“Got a problem?”
He bites his tongue. Literally—I can see the muscles in his jaw shifting as he physically restrains whatever ill-advised response was about to escape. His head shakes once, tight, the motion of a man who has belatedly realized that the hill he chose to die on has an active volcano.
“No, Chief.”
“Good answer.”
I roll my eyes—directed at the room in general, at the entire collective failure of professionalism and basic decency that apparently constitutes the Sweetwater Falls Sheriff’s Department—and raise my voice just enough to ensure every corner receives the message.
“Get back to work. All of you. Those task assignments are due by end of day tomorrow, and if I hear one more excuse involving scheduling conflicts, training rotations, or any other creative fiction, I will personally hand-deliver performance reviewsto the county board with my professional recommendation attached.”
Movement. Immediate, motivated, the kind of sudden productivity that would be gratifying if it weren’t so pathetically overdue.
I stride toward the side exit, pausing only to address the Alpha still standing in the doorway, watching me with those green eyes and that barely-contained grin that I refuse to find disarming.
“Park the cruiser next to the horses.” I don’t slow down, don’t stop, just deliver the instruction in passing with the directional efficiency of someone who has places to be and precisely zero time for additional conversation. “Not hard to miss in this small-ass town with its small-ass parking lot.”
“Copy that, Chief.”
The title rolls off his tongue with something that sounds dangerously close to genuine respect—not the reflexive, rank-mandated variety that I’ve been extracting from this department through threats and force of will, but something earned. Offered. Given freely by someone who apparently decided I deserved it before I demanded it.
Don’t read into it, Martinez.
He’s oversight. He’s here to evaluate you, monitor you, report back to whoever sent him. That smile doesn’t change the politics. That scent doesn’t change the situation.
That scent.
Stop thinking about the goddamn scent.
The autumn air hits my face as I push through the department’s side exit, cool enough to chase the lingering traces of candied blood orange and cinnamon from my sinuses. I stand on the concrete step for a moment, letting Montana wind replace the claustrophobic cocktail of institutional stagnation andunexpected pheromones with something cleaner. Something I can control.
My hand rises to my face. Discreet. Practiced.
No blood. My nose is dry.
Small mercies.
Inside, I can hear the muffled sounds of a department reluctantly returning to function—chairs rolling, keyboards typing with actual purpose, the tentative hum of people who’ve been reminded that the woman in charge is not, in fact, going to tolerate their carefully cultivated incompetence.
The board at home waits for me. The missing Omegas. The shell companies. The new Omega smiling from her pinned photograph at the center of every question I haven’t answered yet.
And now, an oversight crew.
Sent to assist.
Or sent to watch.
An Alpha with auburn hair and green eyes and a scent that made my biology sit up and bark for the first time in years stands somewhere behind me in that building, and I don’t know yet whether he’s a complication or a resource or both.
Deputy Oakley Torres.
Not Oak. Not the lead. Thirty years old with a Pokémon reference and the only set of boundaries anyone’s stated to my face since I got here.
I exhale through my nose, watching my breath mist in the October air.
At this rate, I doubt my patience is going to last another week of this level of ignorance…
CHAPTER 3
