Chapter 1 - Byron

"It's the proxy," Olivia says, her eyes flicking to mine, her pink hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. I stare at her, chest heaving, jaw tight. I don't want to be here, right now, stuck in this fucking memory.

I know this isn't real. This is a dream, but I can't stop myself from going through the motions, from opening my mouth and following the damn script.

We're sitting in my apartment, trying to tighten up the security for the base after someone managed to hack it and get through. The blinds are drawn, the room illuminated only by the lights of our screens. We've been working around the clock.

I'm sitting on the couch. Olivia is kneeling at the coffee table, refusing better seats, saying she prefers to sit on the floor.

"The proxy?"

"Check the firewall; you'll see the proxy needs strengthening. The attacks are getting through."

I stare at her lips, which shine with the same bubblegum pink as her hair. She's wearing a little tank top with spaghetti straps, the faint line of a tattoo curling over her shoulder. My fingers itch to reach out and touch her, feel her warm skin under my palms again, but I hold still, squeezing my eyes shut, willing this dream to be over.

"Byron?"

"You're right," I murmur, opening my eyes to her again, meeting those green eyes briefly before looking back at my computer. "You're right."

"Like always," she says, leaning back and crossing her arms, giving me a smug look. My heart squeezes painfully, like it does every time, like it did that night.

"Shit," I mutter, hand to my chest.

"What?" she asks, alarmed, standing, coming to my side, her hand on my shoulder.

"Nothing," I say, clearing my throat, tilting my head, looking up at her. "Just a little chest pain."

We are so close now, her face just inches from mine as she looks down at me, biting her lip with worry. I can't stop my gaze from focusing on the movement, on how I can smell her—all cherries and almonds.

"Byron," she whispers, dropping her face closer to mine. "You should get that checked out."

"It's fine," I say, unable to tear my eyes from hers. "Congenital thing. My heart acts up sometimes when I get worked up."

"Are you worked up right now?"

I shouldn't kiss her. I knew it then, and I know it now, reliving it in this dream. Kissing her opens the door to a thousand more ways to hurt, more opportunities to hurt her, and I wish I could go back and undo it.

But I'm just a character in a movie, now, and I nod, my chin bumping against hers as I do. A second later, her lips are on mine, and I'm grabbing her hips, maneuvering her so she's straddling me, sighing into her taste, her touch, her scent all around me.

"Byron," she gasps, "take off your fucking pants."

And then, my alarm goes off.

I jump, my arm swinging, knocking over at least three empty energy drink cans as I reach for my phone, desperately trying to quiet the damn thing. I roll onto my back, scrubbing my hands over my face and looking up at the ceiling, wishing I could go back to sleep.

But Aris insists on these early-ass team meetings, so I force myself to open my eyes and reach over, grabbing a half-full energy drink and drinking the rest of the flat, acidic liquid. Faintly in the back of my head, I can hear Olivia telling me that there's no way these things are good for my heart.

And maybe that's the point.

I drag myself to my feet and shuffle through my apartment, kicking away clothes as I go. After a quick shower, I checked my watch, and, realizing I had a bit of time before the meeting, stopped in my computer room.

Others would call this space their "office," but that's not what it is. Truly, the only thing in here is my computer, a beauty I built myself, brick by brick. Every single component was customer-ordered and shipped from the best hardware manufacturers in the world.

I'd decided that if I was going to be stuck in Rosecreek with the team, I might as well get myself a sick PC. Forget playing games on this thing—I could man a fucking space shuttle from this room.

I pull out the chair, and that familiar rolling sound soothes something in my chest. I can't stop myself from dreaming about Olivia, but I at least self-medicate with a dose of computer time every morning.

First, I check on the cyber security measures on all the pack servers. No attacks or unusual behaviors. Next, I check on my stocks.

Here's the thing about coding and algorithms—with enough tweaking, you can create a program that perfectly predicts the movements of the market. During the years after Varun and before Bigby left for California, I had a lot of nothing to do.

Aris pays us a good wage to be part of the team, but a custom graphics card from Japan is more expensive than what the average person might expect. I needed a little extra money. When I read an article about day trading, I had an idea.

My stock-trading program considers millions of data points before buying and selling stocks. With a little extra work, I've rigged it so it can assess the financial movements of politicians, billionaires, and technology players. It considers information from the news cycle and analysis thousands of social media posts a day to predict trends.

It's worked better than I ever could have predicted. I click over to my account and see it's gone up a few ten million since I last checked.

Another alarm dings on my phone, and I stand.

"Computer, shut down."

I watch as all the screens flicker to black, then grab my laptop bag and stuff it inside, turning and walking out the door.

***

"How hard is it to be on time to a video call?" Aris mutters, taking a sip of his coffee and glancing up at the screen, which is gray and reads, joining soon . Ado sits to my left, quiet, like usual, and Bigby is fully reclined in a chair to my right. I stare at it, worried that it might snap under his weight.

As usual, Percy is late to the monthly meeting, and since he's in Missouri, it's not like he's going to be able to bring donuts to make up for it. My heart is skipping along, partially thanks to the energy drink.

"Good morning!" someone says from the screen, her voice floating through the room, and I put a hand to my chest, rubbing my palm there, as though it can keep my heart from acting up.

