His Unidentified & Untouchable Mate

A Lie and a Revelation

Jacob POV

Zahraa wore her uniform as a ward of the Northern Pack. And it was cute, sure: a white blouse laced with blue, under which she wore tight sleeves with a thorny rose pattern, and her usual gloves. There was a stiff pencil skirt, with an apron over it that had pockets for various uses. She wore blue leggings under the skirt, and boots.

Dutifully, she brought me my coffee at 8:30am on the dot. I felt awful, because in my sleepless stupor, my first reaction was to snort a laugh.

“What?” she asked, brows pinching in genuine concern. “I asked your head omega how you liked your coffee. Did I get it wrong?”

“No, no, no, no,” I spoke too quickly, swallowing another rising laugh. “It’s just that the secretaries don’t wear uniforms like the usual omegas. I didn’t expect you to show up looking so… formal.”

“Oh,” her face fell, and then to my surprise and relief, she looked relieved herself. “If that’s all, I’ll make sure I’m dressed appropriately tomorrow.”

“Again, you don’t have to be so formal with me,” I sipped the coffee – it tasted even better than usual. Perhaps because I got to drink it while taking in the spectacular sight that was Zahraa. “Your job is pretty much to screen anyone that wants to see me – and don’t worry, not many do – and to run files around the pack house, so I can focus on my work. It’s a very easy job. The girl before held it because her father is a prominent gamma, and though she’s honestly pretty lazy, it’s a hard job to screw up.”

I’d been annoyed when I first met Lara. She was the same age as me, and started working at the same time. She was constantly on her phone – I was trying my best to impress father, in the hopes he might glance my way after seeing my expert filing skills. Over the last three years, we’d met in the middle. I calmed down, realizing that no matter what I did, I’d been relegated to a bottom-floor office approving small monetary requests and scheduling for requests when someone asked for vacation time, and no matter how good I did, I’d always be here. She put her phone down the moment I needed something, perhaps realizing that our jobs were such afterthoughts that she’d have plenty of time to play bubble shooter in between tasks.

Lara and I had formed a relationship that was hard to define. We were barely coworkers, not quite friends, and we’d kissed a couple of times at various pack functions, when the lights were too low and everyone else had paired up. Nowadays, we spoke casually to each other, and we could reach each others moods as though they’d been written on our foreheads.

It was a gut punch to realize that she was gone, though.

When I saw Zahraa’s look of concern, I realized I’d zoned out and missed her response. “Sorry, what?”

“You must miss her,” Zahraa repeated, her expression fully sympathetic without a shred of jealousy. Her glove settled over my hand, and she softly added. “I’m sure they’ll all be found soon.”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. They will.” I shuffled some papers around to see my desk calendar, and I saw a note that I’d scratched out: lunch with Rowan.

I’d asked him to meet me yesterday, about Zahraa’s file, and in the chaos, I’d forgotten. s**t.

I hid my panic – Zahraa thought I already had the file, and I wasn’t going to come clean about that anytime soon. I offered her a bright, fake, customer service smile. “Zahraa, as your first task as secretary, could you call Rowan and ask him to reschedule our lunch meeting for today, if possible?”

“Aye aye, captain,” she replied, dipping out of the room as quietly as a mouse.

I sighed and started sorting the files on my desk. It was a mess from my frantic phone calls the day before, and I hadn’t thought to organize it after all my interviews. I was sorting blindly – a directory of phone numbers for each pack went back on my shelf. A file detailing emergency protocols went back in the drawer – a proposal I’d been fact checking and proofreading was marked up with highlighter and red ink, and that I slipped into folders of similar pages.

Then – a map of the pack grounds.

I squinted at it in confusion – I hadn’t pulled this out. Then, I squinted at it further, something tickling the back of my brain. I fired up my ancient computer (seriously, everyone in the pack house got upgraded equipment before I did) and opened my email and calendar app, filled with pack events and notifications.

I clicked on one I’d received just this morning – an image of the same map, with locations marked off that had been thoroughly searched. I began to carefully cross-reference the two, taking my red pen and striking through buildings that had been searched (as though we really thought we’d find all 7.7k wolves hiding in one building in our pack lands).

I barely noticed Zahraa entering the room again, too engrossed in my work. I was supposed to carry out more interviews starting in just thirty minutes, and there were a slew of things I should’ve asked Zahraa to print off for me, but instead, I motioned for her to sit.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

I didn’t know yet.

There were discrepancies in the map that was being emailed – small ones. A building would be marked differently, or placed differently. The square footage certainly seemed off.

Then I saw it.

There, right on the border of the western territory, with an icon that implied it was set for demolition – an old lumber mill. We hadn’t used the thing since 1960, and it had been terribly outdated and dangerous then. But we’d used it for storing big, faulty equipment, and so the building was only just being cleared for demolition – and the order to demolish had come years ago. I remember exploring it as a child.

It was dangerous, but more so than that, it was huge.

And it wasn’t on the map we were using to search the territory – I couldn’t believe it had been overlooked. But more so than that, I felt a tug in my gut. Something gnawed at me, and I pushed myself out of my chair and met Zahraa’s eye with an amount of enthusiasm that shocked even me.

“Alright. Let’s go on a quick field trip.”