Noah

Working the front desk could be boring, he’d decided.

“So do you normally just sit around all night with nothing to do?”

“Mostly,” Hector replied. “But I mean, it could be worse.”

“It could?”

“Sure. The building could burn down while you’re on guard duty. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Noah blinked and worked his jaw as he tried to come up with a response to that. “Ummm,” was the genius line he came up with.

“Sorry, a little bit of latent frustration,” Hector said, not looking up from where he was bent over his phone. “That actually happened to me. Your predecessor tried to frame me in an attempt to get rid of me to work his way up the ladder of seniority.”

“Oh.” Another gem of a line.

“Yeah. True story. You can read about it.”

“What? There’s a story about it?”

Hector looked up now, giving him a weird stare. “No, I meant in the reports.” He shook his head and went back to whatever it was he was doing. “A story,” he muttered under his breath. “Now wouldn’t that be something.”

“The place doesn’t look all that bad,” Noah said, finally managing to speak up.

“Oh, well it didn’t literally burn down. But there was a fire, and we had to do all kinds of repairs. That’s why the lobby looks so new. We demo’d the whole thing and revamped it, new tile and such.”

“Ah. Looks good,” he said, taking a glance around with a fresh perspective. “Is that when you installed the map?”

“Mm-hmm,” Hector said, obviously distracted.

“May I ask you something?”

“Ya.”

“What the hell are you doing on your phone?”

Hector looked up again. “Texting.”

“Text…ing,” Noah repeated, the unfamiliar word sounding odd to his ears. “Umm, what exactly is that?”

His mentor sighed slightly in frustration and looked up. “Basically, you can type out messages on it, and then it will send it to whomever you want. They can then reply. It saves the hassle of having to speak on the phone when you can’t, or when you don’t want to have the entire conversation at once.”

“Ah. So,” he said, his brain working overtime. “You’re telling me that I could use this to send a, um, what do you call it?”

“A text.”

“I could send a text, to Angela, then?”

Hector grinned. “If you have her number.”

Noah slumped back into the chair. Damn. He didn’t have her number. And the only way he could get it was to ask her, and then she would—

He sat upright.

“What?” Hector asked, his head snapping up as he scanned for threats. “What is it?”

“That day at the restaurant,” Noah said excitedly. “Angela did something to my phone. She, um, I don’t know what. But she said I’d know it when I found it. Could she have been putting her number into it?”

“Why don’t you check and see?” Hector suggested dryly.

“Right.” He bent to his phone, then looked up again almost immediately. “How do I do that?”

Hector sighed, his head drooping. “You haven’t read the manual, have you?”

“There’s a manual?”

“Oh for…here, follow what I do on mine. Touch here. Then there. And boom, you’re into the section that’s called ‘Contacts.’ It’s where all the information for people you might contact is stored.”

Noah followed the instructions, waiting what felt like an eternity for the screen to load, even if in reality it happened faster than he could register. There was only one name listed.

Angela Breeson.

“Well look at that,” Hector crowed, looking over at his phone. “She gave you her number.”

In short order Hector showed him how to send a text, and gave him a brief lesson on something he called text-iquette. Apparently things operated differently than when in person.

“I’m confused.”

“That’s normal. It took me ages and lots of coaching from Rachel, and I’m still an oaf with this thing. I just know some of the basic functions, including text.” He grimaced slightly. “Rachel likes to text. She doesn’t like to wait for replies very long either.”

“Let me guess,” Noah said, taking the bait. “She has no issues making you wait though.”

“Bingo!” Hector said as they shared a laugh about something common to all relationships.

“Okay, let’s see how this goes,” he said, more to himself than to Hector, who had already leaned back in his chair, absorbed in his conversation with Rachel again.

Noah: Hey, it’s Noah.

He waited for several seconds, then put his phone down, trying not to look at it. She might not have her phone on her, he told himself. Maybe she was showering, or busy with the baby. Who knew. She could be doing a thousand things that could take her a while before she realized she had a message. So he couldn’t flip out. He needed to stay relaxed, calm, and focus on his job—

Ding.

