I tapped my head, and Candy pulled back, sitting down in her chair.
“This study could catapult us to levels we wouldn’t have dreamed of in the first ten years of our tenure, but it’s not just the professional boost it would give us. We’d inform future scientific understanding of alpha and omega genetics, physiology—”
“You want to study the pack, study the impact being around you is having,” she said, and I nodded. “Fuck, that’s gonna be a tough one.”
A sharp knock came from the door, and then it opened to allow Robert to stick his head in.
“Morning, ladies, just popping in for an update.” His keen senses seemed to pick up the mood in the room, so he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “Is everything OK?”
“Just some stuff going on, Robert,” I said to reassure him.
“Nothing to do with the study?”
He flushed as soon as the words were out, even his impaired social perception letting him know he was crossing a line.
“No, and on that. We’re going to need to put together a complex proposal to the ethics committee. The reason why the guys are in town is they’re pretty sure they’ve found their mate, and I’ve managed to talk them into letting me take some data through the process, beyond simply the genetics. Hormonal responses—”
“Physiological changes, psychological evaluations.” The words rushed out of Windsor’s mouth, his excitement palpable. “My god, the list is almost endless. And they’d permit a team to evaluate them during this process?”
“Ah, not a team,” I said. “Me. This is obviously an incredibly personal time and—”
“You’re the one they feel comfortable with. Yes, of course, that does make sense. I’ll put it to Gideon immediately, but there would have to be a workaround. If you were prepped sufficiently on the protocols and given all the relevant equipment… Any word on their mate and his or her thoughts on this?”
“She,” I said, “and she wants to remain anonymous, obviously. The whole pack does. We’re about to release incredibly sensitive information to the scientific community, and—”
“Yes, of course,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Leave it with me, though if the two of you could work out the different potential threads for the study and put them to the pack, see what they’re amenable to, and email that over, it’ll make the process much easier.”
He smiled then, a spontaneous, bright thing that I knew set aflutter the hearts of quite a few of the older staff in the building.
“Of course, we’ll get right on that,” I replied.
At that, Windsor ducked out again, no doubt about to crash Gideon’s office with news of the broadened scope of the study, as Candy grinned evilly. She plucked a whiteboard marker out of my packet and then created a circle, and in it she wrote, ‘Riley’s pack.’
“Candy…” I all but growled.
“If this is the way you want to go, if you just want to focus on the science, then let’s focus on the science. Let’s do what Windsor said and explore exactly what we might be able to get permission from them to study. You’re having lunch with one of the alphas today?”
“Probably, but—”
“So let’s get a rough proposal together, and then he can get the rest of his brothers in here to see what they’re on board with.”
She drew the first line from the circle and wrote ‘super seminal response and mating’ as the first point. I sucked in a breath, feeling the cool, hard, analytical mindset settling in again before firing off my own ideas, and we kept going until a sharp knock on the door broke our flow. Candy grinned like a manic howler monkey and then opened the door to a much more circumspect Ryan standing there.
“Hey, I was after…”
His words faded away as his eyes locked with mine, a small smile forming.
“Hey, Riley.” Silence stretched on and on, Candy looking like the crowd at a tennis match, her eyes flicking from me to Ryan and back again, waiting for someone, anyone to say something.
Finally, he shook his head and then said, “I’m here to take you for lunch.”
Chapter 19
“So how are you holding up?
Ryan’s question caught me off guard, my eyes sliding sideways. He looked down at me with a slow smile as we walked down into the carpark beneath the institute.
“No one’s talking to each other about…well, fucking anything,” he went on. “Once we all decided to have a tilt at this separately, so as not to overwhelm you, lips got sealed. But I feel things.” My steps slowed, and he turned around, walking backwards as he watched me. “Blake made you happy last night, then happier again, then he hurt you.” The smile faded at that.