Urgency. Real, unmasked urgency.
“But I can’t do that with you here.” He swallows hard, and the motion looks painful, like every word is being pulled from somewhere he’d rather keep locked. “Keeping you in this building, in this city, puts you at risk in ways I’m not willing to articulate in a room that might be monitored. And since you don’t have a pack?—”
The sentence detonates.
Not the words themselves—I’ve heard the pack argument a thousand times, from academy instructors, from colleagues, from every well-meaning Alpha who believed an unmated Omega was somehow incomplete—but the implication behind them. That my packlessness isn’t just a social inconvenience. It’s a tactical vulnerability. One that whoever orchestrated this investigation has clearly identified and intends to exploit.
A groan rips from my throat before I can cage it.
“I don’t need a group of men with fucking balls to be a force to be reckoned with,” I snap, the vulgarity sharpened by years of swallowing this particular brand of condescension. Myscent flares again—eucalyptus frost crystallizing into something jagged, aggressive, the kind of olfactory warning that tells every Alpha in a fifty-foot radius toback off. “I’ve handled every threat this department has faced without a pack propping me up. I don’t need one now.”
Callahan chuckles.
It’s brief, weary, tinged with a fondness that catches me off guard.
“You’re absolutely right,” he agrees, and the sincerity is undeniable. “You’ve proven that a hundred times over. No one in this building would argue otherwise, Martinez, and if they tried, I’d handle it personally.”
But.
There’s always a but.
“But you’re at a disadvantage as an Omega,” he continues carefully, like a man navigating a minefield of his own making. “The system—” He pauses when my eyes narrow into something that could cut glass, and he puts both hands up in a gesture of surrender that would be comical under different circumstances. “Their words, not mine.”
I roll my eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t detach from their sockets.
“The government has pretty much dismissed your ‘usefulness,’” he continues, navigating the air quotes with the kind of visible distaste that tells me he’s reciting someone else’s language, not his own. “As a packless Omega of your age, the official assessment is that you wouldn’t have underlying motives for sabotage—no pack to enrich, no mate to protect, no biological incentive for power acquisition.”
Translated: she’s old enough to be useless and alone enough to be harmless.
How fucking generous of them.
“That assessment works in your favor for now,” Callahan adds, his tone shifting to strategic, the director replacing the sympathetic mentor. “It means they’re not pursuing criminal charges—yet. But until I can point fingers at whoever actually orchestrated this, I need you to choose. Leave or reassignment.”
The room narrows.
Not literally—the walls don’t move, the ceiling doesn’t lower, the physical dimensions remain exactly as they’ve always been. But my world contracts, the edges curling inward like paper held to flame, until the only things that exist are this desk, this man, and the two doors he’s offering that both lead to the same abyss.
I cross my arms, feeling the press of my own muscles, the tension coiled in every fiber of trained physique that I’ve spent a decade honing into a weapon. The scar tissue along my ribs pulls with the motion, a reminder that I’ve survived worse. Cigarette burns, lash marks, the kind of violence that leaves topography on your skin—and I survived all of it without a pack. Without anyone.
I’ll survive this too.
“If I choose leave,” I say slowly, each word deliberate, “it makes me look guilty. It gives whoever did this exactly what they want—my absence read as admission. Every colleague, every subordinate, every goddamn intern in this building will look at that empty desk and draw conclusions that no amount of exoneration will fully erase.”
I pause, letting the silence build.
“And I’ll lose my fucking mind.”
Callahan chuckles again, softer this time, and there’s something in his expression that looks almost paternal. Not mocking—never that. Just the recognition of a truth we both know intimately.
“I’m not mocking you, Martinez, but you probably would lose your mind.” He taps the desk with two fingers, a rhythmichabit I’ve watched him employ during every difficult decision in the past decade. “Which is why reassignment might be more justifiable. A smaller jurisdiction where you can maintain operational status, stay active, keep your skills from atrophying while the investigation runs its course.”
My frown carves itself deep enough to ache.
“Small town.”
He nods, already pulling a folder from his top drawer—which means he’d planned for this, had anticipated my response, had prepared the alternative before I’d even sat down. The realization sends a complicated rush through me. Equal parts gratitude that he knows me well enough to predict my choices and fury that this situation exists at all.
“Sweetwater Falls,” he says, opening the folder to reveal a sparse dossier. Aerial photographs of a town that looks like it was assembled from a postcard catalogue—rolling hills, ranch land stretching to the horizon, a main street that probably has more horses than parking meters. “Small population. Low crime rate—suspiciously low, actually, but we can discuss that later. It would be a good place to lay low while I work the angles here.”