He snatched the phone up and hurriedly clicked the icon that said he had a new message.

Angela: Figured it out at last did you?

There was a little yellow face with an expression on it that looked like it was smiling.

Noah: Yeah! Finally managed to come out of the prehistoric era I guess. I still prefer talking in person however.

Angela: Well perhaps you’ll have to come see me again then.

Noah: I would like that. I don’t work tomorrow evening. Are you available?

The wait for her reply seemed to drag on forever, until the point where Noah could barely contain himself. Finally Hector turned and simply arched an eyebrow at him, indicating he needed to knock it off. Feeling slightly stupid, and about twenty years younger based on the butterflies in his stomach when it came to talking to a girl, Noah sat back, resolving to wait out her reply in silence.

That didn’t stop him from snatching at his phone like a madman when it went off, hurriedly tapping on the screen repeatedly until it finally obeyed him and showed the message from Angela.

How does dinner and a movie at my place sound? I’m not sure I could find a babysitter on such short notice. The demand is rather intense these days.

He chuckled out loud at the understatement. With almost all of the women that Cadia was helping out having given birth—only a few stragglers remained—the town of Cloud Lake was stretched to its limits in ways it had never before known, including a lack of babysitters.

Noah: That sounds just great to me. What time would you like me there?

Angela: Say 6ish? I put Cooper down for a nap then, so it would work well. Just knock softly.

Noah: Perfect. See you then!

He wondered for a split second if the exclamation mark was too intense, and then decided he honestly didn’t care. If Angela couldn’t handle the fact that he was excited at the prospect of seeing her, then she wasn’t what his animal was telling him.

He sent the message and sat back in his chair, uncaring of what anyone might think of the beatific smile upon his face.

“You must like the job a lot.”

Noah jerked upright in his chair as Gray spoke from in front of him. He opened eyes which had closed themselves at some point without his permission and focused them on the tall figure of his boss.

“Uh, actually, yes,” he replied. “I do like it.”

“Good,” Gray said, giving him a nod. “But it’s not nap time.”

“I wasn’t napping, sir, but you’re correct my eyes should not be closed.” He sat properly at the desk, his feet on the floor.

“Better. Don’t let Hector lead you into thinking it’s okay to slack on the job.

There was a snort from the other shifter. Noah looked back and forth between them, questions running through his head. The respect and care they had for each other was obvious to anyone with half a brain. He could easily see it, because he was on the outside of it. Not that Noah was offended; he was the new guy, the outsider, such as it was. He’d known coming in to Cloud Lake that it would take time for him to ingratiate himself with the old guard.

What he hadn’t expected was the sudden cold shoulder that had been shown his way. It wasn’t an icy one, but it was certainly a change from how things had been the first several days he’d spent in Cloud Lake.

Ever since I overheard Andrew tell them about an agent from Cadian Intelligence they haven’t been quite the same. It’s hard to blame them though, if they feel their way of life here is threatened.

Their way of life. It was something Noah hadn’t had much of a glimpse of since his arrival. Both Hector and Gray spent the majority of their time off-embassy. They both had mates, he knew that, and so it seemed a safe assumption that the majority of their time was spent there.

Yet they rarely talked about it, never truly saying where they went. It was almost as if it was a secret that he wasn’t supposed to know about. Was staying off-embassy prohibited maybe? Could that be why they were so reluctant to talk about it until they knew him better?

“Something on your mind?”

Shit. Noah had gone and gotten lost in his muse with Gray still standing at the desk. “Umm.”

“Go on, spit it out,” his boss said.

“I was just wondering something, sir,” he said, thinking quickly.

“And what’s that?”

“Well, back in Cadia, there are some rumors going on about Cloud Lake. They didn’t really concern me. In fact, they still don’t, but I can’t help but be a little curious.”

Gray’s face went very still but he indicated for Noah to continue.

