“That’s right.” Dr. Winters nods, her expression calibrating from warm to clinical with the seamless transition of a professional who knows when to comfort and when to inform. “Your department cruiser was rigged with an incendiary device that detonated when the key fob signal was received. You probably don’t remember the details because the blast contained an unusual toxic substance—an aerosolized compound that was dispersed upon detonation.”
She leans forward slightly, the stool’s wheels adjusting beneath her.
“It doesn’t affect Alphas much. Their olfactory receptors process it as an irritant—some coughing, temporary dizziness, nothing that persists beyond a few hours. But for Omegas?” She shakes her head, the motion carrying the specific gravity of someone who understands the biochemical disparity between designations and has spent her career treating its consequences. “Our scent receptors are orders of magnitude more sensitive than the average Alpha’s. What registers as an irritant in their systems hits ours like a neurotoxin. The compound essentially overloaded your olfactory-limbic pathway, which triggered a systemic shutdown. Your brain pulled the plug to protect itself.”
My brain pulled the plug.
That’s one way to describe losing consciousness in a gravel parking lot while a car bomb converts your department vehicle into shrapnel.
“How long have I been out?”
“The explosion was last night.”
I stare at her.
Last night.
I’ve been unconscious for—what—fourteen hours? Sixteen? The explosion happened in the late afternoon. If it’s morning now, that’s?—
Dr. Winters presses a button on the bed’s side panel, and the mattress adjusts beneath me with a smooth, mechanical hum, tilting my upper body to a seated position that my muscles definitely did not authorize but my spine grudgingly appreciates. The room broadens with the new angle—I can see the sage-green walls fully now, a window showing weak October morning light, a small desk with files and a laptop, and the door.
The door, which is closed.
And beyond which, if my residual scent detection can be trusted despite the neurotoxin hangover, an Alpha is pacing.
The frozen pine is unmistakable. Agitated. The peppermint bark undertones sharp and volatile, the scent signature of a man who is moving back and forth with the compulsive, repetitive urgency of a caged animal who has been told to wait and considers waiting a form of punishment.
“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Dr. Winters says, and the warmth returns to her voice, the clinical precision softening into something that feels like genuine relief. “The pacing Alpha outside will be very pleased, even though he should be resting since he was caught in the blast too.”
My eyes widen.
“Wait.” The word comes out louder than the rasp should allow, adrenaline doing for my vocal cords what water alone couldn’t. “I was with Roman. Roman Kade. Is he okay? He was—right there, he grabbed me before—is he?—”
“Commander Kade is fine.” Dr. Winters raises a calming palm, the gesture of a woman who has intercepted many panicked inquiries about loved ones and understands that the answer needs to arrive before the anxiety peaks. “A few scratches. Some bruising along his posterior thoracic region from what I can tell was a fairly spectacular impact with a brick wall. And he’s probably going to give himself a concussion with how much screaming he’s been doing through a phone for the last six hours, but other than that, he’s good.”
She smirks.
The expression is knowing—the look of a woman who has been observing the dynamics between the pacing Alpha and the unconscious Omega through the lens of professional experience and personal amusement.
“Clearly your Alpha loves you to bits, since he’s so protective.” She tilts her head, the smirk settling into something warmer. “Wouldn’t let those FBI or CSI agents come anywhere near you. Planted himself outside that door like a Norse sentinel and informed anyone who tried to enter that they’d be ‘physically relocated’ if they crossed the threshold without authorization.”
Her Alpha.
She called him my Alpha.
Don’t correct her. Don’t explain. Don’t unpack the complicated, decade-spanning, rivalry-to-fling-to-estrangement-to-whatever-the-fuck-this-is dynamic that defines your relationship with Roman Kade while lying in a hospital bed with an IV in your hand and a neurotoxin hangover in your brain.
But the rest of her sentence catches up.
“I guess he has connections,” she continues, “because they backed off. Federal agents. Backed off. In my twenty years of practice, I’ve never seen federal officers defer to a localcommander on a case that’s clearly crossed jurisdictional boundaries.”
I gawk.
The expression is unbecoming of a police chief and I cannot currently bring myself to care.
“FBI and CSI?” My voice pitches upward with the incredulity of a woman whose Tuesday afternoon parking lot errand has apparently escalated into a federal investigation. “W-Why would they be here?”
Dr. Winters wheels the stool slightly closer, crossing one leg over the other with the settled posture of a woman preparing to deliver information she considers important.
