keep working. The encryption would probably take me a few hours to crack, but did I want to? Maybe I didn’t want to know.Ignorance is bliss, right?

The question was taken out of my hands when I heard a soft knocking on the glass at the back of the house. I quickly erased any digital evidence that I’d been on the computer, shut it down and trotted through the cabin. A giant smile split my face when I saw Samantha standing there waving. I hurried to the door and opened it. “Hey, Foxy.”

“Foxy?” someone repeated with a shocked laugh.

My head whipped to the left and I spotted a woman who was quite a bit taller than me, with flowing emerald-green hair and a lean, athletic body. She had gorgeous features, eyes that matched her hair, high cheekbones, and full, maroon-painted lips. She wore a T-shirt and shorts that showed off a badass assortment of tattoos. There was a beautiful and intricate design on her right forearm, another on her biceps that disappeared beneath the short sleeve of her T-shirt, and several black bands on both arms. She also had a tiny red heart tattooed on her right cheekbone, just beneath the corner of her eye, which would have looked ridiculous on a lot of people, but she pulled it off with flair.

“Emerald, this is Peyton—she’s a black panther,” Samantha introduced. “Peyton, Emerald.”

I raised an eyebrow at her spot-on name.

“Another transplant,” Samantha added, speaking to me again.

“Is that so?” I glanced warily at Samantha and she put her hand on my shoulder.

“She’s got her own secrets to protect. You don’t have to share with her, but I thought we could both use another friend.”

Hadn’t I explained to Samantha that I didn’t do friends? She and Sam and Linette were huge exceptions.

“My stay here is temporary too,” Emerald piped up with a smile. “Don’t get me wrong, a pack of hot wolves isn’t the worst place to be hiding out, but I’ve got shit to do elsewhere.”

“I know the feeling,” I said with a little more ease.

Samantha gestured to the trees behind the house and said, “We thought you might like to get out and go for a run.” A smirk popped onto her lips. “I may have been paying attention to when Nathan left.”

I laughed and nodded. “Are you a shifter?” I asked Emerald curiously. She didn’t smell like one.

“Vampire slayer by birth, human tattoo artist by choice.”

“But she’s in sick shape,” Samantha informed me. “She keeps up with me when I run.”

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