“Anyway, there are rumors starting to circulate that there’s a community out here.”

Gray glanced at Hector before replying. “I would say that’s true. We’ve got a nice little enclave here at the embassy. Both Hector and myself have found mates within the human population, and if he gets his head out of his rear, Andrew will too one day.”

“Unlikely,” Hector joked, but there was a tightness to his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“Not like that,” he pressed on, determined to ask his question. “But a community of shifters living in Cloud Lake.” He paused, then decided to forge ahead. After all, he’d already come this far. “Shifters who shouldn’t be here. Ones rumored dead. That sort of thing.”

Gray’s face didn’t change the way he’d expected. Instead of closing itself off or perhaps looking agitated, the senior-most embassy guard burst into laughter. Big, rolling booms that filled the lobby.

“You listening to ghost tales now?” he asked mid-guffaw. “Dead shifters living here? OooooOOOOoooOOOO!” he said, waving his hands in the air in a mimicry of a ghost.

Noah glared, annoyed at the dismissive response to a serious question.

What did you expect? If there are such shifters living here, it’s unlikely that they’re going to just up and admit to it. Gray, Hector, Andrew, and anyone else here would go down with the ship if it was found out they were harboring fugitives and rogues. Doubly so since they’re doing it on human territory.

“Yeah, we’ve heard those rumors too,” Gray said, calming himself at last. “They started up right after we were assigned here. People started seeing shifters everywhere, and they assumed that there were more of us here than there actually are.” He shrugged. “Add in that new faces arrive every few weeks, and suddenly it feels to some of the locals that there is a community of us here, living secretly. One of them mentions it in hushed tones at a bar where a shifter is drinking, not realizing we can hear it, and boom, that makes its way back to Cadia.”

Noah sat back slightly, perplexed. It was a perfectly valid, acceptable, and even believable answer. But it didn’t feel right to him. Gray wasn’t telling him the truth. Or at least, not the entire truth. He opened his mouth to say more, but boots clomped up the front stairs before he could and Chase appeared in the doorway.

The other shifter stopped, looking back and forth between the three of them.

“Did I interrupt the super-secret meeting?” he joked.

Noah shook his head. “No, I was just getting reamed out by Gray here for doing my job with my eyes closed. He was just getting to the juicy bits where he insults my heritage and then I fight him because he calls my mother a Financial Coitus Expert.”

“How is telling the truth insulting you?” Chase asked without skipping a beat.

Gray laughed. Noah groaned. Hector typed away on his phone.

“You’re worse than a human child,” Gray said, reaching over the desk to swat Hector in the head.

“Hey!” he protested. “We’re trying to decide on something.”

Gray rolled his eyes. “On what?”

Hector looked around, as if suddenly aware of the presence of the other two shifters. “Um, of that new project we’re doing,” he said. “You remember I was telling you about that?”

“Oh, right,” Gray said. “Well, do it when you aren’t giving the new guy a terrible impression of how we operate here, got it?”

“Yes, boss,” Hector said formally before sending another text message.

“Hector,” Gray said sternly at the way his order was completely ignored.

“I’m just telling her that you’re having a power trip and telling me to put my toys away so that I feel as miserable as you do.”

Gray grinned. “Damn right. What’s the point in being the boss if I can’t make everyone around me hate their lives as much as I do? Now put your phone away, and teach the new guy something useful besides how to pick your nose and burn things down.”

Hector shook his head. “I’m going to get you. One of these days, you’re going down.”

“Yeah yeah,” Gray said, then waved at the pair of them to continue. “Have fun boys.” Then he turned and pointed at Chase. “You, come with me. Let’s see what you’ve learned.”

Chase gulped and followed the senior shifter into the conference rooms at the back.

Noah just smiled and waved, wishing him good luck. He made a mental note to give some further thought to what had just occurred between him, Gray, and Hector. That would wait, however, because something even more pressing kept forcing its way back into his mind.

He had a date with Angela!