He drove to the city. The registry is in the city. He drove hours to the city, dealt with bureaucratic paperwork, sat in traffic, and drove hours back—all to put his name on a document that says this pack exists and this Omega is protected.
The errand.
He moves to pass me—aiming for the side entrance, for the coffee and donuts and the office where Alaric is waiting with whatever operational update the afternoon requires.
I stop him.
My hand finds his forearm. Not grabbing—just contact. The pads of my fingers against the sleeve of his tactical jacket, over the Norse runes beneath, the lightest possible intervention required to halt the forward momentum of a six-four Alpha.
He stops.
Looks at me.
Pouts.
The expression is so unexpected on a face calibrated for intimidation and competitive fury that it takes me a full second to process. Roman Kade. Pouting. The lower lip marginally extended, the ice-blue eyes carrying the confused, slightly offended energy of a man who was going toward food and has been intercepted.
“Why are you even here?” he asks, and the question is aimed less at my physical presence and more at my decision to be in his path. “Coming to greet your arch nemesis? Want to gloat aboutsomething? Did you solve the fire while I was gone and now you’re going to hold it over my head for the next decade?”
I roll my eyes.
Huff.
And before the filter can intervene, before the defenses can reassemble, before Chief Hazel Martinez can override the woman who ate three plates of eggs and said “hurt me” and asked for hugs?—
“Do you do hugs?”
The question exits my mouth like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
Roman laughs.
The sound is sharp, genuine, carrying the startled amusement of a man who has just been asked something so wildly outside the parameters of their established dynamic that his brain defaulted to the only response available.
“Why would I hug anyone?” He looks at me like I’ve suggested he take up knitting. “I don’t do hugs. Hugs are for people who express emotions through physical contact like functional adults, and I am neither functional nor?—”
He pauses.
Recalibrates.
“Well. Maybe with you. If you’re truly feeling in the hug?—”
I punch him in the gut.
Not hard enough to cause damage. Hard enough to make a point. My fist connects with his abdomen—which is, infuriatingly, dense enough that the impact reverberates back through my knuckles before it registers in his diaphragm—and the sound he produces is deeply satisfying.
A heave.
A cough.
A wheeze that bends him forward two inches, which is the maximum concession his pride will allow.
“Dammit, Chief!” His hand cups the impact site. “Is physical assault your default greeting? First my forehead, now my?—”
I make sure to glance around.
The parking lot is empty. The side entrance is behind us, the door still propped with the brick. No witnesses. No officers. No one to see what I’m about to do and file it under evidence that Chief Martinez has been compromised by emotional attachment.
I step in.
