“Oh! Officer Martinez?”
Hazel pauses.
Mid-departure. Her hand still in mine, her body angled toward the shelves, her momentum interrupted by the social contact that small towns produce with the reliable, unavoidable frequency of a weather pattern.
She turns.
And the transformation is instantaneous—the bookshop excitement receding behind the professional composure that Hazel deploys like a uniform. Spine straightening. Shoulders squaring. The smile that arrives is warm but measured, carrying the calibrated friendliness of a public servant who is accustomed to being recognized and has a face for it.
“What are you doing in this town?” the silver-haired woman asks, her tone carrying the particular, invested curiosity of someone who considers Officer Martinez a character in a narrative she’s been following.
Hazel’s smile widens. “Just visiting.”
“Oh, we hope not for work!” the other woman says, adjusting her reading glasses with the nervous, fidgeting energy of someone who is excited and trying to manage it. “This place is rather peaceful. We’d hate for any of that Sweetwater business to follow you here.”
Hazel laughs.
Nervously. The sound that escapes when her professional composure and her genuine self are negotiating in real time. “No, no. I’m just here with…”
She trails off.
The sentence stalling on the word that should followwith—the descriptor, the label, the relational identifier that would complete the introduction and define what the tall man standing behind her represents in her life.
She doesn’t know what to call me.
Not because she doesn’t know what I am. Because the vocabulary for what I am hasn’t been used by her mouth enough times to feel natural. “Partner” is too clinical. “Boyfriend” is too casual. “Alpha” is too biological. And the word she probably wants to use—the one that sits behind herteeth with the shy, untested weight of something she’s only recently learned to want—is too new to say in public.
I move.
Stepping behind her. Closing the distance between us so that my chest is against her back, the height difference placing my chin at exactly the right elevation to rest lightly on the top of her head. My arm wraps around her waist—the gesture unhurried, proprietary in the best sense, communicating ownership that is mutual rather than unilateral.
She fits.
Against me. The way she fit against the booth at the brunch place and the way her hand fits in mine. The specific, ergonomic compatibility of two bodies that have found their configuration and settled into it.
“Alaric Venezuela,” I say, meeting the women’s eyes over the top of Hazel’s head. “One of her Alphas.”
They gawk.
The synchronized, upward-tilting, mouth-opening expression of two women who have just had a significant piece of community information revealed and are processing it at the speed of gossip.
“O-O-OH?!” Silver-hair manages. Her eyes dart between Hazel’s face and mine, the rapid assessment of a woman who is rewriting a narrative she thought she understood. “You’re not with…the other pack? From the station?”
Hazel laughs again.
This time it’s more genuine—the amusement of a woman who is hearing the assumption she expected and has the answer ready.
“No,” she says. “We actually parted ways. They’re dating some new deputy Omega, I think.”
The women exchange a look.
The specific, rapid-fire, information-sharing glance that passes between two people who know something the speaker doesn’t.
“No, she’s not dating them,” reading-glasses says.
Hazel frowns.
I feel the frown against my chest—the subtle shift in her posture, the tension entering her shoulders beneath my arm.
