I count six. The department cruisers are expected—standard issue, the paint jobs carrying the same county markings as theone we arrived in. But beside them, arranged with the pride of ownership that car enthusiasts unconsciously display in the spacing between vehicles: a matte-black Dodge Camaro that has no business existing in a town with a population under four thousand. A silver Mercedes-Benz C-Class that I recognize as a model I used to see in the city parking garages of the financial district. A midnight-blue pickup truck that looks vintage—seventies, maybe, the chrome trim polished to a mirror finish, the kind of vehicle that someone has invested time and affection into maintaining.
And two other trucks. Standard. Practical. The reliable, mud-capable vehicles that actually make sense for a Montana property.
“We park in here,” Oakley explains, cutting the engine, “just in case drones are flying above. Aerial surveillance is one of the harder variables to control, so we minimize the visible footprint. Anyone doing a pass sees a farmhouse and a barn. The vehicles stay hidden.”
He turns to me.
The smirk settles into something warmer.
“But if anyone criminal tries to come on these lands, it’s instant trespassing and lockup. So.” He tilts his head, the auburn curls shifting with the motion, the hazel of his eyes catching the barn’s overhead light. “Our girl is safe.”
I give him a side-eye.
The specific, one-eyebrow-lowered, other-eyebrow-raised expression that I reserve for statements that require immediate interrogation.
“Our girl?”
He doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t backpedal. Doesn’t offer the sheepish correction that most people produce when they’ve been caught making a possessive claim and the person they’re claiming is staring atthem with the evaluative intensity of a woman who has opinions about being claimed.
Instead, he smirks.
“You are our Omega now,” he says, the words carrying zero hesitation and maximum conviction. “So yes. Our girl.”
He punctuates it with a wink.
The audacity of this man.
Thirty years old. Auburn curls. Winks like it’s punctuation. Calls me “our girl” with the same casual confidence he uses to administer counter-agents and stage decoy apartments and slide across cruiser hoods?—
He gets out.
I reach for my door handle.
And then I watch, through the windshield, as Oakley Torres rounds the front of the cruiser in a movement that is part jog and entirely unnecessary—his hand bracing on the hood as he slides across it with the fluid, athletic grace of a man whose body treats conventional pathways as suggestions rather than requirements.
He lands on my side.
Opens the door.
And stands there, one hand on the door frame, the other extended toward me, the candied blood orange of his scent arriving with his proximity—close, warm, sweet, threaded with something darker beneath the citrus that I haven’t identified yet but that my Omega physiology is cataloguing with an interest that my professional brain finds inconvenient.
I smirk.
Just slightly. The controlled, one-corner-of-the-mouth lift that is the Hazel Martinez equivalent of a standing ovation.
“You’re trying to impress me now, Rookie?”
He laughs.
The sound bouncing off the barn’s interior walls, warm and unguarded, carrying the specific delight of a man who hasbeen called something he’s going to argue about and is looking forward to the argument.
“Come on,” he says, and the grin is full now—the sunrise-bright, impossible-to-resist expression that I’m starting to understand is not a social tool but an actual manifestation of how Oakley Torres experiences the world. “I’m not a rookie anymore.”
Another wink.
He offers his hand.
