The bitterness in my voice is unprofessional. I know this. I catalog it, file it undervulnerabilities displayed in front of unknown parties, and make a mental note to reinforce that particular crack in my armor before the next interaction.
Alaric laughs.
The sound is unexpected—warm and genuine, resonating from somewhere deep in his chest, carrying the bourbon notes of his scent in an olfactory wave that makes the small office feel momentarily like a place where laughter belongs. It’s not mocking. Not performative. Just the honest amusement ofa man who’s lived long enough to recognize irony when it introduces itself.
“Your boss Callahan?” he asks, and the familiar use of the director’s name sends another layer of implication settling over the conversation like sediment.
He knows Callahan.
By name. Without hesitation. Without needing context.
How deep does this go?
I nod slowly, watching his face for the micro-expressions that betray truths his words might not offer. He gives me nothing—his features settling into that same composed neutrality he’d been wearing when I walked in, the kind of controlled blankness that only people with extensive interrogation experience can maintain.
Former metropolitan police chief. He’s been on both sides of this kind of conversation more times than either of us can count.
He pushes off the wall and moves to the opposite side of my desk—giving me the space, I realize, to claim my territory fully. The gesture is subtle enough that someone less attuned to power dynamics might miss it entirely. He’s not retreating. He’s repositioning. Establishing himself as a visitor in a space he’s conceding is mine, and the distinction between those two postures speaks volumes about the kind of authority he wields.
He doesn’t compete with dominance. He outmaneuvers it.
I have to actively resist the pull of his scent as he passes. It’s harder than it should be. Where Oakley’s blood orange and cinnamon had been a whiplash—sudden, sharp, a biological sucker-punch I hadn’t been braced for—Alaric’s burnt vanilla and cedarwood operates on an entirely different frequency. It doesn’t hit. Itwraps. Curls around you like smoke from a glass of bourbon held close to a fireplace, warm and layered andseductive in a way that bypasses the defensive reflexes entirely because it doesn’t register as an attack.
It registers as comfort.
And that’s infinitely more dangerous.
Oakley’s scent had been a whip crack across my senses—violent, electric, impossible to ignore. This is its antithesis. If Oakley was the shock of cold water, Alaric is the slow heat of a bath you didn’t realize you needed, the temperature rising degree by degree until you’re in too deep to feel the burn.
Two Alphas. Two entirely different weapons. Both aimed at a woman who hasn’t let an Alpha past her defenses in years.
The universe has a sick fucking sense of humor.
I force my expression neutral, sitting straighter in the chair, and meet his gaze across the desk where he’s now settled into the visitor’s seat with the comfort of a man who’s occupied every chair in every room and found them all adequate.
“Callahan isn’t stupid, and he isn’t blind,” Alaric says, his tone shifting into something more measured. Analytical. The private investigator surfacing beneath the personable exterior. “If he sent you here while they investigate, it’s probably to ensure no one further sets you up while he handles things from inside. Putting distance between you and whoever is pulling strings makes you harder to frame with a second incident.”
He pauses, and the dark eyes study me with the kind of unhurried assessment that I recognize from my own mirror.
“However.”
There’s always a however.
“Whether you’re going back or not will be determined by whatever evidence they can find to prove your innocence versus everyone working to make you look guilty. And from what I’ve seen of these situations—” The corner of his mouth lifts, just barely, a micro-expression that carries the weight of personalexperience. “—the people doing the framing usually have more resources than the people being framed.”
The assessment is clinical, accurate, and lands with the precision of a knife I didn’t see coming. Not because I disagree—every word aligns with the conclusions already mapped on my corkboard at home—but because hearing someone else articulate my situation with such unflinching clarity strips away the thin veneer of optimism I’ve been maintaining for Callahan’s benefit.
I huff—a short, sharp exhale that sends my eucalyptus frost rippling through the small office in a wave of cold displeasure.
“Why do you give a hoot?”
The question is deliberately blunt, wielded like the tool it is. I’ve learned that directness is the fastest way to separate genuine interest from strategic positioning, and this man—with his intimate knowledge of Callahan, his too-comfortable presence in my chair, his convenient arrival alongside an oversight crew—has too many moving parts for me to trust on presentation alone.
Alaric smirks.
It’s nothing like Oakley’s grin. Where the younger Alpha’s smile had been bright and disarming, this is slow, contained, the kind of expression that reveals less than it conceals. The smirk of a man who’s been asked that question before and enjoys the asking.
“I don’t.”
