Page 170 of Drama Queen

Charlotte interrupted him. “Not a fucking chance. Now, where is the damn conference room?”

A smile lit his face, before he chuckled, bright white teeth gleaming against his ebony skin. She liked a man with good teeth, especially if he knew how to use them in the bedroom. He inhaled deeply, likely scenting her interest, his eyes becoming heavy lidded, and his smile a little darker.

“If you’ll come this way, I’ll see you get everything you need,” he said huskily.

The double entendre wasn’t lost on her, and she smiled back. Maybe living and working at The Seat was going to be better than she thought. Then she remembered exactly why she was there, and that hope deflated faster than a man’s interest when he realised she was smart.

Still, she’d take the perks where she found them, and this guard might very well turn out to be one of them. Her owl protested at that, flooding her mind with images of the president. That was more than she could take right then. The one thing she wasn’t going to do, couldn’t do, shouldn’t do, wasthink of her boss — her boss’s boss to be fair — in any other way than as a boss.

Although she’d bet he was bossy in the bedroom too.

Dammit!

Charlotte had only been to the public areas of The Seat before, and even then she’d only visited a handful of times, so to see this side, the back end of the power corridors, so to speak, was both a novelty and a privilege she knew would never get old. She was glad the guard — Zeke according to his nametag — was with her. She would never have found her way through this rabbit’s warren on her own.

“What do you know of the assistants and interns that work here,” Charlotte asked her guide.

His stride faltered for a moment, before he gently took her elbow and steered her down another side corridor.

“How bad is it?” he asked her quietly, which was when she realised he’d taken advantage of her trust and pulled her aside.

“About as bad as you can think. We’re talking about civil unrest, riots, and possibly civil war, and if it comes to that, we won’t win.”

Zeke blinked at her in shock, then smirked. She knew what he was thinking, they could easily overpower the humans in this country, but he wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. The global picture.

Charlotte sighed. “And after we defeat the humans, how long do you think it will be before the other nations, those less friendly to shifters, will start launching the nukes?”

It hurt to see the confidence wiped from his face. The concept that they were truly stuck in the system they’d adopted, finally hammering home for him.

“If we were ever to gain control of this country, it would have to be peacefully, and in full concordance with its human citizens. Even then, we’d still be fighting off those who think we shouldcease to exist. We’d never be safe, and they would think nothing of sacrificing the humans who had turned their back on their own kind, their own species, to throw their lot in with us.” She shook her head. “As much as we hate it, we have to play the long game, which means making changes here, making them stick, and then waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.”

“So, you need someone with a big picture mentality, but able to fade into the background and do their job. Confident enough to stand up to the idiots, but sensible enough to know when to keep their head down.”

She nodded. “They need to be fast on their feet, both mentally and physically, able to hold their own in hand to hand without relying on partial shifting, and smart enough to anticipate what I need beforeIeven know I need it.”

“I know the perfect guy,” Zeke said with a grin. “They won’t see him coming, you won’t see him coming. He looks and acts like a submissive little bitch, but he’s anything but. He’s just slow to anger, and not a fan of violence. I’ve seen him talk circles around those trying to bully him, take down a pair of wolves larger than him, and all without getting a single hair out of place.”

“And the downside?” Charlotte asked. “Because I can think of fifty different jobs where he’d be snapped up and given a chance. There has to be a reason nobody has done it before.”

The sad look he gave her warned her the reason would be a doozy.

“It’s his eyes,” Zeke said simply. “They’re unusual enough that they freak people out. He has a wall-eye that points completely off to the side. There’s no wondering which one to look at, the damn thing never points forward.”

That was unusual, but not reason enough to ignore the guy. She frowned at him. There had to be more to it than that.

“Plus he has heterochromia. So, the freaky eye is blue, like it’s blind, but he’s totally not, and the normal eye is brown. The thing is, his binocular vision is weak, because the eyes operate independently. Like a fish or something he said. He can see equally well with both, so while he’s looking at you, he can be reading a poster on his left, and his brain just processes it all.”

“But his binocular vision isn’t good?” What the fuck did that mean?

“Yeah, like his depth perception. When he goes to grab a door handle, sometimes he’ll miss, or he tries to pick up his coffee mug and knocks it over instead. His computer has larger font and shit, and so does his phone. He often gets them both to read his emails to him and stuff, so he’ll always have an earbud in one ear.”

“And what, because he looks a little different, people ignore his other talents?” She was finding this harder and harder to believe.

Zeke huffed a sigh. “You know what people are like. You’re a shifter. You’ve experienced prejudice and discrimination because you’re different. Roly? He’s a freak amongst freaks. People are superstitious, especially shifters, people say he’s cursed or evil or fucking anything they can think to throw at him, but he’s just a really cool, really smart guy.”

“You know him well then?” Charlotte surmised.

Rather than denying it, Zeke shrugged. “He came up to me one day, told me one of the guys I was playing cards with was cheating, totally swindling us all. We could never catch him at it, but Roly told me what to watch for, and sure enough, the fucker was. He begged me not to tell the others where I’d gotten the information from, because he knew they’d all turn on him, blame him for not warning them earlier or something. Or worse, they’d tell the guy he’d figured it out, and the guy would get revenge.”

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