"You want me to what?" Eric Lundgren blinked at his Alpha in surprise. Her summons had been unexpected enough, but never had he imagined in his wildest dreams that those words would have fallen from her lips.

Alpha Williams set her cup of tea aside with a deadly serious face. "We need someone with the right qualifications to infiltrate Gecko Labs, and we need to keep it in house. You are the only member of White Falls who matches the criteria we need."

"I'm not a spy," Eric protested. "I'm a scientist. I wouldn't know the first thing about sneaking around and gathering information." And since when was White Falls in the business of spying?

"I think you'd be surprised," the Alpha said. "You're used to following the data to find your answers. This is quite similar."

Eric pulled his glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "People are different than inert data. People introduce too many variables to account for."

Alpha Williams leaned forward and placed a hand on the younger alpha's arm. "Eric. You know about Dr. Brandon Delaney's kidnapping. I've told you what we know, which is shockingly little. We need to know exactly what we're up against, and now that Gecko knows we've blown their cover, they've tripled their security since Dr. Delaney's rescue. There's no way we can sneak anyone in, unless it’s through the proper channels. I know I'm asking a lot. You'll have to give up your current position. Your life will be in danger, that's a fact. You won't be able to contact your family or most of the pack, except in the very strictly protected communication lines we will establish. But you might save us all. Not just White Falls, but all shifters.

Normally, his Alpha's touch would be calming to Eric, as it would any member of her pack, but Alpha Williams's words tore away any peace he might have drawn from it. He loved his job. He'd spent the last five years away from his pack, which was not easy, because he loved his job so much. He was modifying crops so that they could grow in harsh environments. Low moisture. Heavy moisture. His team's goal was to end world hunger--and they just might do it. And Alpha Williams was asking him to let that go. Did she understand what she was asking?

He dared look into her eyes, and the depth of sadness and resolve in them convinced him that yes, she knew exactly what she was asking. And she wasn't asking anything she wouldn't do herself, if she could. 

"I wouldn't lie to you even if I could; this will not be easy. You won't be able to shift at all while you are working at Gecko. Not even in your own home. That's another risk you'll be taking, on top of everything else. You'll have to live apart from the pack. If you run into a pack member, you'll have to pretend to not know them. We have no idea how many of us Gecko knows about. We don't know how much Gecko knows. Do they have enough knowledge to identify us by blood? They may discover you are a shifter before you even enter the building. And I promise, that we will do our utmost to extract you, but we're doing our best to extract everyone. And you're part of that plan. I'll look farther, if you refuse, but shifters like you are not common."

Eric snorted in agreement. That was an understatement. Most shifters craved the nearness of pack. They needed the community to feel whole. Eric certainly appreciated the pack, but he didn't feel that same visceral need. He visited every month, and that was enough for him. But to completely cut himself off... that would be difficult.

Alpha Williams stood and walked to her window. It was dusk, and the last fireflies of the season blinked lazily in the darkening fields. "We haven't faced danger like this in centuries, Eric. Until Gecko, we were able to let the idea of men who could change into wolves fade into fairy tale. But Gecko knows, and we have no idea what their intentions are. Do they intend to reveal us? Use us? How? All we know is that they know about us and they are not our friends. The weapons of old, tooth and claw, aren't enough for this day and age. We have social media and databases a twenty-four hour news cycle and phones that record video. In this age, information is the weapon that matters, and right now, we might as well be armed with rocks and clubs." She turned back to him, her blue eyes piercing his own. "We need you, Eric. I think that if we can manage to put you, one of the top geneticists in the world, in their path, they'd jump at the chance. And think of it. You've never been able to study wolf shifter DNA. You've never had the freedom to do that before. And with you involved, maybe we can control the flow of information, prevent Gecko from causing us any real damage."

Damn, Alpha Williams was persuasive. He'd gone into biology hoping he would be able to study his own kind, but reality soon slapped him in the face. The cost of running the equipment to map the DNA of a plant, let alone a complex humanoid, was immense, and required massive amounts of money, which meant grants. He never would have been able to complete his studies in the secrecy the packs would require. But if he went undercover at Gecko Labs, even though they had questionable motives, he'd have the means.

"You'd be protecting us twice over." Alpha Williams's earnest voice weaved through his thoughts. "By providing the information we need to know about ourselves and providing the information we need to know about Gecko."

He could do it, Eric reasoned. Like Alpha Williams said, it was just following the data. Dealing with the management at Gecko couldn't be much more difficult than dealing with the politics of academia. One might cut your throat, but the other might cut your funding, and between the two, Eric was more afraid of losing his funding. 

Decision made, he nodded. "I'll do it."