Page 43 of Moon Tamed

No matter what I felt about the men as people outside of work, I would do my job to the best of my ability. I would pursue every hint of dirty dealings I could find, cringe if anything created a scandal, and present an honest report regarding how Allasandro Stephans managed the Hunters of Moonriver while leading the city-state.

“Are they as nice as everyone says? Everyone’s talking about the report you’ve been assigned to do.”

Someone had leaked about the audit? Sighing, I wondered what other complications would be coming my way. Oh, well. Nothing in anything I’d signed had barred me from telling Sila about the brownies or Mr. Stephans’s tendency to show up at work while a wolf. “To a frightening degree. At this point, the only dirt I have on the father is his tendency to prank his son while at work. I might be able to nail him on using petty cash to prank his son while at work. The controversy of it all might bring Moonriver to its knees.”

Sila snickered. “The broccoli brownie incident?”

My mother must have filled her in already. “He also ambushes his son while a wolf.”

“I do wish the shapeshifters weren’t as shy as they are. You actually got to see Mr. Stephans as a wolf?”

“He pounced on his son, much to his son’s dismay. Mostly, I ignored their nonsense, although I had to rescue a tablet from an early demise. Does that count as corruption in the government, do you think?”

“I highly doubt it. It has good entertainment value, so you should tell me more about that,” Sila announced. “I might even agree to your mad scheme to form a faction should you give me the juicy details.”

“There are no juicy details. Mr. Stephans wanted to test my general tolerance for the absurd, so he pounced Calden on my first day. That’s all there is to tell.”

“Well, that’s disappointing. Were either of them naked afterwards?”

I rolled my eyes at my friend’s question. “There may have been a short period where Calden was wandering around without a shirt on.”

Sila sucked in a breath. “Tell me more.”

“He probably looks even better than you imagine,” I complained, and to get my mind off the lingering mental image of him without his shirt, I began the tedious process of checking over my emails. As promised, Mr. Stephans bombarded my box with tens upon tens of documents, most of which were invoices to be addressed. Several names I didn’t recognize also sent messages. The subjects promised the lists of contacts I’d need to get the bureaucratic red tape dealt with in a timely fashion. “On that happy note, I’m going to get to work, as this morning’s paperwork-based disaster has arrived.”

“Good luck. You’re going to need it. Call me tonight.”

“I will,” I promised before hanging up.

As I doubted I could vanquish the thought of a half-naked Calden out of my head anytime soon, I did my best to focus on the one foe I could conquer: the paperwork.

I suspected Calden’s father had created an email filter to deal with the tens of thousands of documents he sent my way. Fortunately for my sanity, someone had standardized the invoices, vital records, and other important pieces of paperwork necessary to settle the refugees on our world. Most of them didn’t need any actual attention; someone had created an email address to store and organize the documents by type, and whomever had created the emails had labeled everything consistently. I created a filter for each type of document and forwarded it to the appropriate place before addressing what couldn’t be done with the help of technology.

It would take me more than a few days to deal with the thousand or so invoices requiring attention, and I worried the number would grow as the refugees settled and Moonriver began the tedious process of finding new homes for everyone.

None of the city-states could handle an influx of tens of thousands of people well without warning.

Our planet, on the whole, could.

I wondered how I would fit everything into a report regarding the general operations and rulership of Moonriver. Thus far, the report would show a man who worked hard and limited his acts of corruption to testing his son’s patience.

On second thought, I worried the report would end up becoming a showcase for why the older single women of our world might want to become involved with Allasandro Stephans.

What a mess.

After making a note of the work Mr. Stephans had delegated to me, I began with the oldest invoices. Within a few moments of opening the email, I determined why I’d been asked to handle them.

All required signatures to be processed, and the invoices also required the faction’s seal, which meant digital copies and payments wouldn’t suffice. While I couldn’t automate the payment process, I could print everything out in one fell swoop if I downloaded the attachments and queued them into the printer.

Nobody would be printing anything for the rest of the day on the machine I selected, but some prices needed to be paid.

Twenty minutes later, I ignored the protests of my beleaguered computer, initiated the print job, and got up to observe the mayhem. Would the printer survive so many processes in its queue? In any case, I’d find out. I caught the cheetahs and put them in their pen so they wouldn’t destroy my office before heading out to arm myself with coffee. With the beasts contained, I left the door open so the hummingbirds could come and go as they pleased.

They opted to follow me to the break room, where I armed myself with a cup of tea. Thus prepared, I invaded the cubby with a collection of fifteen printers and a table to discover my job had activated them all, and the devices spit page after page out. Giggling at the machines whirring away, I sipped my tea while I waited for enough pages on each tray to be worth dealing with. As nobody else was using the room, I took over the table, tossing the sheets down in random piles.

A bark of laughter behind me drew my attention to Calden, who raised a brow at my mess. “I hadn’t realized we’d been forecasted for a hurricane in the printer room.”

“I thought I’d queued in one printer, but I guess I got them all.”

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