One finger drops.
“Option two: I conduct a full performance review of every officer in this department. Six months of workflow, case handling, and productivity metrics. And I determine—personally—whether each of you will last long enough to collect your holiday pay.”
The remaining finger drops.
My hands return to my sides.
The silence is so complete, so total, that I could probably hear their heartbeats if I concentrated. A room full of officers—mostly Alphas and Betas, trained in authority, armed and badged and presumably competent enough to pass their entrance exams—and not a single one can meet my eyes.
This is what a department looks like when it’s been left to rot.
This is what happens when no one demands better.
Someone was keeping this place docile on purpose. The question is who, and why.
The thought files itself alongside the other red-string connections on my board at home. A department that doesn’t investigate. A crime rate that doesn’t add up. Officers who’ve been conditioned to do nothing and expect nothing in return. This isn’t laziness—it’s engineering. Someone built this complacency deliberately, created an environment where questions aren’t asked because the people paid to ask them have been systematically trained not to.
And I’m standing in the middle of it with a target on my back and a corkboard full of missing Omegas.
Fantastic.
I’m about to issue specific assignments—because if these people need their hands held through basic policing, then by god I’ll hold them with a grip that leaves bruises—when a sound cuts through the charged silence.
A whistle.
Low, casual, appreciative in tone—the kind of sound someone makes walking into a room and reading its energy in a single breath. It comes from the direction of the main entrance, and every head in the bullpen swivels toward it with the synchronized urgency of people desperate for any distraction from the woman who just threatened to end their careers.
I look down the length of the room.
And my lungs forget how to work.
He’s leaning against the doorframe like the building was designed around his silhouette—one shoulder braced against the wood, arms crossed loosely over a chest that fills out his navy tactical jacket with the kind of lean, athletic precision that speaks of sprinter’s discipline rather than weight-room vanity. His frame is compact but calibrated, every line suggesting speed over bulk, agility over brute force. Tall enough to commandattention but not so tall that he towers—five-ten, maybe, which some distant corner of my brain recognizes as exactly my height.
Same height.
Why does that matter?
It doesn’t. Shut up.
His hair is the first thing that properly registers—dark auburn, catching the overhead fluorescents in a way that pulls copper and red-orange from the strands like they’re hoarding stolen fire. It’s slightly tousled, pushed back from his forehead with the kind of careless styling that takes either zero effort or exactly the right amount, and the warmth of it frames a face that is aggressively,offensivelyyoung.
Green eyes.
Not the muted olive that most people describe as green. Actual, unambiguous green—bright, sharp, lit with an intelligence that his relaxed posture is working hard to disguise. A small scar bisects his left eyebrow, white against sun-touched skin, the only imperfection on a face that otherwise looks like it was assembled by someone who understood exactly what would make an Omega’s hindbrain pay attention.
Don’t. Don’t you dare.
But it’s his scent that devastates me.
It hits before I’m ready—a wall of pheromones that slams through the bullpen’s stale air like a fist through glass. Candied blood orange peel, the kind of bright citrus sweetness that makes your mouth water on impact. Cinnamon bark, warm and spiced, layered beneath the citrus with a complexity that suggests depth beyond the initial sweetness. And threading through both—snow-dusted cedar, clean and cool and grounding, with undertones of white musk and toasted sugar that linger in the sinuses like the memory of something you didn’t know you were missing.
Alpha.
The word fires through my nervous system like a current, which iswrong. I don’t react to Alpha scents. Haven’t since my suppressants leveled the biological playing field into something I can control. I’ve worked alongside Alphas for over a decade—shared squad cars, shared crime scenes, shared the suffocating proximity of stakeouts that lasted forty-eight hours in vehicles that didn’t believe in ventilation. Their pheromones are background noise to me. Static. Irrelevant data my brain has learned to filter with the same efficiency I apply to everything that threatens my focus.
This scent is not background noise.
This scent is a fucking marching band.
