No scent.
No arousal slick pooling between my thighs when an Alpha walked by.
No nesting instincts.
No bond-hunger.
No biological clock screaming at me to mate, breed, and submit.
I'd traded all of it for a career. For respect. For the ability to walk into rooms like this one without being dismissed as a slave to my hormones.
My old doctor had retired last year.
The new one came highly recommended—a specialist in Omega endocrinology. He'd reviewed my bloodwork personally and confirmed my heat suppressant levels were optimal.
"Block D has been quieter lately," Harker led us through the next checkpoint. "Several inmates transferred out over the past year. Paroles. Early releases. Good behavior."
Hmmm. That’s interesting.
I filed that information away. It didn't fit. Rook’s pack—he called the Broken Court—didn'tdogood behavior.
My mind instantly went to Rook.
The newspapers had called him the Trickster.
Forty-seven kills over twelve years, every victim an Alpha male he deemed unworthy. Weak genetics. Poor health markers. Male Alphas who, in his estimation, had no business breeding with Omegas and passing on their inferior traits.
When he killed these men, he made them into art—bodies posed around hand-painted playing cards, faces transformed into grotesque clown masks with garish makeup and wigs.
For twelve years, the police had chased shadows.
Then, one ordinary Tuesday, he'd walked into a Los Angeles police station with fifty-two pack members and said five words:I'm done playing this game.
He'd confessed to everything.
Named every victim.
Provided evidence the police had never found.
The investigation that followed revealed he'd been a tenured professor of Logic and Mathematics at a top university—a genius hiding in plain sight.
No one understood why he turned himself in.
But I thought I figured out part of his reasoning due to spending five years building a theory. Rook didn't surrender—herepositionedhimself. The prison wasn't a cage; it was a throne.
But what was the greater game?
That question was the professional reason I was here.
The real reason was darker, and I'd never admitted it to anyone.
I was obsessed with Rook
Knew way more about him than anyone.
Rook’s father was an Alpha. Big, loud, biologically dominant—and weak. He drank. He gambled. When he lost money, he took it out on his family.
By the time Rook was five, he’d already been to the hospital more than once. Broken arm. Split lip. Bruises doctors learned not to question.
