1
Silas
Silas Rutledge pinchedat thebridge of his nose and sank back into his office chair. The stack of papers on his desk had swelled overnight, and while he’d been expecting an influx of work, he hadn’t been expecting the onslaught towering before him. Were there really that many omegas coming in from the recent bust? He eyed the pile of documents. At least twenty separate folders waited to be verified.
There was no way he’d get it done before his session with Jepsen began.
As Silas eyed his work, willing it to disappear, movement in his peripheral vision redirected his gaze. Owen Ellis, a fellow rehabilitation counselor, leaned against the doorframe of Silas’ office and grinned at him.
“You look busy,” Owen remarked.
“I have no idea what Torres wants from me.” Silas prodded at the stack of papers before him, frowning. “I’m due for a session with Jepsen in two hours. I’m good at paperwork, but I’m notthatgood.”
“Mmhm, Torres knows.” Owen propped himself up from the door and strolled into the room. Beneath his arm was a file folder. “She took you off Jepsen’s case. Reassigned it to me.”
“What?” Silas looked away from Owen and to the stack of file folders in front of him. He’d been working with Jepsen for close to a month, and they’d made tremendous progress. Rehabilitating troubled omegas wasn’t easy work, and as the sole alpha counselor on staff, Silas only took on cases that met certain standards. Omegas whose self-worth had been so severely warped by psychological trauma, or who suffered from other severe mistreatment beyond the usual, were typically entrusted to him. Jepsen had been stubborn, but over time, Silas had talked him down from his staunch insistence that he was inferior. In their last session, they’d even started to work toward getting the help Jepsen needed to study for his GED.
To hear he’d been taken off the case was unsettling.
“It’s a lot of paperwork, but it’ll take me a day at most. There’s no need to remove me from Jepsen’s case because of it. There has to be something else going on.”
“Sharp as always.” Owen winked. He arrived at Silas’ desk and produced the file folder from beneath his arm, dropping it atop the stack. “You’re taking on a more urgent case. The field team has been assessing the rescued omegas down at the precinct, and one of them in particular is causing trouble.”
Silas took the folder from the stack and thumbed open the cover. Inside were standard forms used by the field team. The reports they sent were usually thorough, but in this one, most of the fields were blank. The only field filled in was the given name.
Elijah.
“He’s refusing to share his information?” Silas guessed.
“You got it. Won’t talk, won’t listen, and all he wants to do is get back to his pimp. He seems to respond well to the alphas on the police force, but even then, he’s stubborn. We’re not even sure that’s his real first name. So far, the precinct has only found a few IDs after searching the pimp’s office and the brothel headquarters.”
Silas eyed the form. By now, he knew the subject of each field by memory. Name, last and first. Date of birth. Sex. A/B/O. If omega, date of last heat. All of them were blank.
“He’s not even willing to share when his last heat was?”
“Nope. I think the field officers are trying to get some information out of his peers, but it’s chaos down there. The bust was substantial. We’ve got a lot of young men we need to work with.” Owen snagged half of the folders from Silas’ desk. “But that’s life, right? I’m glad that they’re coming here instead of living in that hellhole of a whorehouse. The White Lotus, I think it was. Sick stuff. The guy in charge was doing more than selling their bodies, too. Some of them were beaten. Some of them were denied contraceptives and sold during their heats to the highest bidder. Really twisted.”
Silas looked up from Elijah’s file to look Owen over—there was something different about his voice today, hinting at breathless and excited. His cheeks were flushed and his skin glowed. Owen looked fantastic. There was something about his posture…
A scent registered on the air, and Silas shifted on his chair as his body began to react. Owen was in heat. The heat suppressants Owen took did a fantastic job of blocking most of the pheromones his body produced, but no suppressant was perfect.
As though Owen knew, he tugged the files to his chest and took a step back from Silas’ desk. His gaze lingered on Silas for longer than it should have.
“Torres wanted me to pick up half your caseload. She says that you’re going to have your hands full with your new omega.”
Elijah. Right. Silas bit down on his lip and tore his gaze away from Owen to look at Elijah’s file. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Honestly, none of us want to deal with an omega that stubborn, so you’re taking one for the team.” Owen flashed him a charming smile and paused at the door, not yet ready to leave. “So I was wondering… maybe you’d like to see each other after work today. We could go out to eat or something.”
The heat was starting to get to Owen’s brain, and Silas knew he didn’t mean it. Silas had never taken advantage of a heat-addled omega before, and he didn’t intend to start. After all of his schooling and sensitivity training, he knew it was wrong.
“Maybe next week,” Silas said softly. “I’m going to be exhausted this week trying to get through this new case.”
“Right,” Owen mumbled. He ducked his head, but managed to smile. “You got it. See you a little later.”
Before Silas could say anything more, Owen was gone. With little time left to squander, Silas took the first case from the stack and opened it, going through the process of inputting the patient’s information into the system and verifying the data made sense. As he worked, he couldn’t help but think of the omega he was about to meet.
“Elijah,” Silas murmured. He traced his finger along the side of the case file, then shook his head. “I have a feeling you’re going to be trouble.”
