Tries.
But the expression doesn’t fully form because the vein at his temple is already pulsing—that specific, telltale throb that I remember from academy days, the one that appeared every time I outscored him, every time an instructor acknowledged my performance before his, every time reality reminded him that the Omega he’d been conditioned to underestimate was standing on the same podium.
“Commander,” he corrects, and the title comes out clipped, bitten off at the edges, served with enough barely restrained irritation to season a full-course meal. “Commander Roman Kade. Oversight unit lead.”
Commander.
Nowthatmakes me smirk.
Full, unrestrained, devastatingly satisfied. The kind of expression that I know from experience makes Roman’s blood pressure spike because it communicates in no uncertain terms that I am impressed against my will, and my will is something he has never once managed to override.
Commander. He climbed the ranks. Fought his way up, probably with the same obsessive, sleep-deprived intensity that carried us both through the academy. Built something from the competitive fury that used to have us at each other’s throats.
Good for him. Genuinely.
Still going to give him hell about it, though.
Our eyes hold. The stare between us generates the kind of tension that makes the October air feel thinner, charged, like the atmosphere before lightning finds ground. His frozen-pine scent and my eucalyptus frost collide in the space between our bodies, creating a microclimate of cold that anyone with functioning olfactory receptors could read as territorial from fifty yards.
Two predators. One parking lot. Zero intention of backing down.
I check him out.
Deliberately. Slowly. From the polished tactical boots up through the gear-fitted frame, across the broad chest, along the tattooed forearms, to the ice-blue eyes that track my assessment with the coiled awareness of a man who is being evaluated and cannot decide whether to be offended or pleased.
He really has become extra attractive. The bastard. As if the universe hadn’t already handed him enough genetic advantages, it went back and added a second coat.
“Wait—”
Oakley’s voice breaks through the standoff like a pebble dropped into a frozen lake, cracking the surface tension with the cheerful obliviousness of someone who either doesn’t read rooms or reads them perfectly and chooses chaos.
“Y’allknowone another?”
He’s materializing at the edge of my peripheral vision, leaning against the cruiser’s hood with his arms crossed and his auburn hair catching October light like bottled fire. His green eyes bounce between Roman and me with the delighted curiosity of someone who’s just stumbled into the most interesting thing that’s happened all week.
“How do you even know her?”
Alaric’s voice comes from behind me.
Not beside me. Not at a respectful conversational distance.
Behind me.
I have to look over my shoulder to confirm what my senses are already screaming, and sure enough—Alaric Venezuela is standingdirectlybehind me. Close enough that the burnt vanilla of his scent is curling into the space between my shoulder blades like a hand resting on my back. Close enough that if I stepped backward, I’d collide with a wall of beige coat and cedarwood and the kind of quiet, territorial proximity that most Alphas are too smart to attempt with me.
Most.
I arch an eyebrow.
The expression is slow, deliberate, loaded with the same energy I’d deployed on Dennings in the bullpen—except this time, it’s not aimed at incompetence. It’s aimed at the audacity of a man who has known me for approximately twenty minutes and is already testing the perimeter of my personal space like a cat seeing how close it can get to the counter before getting sprayed.
Alaric smirks.
And theaudacityof that smirk—warm, unbothered, carrying the confident amusement of a man who knows exactly what he did and is waiting to see what I’ll do about it—should be grounds for immediate ejection from my airspace.
“Are you going to give me a lecture on personal space?” he asks, and the question is so precisely calibrated between genuine curiosity and playful challenge that I can’t determine which side it lands on.
I begin to cross my arms.