"Are you okay?" Bigby asks, leaning over to me, his eyes flicking between my hand and my face. I drop my hand and glance at the screen, where Olivia's face is blown up, her green eyes sharp.

"Fine," I say, hoping she didn't see that. If she did, she doesn't say a thing, instead backing up and sitting next to Veronica on a couch in a hotel room. Through the window, the Gateway Arch is visible, early morning fog concealing all but the top.

"Okay, now that everyone is here, let's get started," Aris says, waving to the camera. "First up, Bigby has results from his mission."

"Right," Bigby says, leaning back in his chair and tapping a pen on the table. "Ado and I found the vamp nest near here—cleared out. Completely empty. We spent hours there gathering evidence, but it doesn't look like there's any clue as to where they went."

Just a few months ago, the team had to take on a swarm of vampires trying to kidnap Veronica, Percy's mate, after finding out about her pregnancy—the result of which will be one of the first-ever true-born shifter-vampire hybrids.

As a medical professional, Veronica is already excited about the prospect of the baby and discovering what that kind of hybrid might mean for the paranormal community.

"What do you have for us, Byron?"

I blink at Aris, realizing I'd zoned out of the conversation for a moment too long.

"Right," I say, clearing my throat and trying to avoid looking at the screen, where Olivia is sitting casually, her legs crossed, the hem of her dress around her calves. "Well, I've been scanning the internet more, and there are a lot of trends encouraging young people to make themselves vulnerable to vampires, especially in major metropolitan areas."

"Anything on St. Louis specifically?" Veronica asks, leaning closer to the camera.

"Yeah, ran that last night," I say, tapping on my laptop and bringing up the figures. "More than two thousand reports of strange bites in emergency rooms across the city, specifically at SSM, Barnes, and Touchette."

When I look up, they're all still looking at me expectantly.

"This is significant because these emergency rooms are closest to downtown, and the nightlife is where the vamps like to strike. We're seeing more activity from vampires in downtown areas. In fact, the reports of bites haven't been this high since the late 90s."

"Shit," Bigby says, shaking his head, and when our eyes meet, I can tell he understands the significance. With the boom of the internet, people were suddenly able to coordinate meetups with online friends. Internet safety hadn't been established yet, and teens and adults alike were victims of vampire attacks.

The vamps were one of the first groups to take to chatroom culture, and were a huge cause for the internet security push in the early 2000s.

"I found two events coinciding with the mayor's ball tonight," I say, tapping my fingers on the table. "I'll send the information over, but there's a strong chance it's a vamp ambush, specifically targeted at teenagers."

"Well, shit," Percy says, his voice fuzzy through the video call. "Good thing we're here."

"As tempting as it is to check out the events, I don't want to leave any of you on your own tonight," Aris says, "so we'll keep all of you at the mayor's party."

I look down at the agenda briefing for today's meeting, eyes scanning quickly.

Aris has been sending Olivia, Percy, and Veronica to major cities in the area. As elections get closer, politicians have been throwing more and more events to fundraise and convince people to vote for them.

Last month, I identified a spike in vamp activity in each city, coinciding with political appearances. We have narrowed it down to just a few candidates at each event. Olivia, Percy, and Veronica are attempting to figure out which politician is connected to the vampire activity so we can apprehend them and gather more information about their plan.

"Byron," Aris says, "great work. Just keep doing what you're doing, and see if you can gather any more information about these events. Maybe trace it back to whoever is planning them."

"Will do," I say. I already have programs running to try and trace the originating IP address for the events, but whoever organized them went through quite a few steps to keep from being found. When the information is finally available, it's very possible the details will just point to a public library, or a computer available for public use, which will require even more work on my end.

But I will figure it out.

"Okay, great work; report back to me with what you find," Aris says, and everyone waves goodbye to the agents in the field before the camera cuts off.

Aris doesn't think live monitoring during the mission is necessary, but, since I respectfully disagree with him, I hurry back to my apartment, stopping only to refill on energy drinks at the gas station and pick up food from the new Thai place on the square.

Once I'm back inside, I feed my fish, round up the empty energy drink cans, and plant myself in front of my computer, Thai food in hand.

Olivia and the others are likely still getting ready. I flick over to the cameras in the hotel lobby, trained on their door, then load up a game while I wait for movement.

Hours later, the door opens, and Olivia steps out into the hallway.

She's breath-taking in a short, sparkling black dress that hugs her body like a second skin. She's wearing a dark red wig longer than her actual hair, falling in the middle of her back in loose curls.

I wish I was there. To see her in person. To smell her cherry and almond scent. To touch her.

Except that I don't want that. And I know better than to let myself run away with these thoughts. I watch Olivia make her way down the hallway, then flick to the other cameras as she goes, my game forgotten on the other screen. A moment later, Veronica and Percy come out of the neighboring room, heading down the elevators as Olivia takes the stairs.

It's easy to track her progress as she goes, and I do, flicking through cameras and making sure to keep eyes on her.

I may not want to be with her—can't stomach the thought of marrying her, or spending the rest of our lives together—but that doesn't mean I want anything to happen to her.

Later, when I lean away from the monitors, I realize my Thai food is ice cold.