Kissed by a Dark Prince(23)

She was damned if she would let someone steal Loren away from her.

Olivia didn’t want to consider how that sounded. She was talking professionally, not romantically. Never romantically.

“We’ll convene in meeting room three in fifteen minutes. I suggest you prepare.” Mark’s tone made it painfully clear that he knew her thoughts and also believed that their superiors would try to hand this over to someone more worthy of the opportunity to study a new species of fae. If she didn’t make a good case, she would be off the team.

Her only choice then would be to have Loren kidnap her again.

If she went back to his castle, separated from her world and everything here that kept her grounded, it would only be a matter of time before she gave up the fight against the sparks that exploded along her nerve endings and heated her blood whenever she was in Loren’s presence.

Olivia straightened and curled her fingers into fists. That wasn’t going to happen. She would find a way to make her case watertight so Archangel couldn’t remove her from the team or make this about a team at all.

“Thank you.” She picked up the scattered papers of her report from his desk and swiftly left the roomy cream office, heading along the pale corridor to the elevators.

She pressed the call button. She would start with her report and her findings, and then she would state her case, embellishing a few things. If she said that Loren had agreed to the tests on the basis that only she would be involved, and they would be left in peace during them, would her bosses go for that? She wasn’t a great liar, but she was sure that Loren had only agreed to come to Archangel and work with her because he thought they would be working alone.

He wouldn’t want others at the facility finding out what he was. He had taken his people away from the mortal world to protect them. If Archangel discovered that elves not only existed but lived in a whole different realm, accessed via teleportation, they would want to go there and investigate it.

Olivia knew that for a fact because it was what she wanted to do.

She headed down to the next floor, found the meeting room and set herself up at one end of the long oval beech table. She opened the folder and spread her report out in front of her, scanning over Loren’s vitals and the transcription of her voice recording. She could do this.

No sooner had she thought that than the doors opposite her opened and several senior staff members filed in, together with four hunters, one of which was Sable, and some of the top medical staff. Mark was the last to enter. He took the seat at the other end of the table.

Olivia glanced at Sable. It was nice to have a friendly face amongst a sea of scowling ones. No one looked happy to be here and Olivia changed her mind.

She couldn’t do this.

All three grey-haired men on her left, the senior members of Archangel based in this facility, looked as though they had already made up their mind about her request and she was going to be off the team. Two male doctors in white coats sat opposite them to her right, a smug look on their faces. They knew the deal. Let her speak, indulge her, and then watch as her superiors crushed her hope and gave the fae to them.

They had probably all scanned her report in the last few minutes, taken a look at her findings, and then her request, and thought she had gone crazy to even think about asking to lead the study.

Olivia’s hands shook as she shifted her papers around and then sharply raised her head and threw herself onto the tracks of the last train for La-La-Land.

It took her less than fifteen minutes to outline her findings and field some very personal questions that she definitely hadn’t anticipated, and a few disdainful remarks, and then all Olivia could do was try to prove that she hadn’t gone insane and that she believed that the test subject wasn’t out to blow up the building.

One of the doctor’s made a very snide comment about it being a male specimen and her report about his body. Olivia’s blood boiled and she pressed her hands against the desk, fighting to keep her anger below their radars. The chatter amongst the hunters, her superiors, and the doctors verged on an argument.

“What she’s suggesting is crazy. A healthy fae male of unknown origin cannot have free run of the facility. At the very least, he should be contained during the study.” The oldest male hunter’s brown eyes had a twinkle in them that looked a touch sadistic to Olivia.

“The male in question will not subject himself to containment. You’re talking about forcibly restraining him. Doing such a thing to a guest of Archangel is not going to help us improve our image.” Olivia’s words fell on deaf ears as the doctor who had remarked on her relationship with a demon spoke over her.