Not because I reached for hers. Not because the public visibility strategy requires it. Because we’ve been walking through this town for six hours and at some point during the third boutique, her hand found mine and stayed.
And she hasn’t let go.
We’ve spent the day throughout Sweetwater—starting in the morning with the practical necessities and gradually, as the hours softened into afternoon, transitioning into the things that aren’t necessary but matter.
Furniture first. A bedside lamp for her room that she’d spotted in a window display and stared at for thirty seconds too long—a ceramic base in a deep teal with a linen shade that cast the kind of warm, amber light you’d read by. I bought it before she could calculate the price and talk herself out of wanting it. Throw pillows for the armchair—she’d run her hand across a display of velvet options with the slow, tactile reverence of a woman who has not allowed herself the luxury of choosing soft things. Two candles. Lavender and cedar. The scents she’d lingered near at a market stall, her Omega physiology drawing her to fragrances that complement her natural chemistry.
Clothes next.
This had been the revelation.
Watching Hazel navigate a clothing store with the cautious, overwhelmed uncertainty of a woman who has not shopped for herself in years. She’d gravitated immediately to the black section—the monochromatic, functional, uniform-adjacent pieces that her wardrobe consisted entirely of—and I’d gently redirected. Not forcefully. Not with the Alpha authoritythat I could have deployed. With suggestions.What about this?offered beside a sage-green knit sweater.Have you tried this color?next to a deep burgundy blouse that would make her amber eyes incandescent.
She’d tried things on.
Tentatively at first. The way you try on an identity you’re not sure belongs to you—pulling garments off hangers with the specific, uncertain energy of a woman who is not accustomed to seeing herself in clothes that were chosen for aesthetic rather than function.
And then the knitted dress.
She’d stopped in front of it like a woman encountering an old friend in an unexpected place. A cream-colored, cable-knit dress that fell to mid-thigh, the material thick and soft, the silhouette managing to be both modest and devastating in the way that knitwear achieves when the woman wearing it has a figure that the fabric conforms to with geometric inevitability.
“I’ve seen this on my Pinterest board,” she’d whispered. The words carrying the quiet awe of a woman who has encountered the physical manifestation of something she’d only allowed herself to want digitally.
She’d checked the price tag.
And put it back.
“Hazel.”
“It’s too much.”
“Hazel.”
“Alaric, I can’t?—”
I’d taken it off the rack. Handed it to the saleswoman. Produced my card.
Because money does not matter.
Not for this. Not for a woman who has denied herself a cream knitted dress because a price tag told her she wasn’t allowed to want it. Our pack has been saving for years—systematically,deliberately, three officers contributing to a shared fund that was earmarked for the future. For the Omega we hadn’t met yet. For the life we intended to build when the right person arrived and the building could begin.
We could buy her a house or two with ease if she wanted it.
A dress is nothing.
A dress that makes her eyes light up the way they lit up when she pulled it from the rack is everything.
After the clothing stores: brunch. Donuts from a bakery that reminded her of the one in Sweetwater Falls where the kind Omega gives her free pastries. Coffee on a patio, because the weather had decided to cooperate—one of those October days where the cold takes a holiday and the sun performs with the generous, warm-toned commitment of a star that knows winter is coming and wants to give the people one more afternoon worth remembering. Light sweaters and jeans. Her hand in mine across the small, iron-top table. The lavender-and-vanilla of her scent mixing with the coffee steam in a combination that I filed underthings I want to smell every morning for the rest of my life.
Then the drive to the cottage town.
Two hours along a lake road that wound through pine forest and granite outcroppings with the scenic, postcard-quality beauty that Montana produces when it decides to show off. Hazel had watched the landscape through the passenger window with the quiet, absorptive attention of a woman who is seeing something she’s been reading about in novels and is discovering that reality exceeds the description. The lake had appeared in stages—first a gleam through the trees, then a widening silver surface, then the full reveal as the road crested a ridge and the water spread out below us, reflecting the afternoon sky with the mirror-flat stillness of a body that has been unbothered by wind.
I have a boat docked here.
Few people know. It’s a private indulgence—a thirty-two-foot cruiser that I purchased three years ago and maintain with the same meticulous attention I apply to case files. The weather today is making me tempted to go check on it. Take it out. An evening sunset ride across the lake with the woman whose hand hasn’t left mine in six hours. I could make it happen—pull a few strings with the marina, get it prepped in an hour.
But right now it’s afternoon.
