DANIEL'S POV
I sprayed another thick layer of chemical disinfectant across the surface of my mahogany desk and wiped the wood down with a heavy microfiber cloth. The harsh bleach masked the faint lingering trace of ozone and wildflowers that Emma had left behind, but I still lit a bundle of dried sage and let the thick smoke fill the corners of the room. My heart rate was finally beginning to slow down to a normal rhythm after the shock of her appearance, though my dress shirt was sticking to my back with nervous sweat. I grabbed my discarded suit jacket from the floor and tossed it over the back of the sofa, trying to focus on the mundane task of cleaning rather than the primal urge to run after my mate. I walked over to the small kitchen area attached to my office suite, turned on the espresso machine, and began grinding fresh coffee beans to give my hands something normal to do.
The heavy oak door swung open, and Marcus walked back into the office while coughing aggressively into his elbow to clear the sage smoke from his lungs. He walked over to the kitchen island, grabbed a clean glass from the cabinet, and poured himself a large measure of water from the refrigerator dispenser before drinking it down in three large swallows. He then opened the microwave, pulled out the container of leftover chicken he had been trying to force me to eat earlier, and took a large bite.
"You are going to set off the commercial fire alarms if you keep burning that weed in here," Marcus said, chewing his food and setting the water glass down on the granite counter with a loud clinking sound. "I already alerted the night cleaning crew to skip the fiftieth floor tonight so no one else catches the scent, but we need to figure out exactly who that girl is right now."
"I know we do," I replied, pressing the button on the coffee maker and watching the dark liquid pour into my mug. "Get on my computer and pull up her employment records from the human resources database. She said her name was Emma and she worked as a junior analyst, so it should not be difficult to find her file."
Marcus nodded, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and sat down in my leather desk chair. His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard as he bypassed the standard employee portal and accessed the highly classified background check files we kept on everyone who worked in the building. While he searched, I walked into my attached private bathroom, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water over my face to wash away the sweat. I grabbed a fresh white towel from the metal rack, dried my skin thoroughly, and threw the towel into the laundry hamper. When I walked back out into the main office holding my mug of hot coffee, Marcus was staring at the glowing computer screen with an expression of complete disbelief.
"What did you find in her file?" I asked, setting my coffee down on the desk and walking over to stand behind him so I could read the monitor.
"Her full name is Emma Carter, and she was hired eight months ago straight out of a standard business program at the local university," Marcus explained, pointing to the digital photograph of Emma on the screen. "Her background looks incredibly boring and completely normal at first glance, but I ran her social security number through the deep pack network to see if her family had any ties to the supernatural community. Her mother was Dr. Aris Carter."
I leaned heavily against the edge of the desk and stared at the name on the screen while a cold sense of dread washed over my entire body. "Dr. Aris Carter was the head geneticist at the clandestine laboratory facility that my father ordered the Council to burn to the ground twenty years ago. The Council reported that the doctor died in the chemical fire along with all the hybrid experimental subjects, but clearly, they missed one."
"They did not just miss one," Marcus argued, scrolling down to a redacted incident report from two decades ago. "Emma is not a random subject who survived the purge. She is the daughter of the head scientist, which means she is the original lost subject the underworld has been searching for since the labs fell. She is Patient Zero, Daniel. Every rogue pack and supernatural mercenary in the country would pay billions of dollars to get their hands on her DNA."
"Nobody is getting their hands on her because she belongs to me," I stated firmly, pushing away from the desk and pacing across the thick carpet. "We need to make sure she made it back to her apartment safely. Access the city street cameras and trace her route from the front doors of this building to whatever address is listed in her employment file."
Marcus typed another series of commands into the keyboard, and the large television monitor mounted on the far wall flickered to life, displaying a grid of black and white surveillance feeds from the downtown area. We watched the screens intently as Marcus pulled up the footage from twenty minutes ago, showing Emma walking out of our lobby doors and heading down the rain-slicked sidewalk toward the subway station.
"There she is," Marcus noted, enlarging the camera feed from the corner of Fourth and Elm Street. "She is walking alone, and she looks completely terrified. You really scared her when you yelled at her and told her to leave."
"I had to scare her away to protect her from you and the rest of the pack," I reminded him, watching her small figure huddle against the cold rain on the screen. "Wait, pause the footage right there. Who is that man stepping out of the alleyway behind her?"
Marcus paused the video and zoomed in on a tall man wearing a hooded sweatshirt who was blocking Emma from walking down the shortcut. The man was leaning forward and aggressively sniffing the air around her neck, which immediately told me he was not a human mugger looking for cash.
"He caught her scent," Marcus said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "He knows what she is, Daniel. Look at his posture. He is preparing to attack her."
I gripped the back of the leather chair so tightly that the wooden frame cracked under the pressure of my fingers. I watched helplessly as the man lunged forward and grabbed Emma by the shoulders. I fully expected him to drag her into the dark alley, but Emma reacted with a sudden burst of violent movement. She raised her right hand and shoved the man squarely in the chest.
"Did you see that?" Marcus shouted, jumping up from the chair and pointing at the television screen in shock. "She just threw a full-grown supernatural enforcer fifteen feet through the air with one hand. She has absolutely no idea how strong she actually is."
I watched the man slam into the brick wall on the video feed while Emma turned around and sprinted down the street at a speed that no human could ever achieve. She disappeared from the camera frame within seconds, but the man in the alley did not stay on the ground. He struggled to his feet, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a cell phone.
"He is not running away from her," I observed, feeling the predatory instinct of my wolf rising to the surface of my mind. "He is making a phone call."
Marcus quickly typed on the keyboard again to access the audio surveillance transcripts from the street microphones. A few seconds later, the man's raspy voice echoed through the speakers in my office.
"I found the lost subject," the man on the audio recording said. "She is heading north toward the residential district. Send the extraction team right now, and tell them to bring the heavy tranquilizers because she is strong."
Marcus turned to me with wide eyes. "That is the extraction code for the rival pack from the northern territory. They have been watching our borders, and they know exactly what she is. They are going to capture her tonight."
I did not bother to answer him. I walked over to my desk, grabbed my car keys from the top drawer, and headed straight for the heavy oak doors.
"Daniel, wait!" Marcus yelled, running across the room to stand in front of the door so I could not leave. "You cannot go after her. If you engage the rival pack's extraction squad in the middle of the city, you will start a full-scale territorial war that will destroy everything your father built. Let them take her."
I looked Marcus directly in the eyes and let the silver light of my wolf bleed into my vision.
"Move out of my way right now, Marcus, or I swear I will kill you myself," I warned him, my voice vibrating with absolute authority. "They are not taking her anywhere. Are you going to step aside, or do we have a problem?"
