Because auditory processing and visual processing are separate neurological functions, and the fact that one was disengaged does not negate the data collected by the other.
I am nothing if not thorough.
Even in sleep.
We walk in the comfortable silence that constitutes the majority of our shared physical space—two men moving through cold air on a gravel path, their footsteps synchronized not through effort but through the unconscious alignment that thirty-four years of shared locomotion produces. The lampposts pass in measured intervals, each one casting its amber pool across the gravel and then releasing us back into the darkness between, so that our progress through the compound is arhythmic alternation of visible and invisible, illuminated and shadow.
The pathway curves toward the eastern residential quarters—a cluster of buildings that the Academy designates for transient occupants: visiting dignitaries, temporary consultants, and, apparently, fugitive packs with bounties on their heads and a week to convince an Omega to bond with them at a masquerade ball. The buildings are stone and wood, utilitarian in design but maintained with the Academy’s characteristic attention to surface-level respectability. The windows glow with interior light. The doorways are lit by brass fixtures. The overall effect is of a village that was designed to look welcoming and achieves something closer to clinical.
We both stop.
Simultaneously. The motion is not protective—not the instinctive combat pause that our training produces in response to unexpected stimuli. This is recognition. The sound that reaches us through the cold evening air is specific, identifiable, and entirely expected given the person producing it.
A gunshot.
The report is sharp, contained—the distinctive crack of a high-caliber handgun discharged in an enclosed space, the sound filtered through walls and distance into something that reaches us as a flat, percussive pop rather than the full, concussive explosion it would be at close range. It comes from the direction of the building that the Academy assigned to Dominic—the corner unit, separated from the other structures by enough distance to provide the illusion of privacy without the substance of it.
A second shot follows. Then a third.
The spacing is even—measured, deliberate. Not the rapid discharge of someone under attack but the methodical, repetitive firing of someone using a weapon as a processingtool. Each shot is an exclamation point at the end of a thought that Dominic can’t articulate through language and is articulating instead through the destruction of whatever target he’s designated as a surrogate for the person he actually wants to destroy.
Damien, presumably.
Or the file on Violet’s desk.
Or the photograph inside it.
Or the concept of fate itself, which has spent the last three years demonstrating a commitment to irony that even Lucien finds excessive.
“Let’s see if he’s still riling up in anger,” Lucien suggests.
His tone is light, but his smirk has sharpened—the edge returning to an expression that had softened during our walk, the amusement recalibrating from genuine to strategic as the reality of what awaits us inside that building reasserts itself. Dominic in a rage is not a social event. It’s a meteorological one. The Prime Alpha designation doesn’t process fury the way standard Alphas do—it amplifies it, concentrates it, converts it into a pheromone broadcast so intense that proximity becomes physically uncomfortable for anyone without the biological resilience to withstand it.
I sigh.
The exhale produces a cloud of condensation that hangs in the cold air before dissolving—a brief, visible manifestation of the resignation that characterizes my emotional response to situations I cannot change and must therefore endure.
“From the sounds of it, he’s still pissed as fuck.”
Another shot punctuates the observation as if providing supporting evidence.
Lucien glances at me. I glance at him. The exchange is brief—a microsecond of shared assessment conducted through thetwin frequency, producing a mutual conclusion that neither of us needs to verbalize because we’ve reached it simultaneously.
He needs us.
Even when he’s shooting at walls and broadcasting fury through his pheromones and making the rational case for leaving him alone until the ammunition runs out.
He needs us.
Because we’re the pack.
What’s left of it.
And the pack doesn’t leave a member alone in a room with a loaded weapon and an unlimited supply of rage.
Even when staying means getting shot at.
We’ll have no choice but to find out for ourselves—and not get hit by a stray bullet in the process.
