Page 59 of Her Reborn Mate

“A German accent? How would you know what a German accent sounds like? You were so little back then,” I said, but even as Vince said it, my mind began unraveling with thoughts focusing on who this mysterious German-accented man could be.

“Because growing up, PBS used to air those documentaries about Hitler and World War II all the time. Not to mention all the Call of Duty games had German Nazi villains in them. That’s how I knew,” Vincent said.

“And do you remember what that voice had said?” I asked.

“I am afraid I don’t remember what he said. Just that it was a man’s voice, and his accent was too Germanic,” Vincent said.

At least now I had some direction in which to search for this mysterious enemy. Thanks to Vincent, I knew two things—it was a man, and he spoke German.

Unluckily, it didn’t come close to narrowing down who it could be in real life. Certainly, it was no one that I knew.

Perhaps Alexis would be able to help.

Vincent had just finished talking when the door opened, and Alexis came inside, her face pale, her eyes wide. Her lower lip was quivering, and her hands were shaking. She was holding a cassette in one hand and a crowbar in the other.

“I have something to share with you, Will, and you’re not going to like it,” Alexis said.

My heart skipped a beat. Somehow, I already knew what she was going to share with me. I just did not want to accept it. Understanding dawned on me a little too late.

Chapter 25: Alexis

Knowing Will and having a functional understanding of Alphas in general, I knew he’d never agree to revisit the site where he was defeated. It was simply against the Alpha code to go to the battleground where they had been beaten. Not that it was just about shame and loss. There was more nuance to it. An Alpha could only return to the site of their defeat if they meant to reclaim that place by winning in a new fight.

From what I could tell, Blair’s tower had been abandoned for quite some now. As for precisely when it was abandoned, I wasn’t sure. My guess was it was ditched somewhere between Ralph’s and Maurice’s deaths. With two of his most loyal compadres no longer working with him, Blair knew he was backed into a corner with wolves surrounding him from all sides. Even if there were someone who was a level higher on the hierarchy of chaos, Blair wouldn’t bet his safety against the entire pack of Grimms. It made sense for him to run, thus, he ran.

And that’s why Will would never visit this place. It would be against the Alpha’s code. Since there was no adversary to fight in this abandoned tower, coming here would be moot for him. He’d never be able to reclaim this place as his own. An Alpha wolf could only claim a space if he won it from someone in a fight. He could never go to a place and designate it as his. If my knowledge of history served me right, when the Grimms had initially come to America, they had to fight for this land from another pack of wolves. It was only after the wolves were defeated that the Grimms claimed the Grimm Abode as theirs.

I, on the other hand, was a slave to no such conditions and premises. I could come here freely and roam around while looking for some critical piece of evidence. Evidence that required a finer eye than Will possessed. As intelligent as he was, Will was far from being fluent in computers. Here, in this desolate building, the only things that had survived the process of Blair’s migration were leftover stacks of computers and servers. Other things included paperwork, lab equipment, and corporate paraphernalia, all of which were useless to me. If there was any evidence of this secret mastermind’s existence, it had to be in those computers.

But which computers, exactly? There were more than thirty floors in this building, and all of them had sub-sections. I didn’t have the time to sort through every single floor, hoping to find something tangible.

Then it occurred to me that I wasn’t as fluent in computers as I’d thought I’d be. This was strictly Maliha’s domain, but calling on Maliha to aid me in this fool’s errand to find the world’s smallest needle in the world’s biggest haystack would only result in me unknowingly spilling the beans to Maliha about werewolves, vampires, and perverted occultists preying on the innocent. As bizarre and far-out as Maliha was, she’d never be able to grasp the fact that a secret universe thrived under her very nose. She’d go insane.

I did not want my best friend to go insane. Not unless it was extremely necessary. If there’d ever come a time when I had to tell her about my real identity, I would ensure that I’d do it in such a way as to soften the blow. But given that it was such a hard blow, it’d require me a lot of mental gymnastics to be able to pull something like this off.

Getting into the vacated building was not hard at all. Now that Blair wasn’t there himself, he also didn’t have any of his guards and mercenaries guarding the place. There was just one big caution tape wrapped around the entrance of the building with a couple of police patrolmen roaming around the perimeter, drinking coffee and eating donuts while talking about the big game last night. They never saw me as I slipped past them and through the cracked glass door that led into the building.

As I had presumed, this was a case of “What Will doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He’d never have to find out that I had to visit the place where he had both suffered such an embarrassing loss. I’d bear the bad memories for him. It was traumatic enough, being in here, on my own. I could see from where I’d fallen off the window, see where Will’s cold body had frothed from the mouth as he’d said Ariana’s name, and witness our collective demise as Blair had injected him with Wolf’s Bane. It was as if all of that had just happened yesterday.

All of it was utterly painful. Will did not deserve to come here to revisit the pain. That’s what mates were for. They helped one bear the burden and ease one’s pain. I wanted to believe that that was what I was doing for him. At least, I hoped that that’s what I was doing for him. He had been so nice to me lately, ever since we’d come back from our getaway in Vermont. Will had been nothing but the most perfect gentleman ever since our engagement.

Speaking of our engagement, the ring on my finger, with its massive diamond, felt too heavy and sturdy, reminding me at every step that I was now bound to my mate in more than one way. It beckoned me to be careful, a tangible reminder of our relationship in the form of gold and diamonds.

It was going to be too humongous of a task, going from floor to floor, wondering which computer held the right information. Most of the computers, just like most of the equipment and stuff left over, had been destroyed, making my already difficult task harder.

I took out my phone, feeling restricted in my abilities that I had to depend on Maliha even though I didn’t want to.

“Sup, home girl,” Maliha’s chirpy voice came from the phone half a second after I’d dialed her number. That woman was as quick on the draw when it came to her phone as a cowboy was back in the old West days. “Been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“I’ve been meaning to meet you, but I was out of the city,” I said. There. That was a half-truth. And for now, it would have to suffice.

“Out of the city? I’ve never known you to step out of Fiddler’s Green. Where were you?” Maliha asked.

“First Bangor, then Vermont, and now I’m back home. Anyways, I’ve got this question. Can you help me out with a computer problem I’m having?”

“Sure. Shoot. What is it?”

“Say you’re somewhere where there are more than a hundred computers. How can you go about searching a group of computers in such a way that you can access all the information on all of them at the same time? Is such a thing even possible at all?”

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