Different.
Not the Chief who’d threatened to dissolve a department with nothing but posture and a Rubik’s cube callout. Not the woman whose eucalyptus frost had made every Alpha in the bullpen reconsider their career choices. Not the rival whose name makes Roman’s temple vein throb or the mystery that Alaric is building a case file around inside his own head.
Just…a woman.
Exhausted. Unguarded. The icy blue hair fanned across the pillow in damp waves that are drying into soft, tousled shapesher regulation bun would never permit. The sharp angles of her face—the cheekbones that could cut glass, the jaw that carries enough tension to power a city grid—have softened in sleep, the muscles releasing their habitual grip on an expression designed to keep the world at maximum distance.
She looks younger.
Which is strange, because thirty-two isn’t old by any metric except the one that Omegas measure themselves against—the biological clock that society has weaponized into a countdown, the whispered expiration date that makes women like Hazel feel ancient when they’re barely into the prime of their lives.
Cobwebs in my pussy, she’d apparently told her friend.
As if there’s a single cobweb in any corner of this woman’s existence. She burns too hot for anything to settle.
I shouldn’t feel this way.
I know this. Can catalogue the reasons with the same clinical precision I’d apply to a field assessment. We don’t know her. Not really. The data points are surface-level: temporary chief, reassigned under suspicious circumstances, past association with Roman that neither of them will elaborate on, a background check that paints a portrait of professional excellence and personal isolation. That’s a dossier, not a relationship. That’s intel, not intimacy.
And yet.
Watching Alaric carry her through that doorway—Alaric, the man who processes emotional stimuli the way most people process tax returns, methodical and detached and operating approximately forty years older than his actual age—carrying her with his jaw clenched and his scent blown wide open in a way I’ve never witnessed from him?—
That freaked me out.
Not the medical emergency. I’ve handled those. Not the unconscious patient. I’ve managed worse, in worse conditions,with less support. What freaked me out was the sight of Alaric Venezuela—composed, analytical, unshakeable Alaric—lookingfrightened. The man who calmly narrated our near-death cliff experience like a nature documentary while the cruiser was still sliding toward the edge. The man who has walked into active crime scenes, armed standoffs, and departmental budget meetings without a visible change in heart rate.
Frightened. Over her.
And Roman, sprinting a mile in five minutes like some unhinged track athlete having a biological episode, bursting through the door like the concept of doorknobs was a personal affront, and then standing over her bed with an expression so raw it practically had a confession written across it in neon?—
These two men. My packmates. My commander and my senior officer. Two of the most emotionally armored Alphas I’ve ever known.
Completely undone by one Omega who’s too stubborn to stay conscious.
And you’re sitting here pretending you’re any different, Torres?
Fair point.
“Because you’re useless in here when Officer Hazel is completely safe and asleep,” I finally answer Roman, keeping my voice at the low volume that the sleeping woman beside me deserves, “compared to being somewhat useful out there, which—by the way—you’re supposed to be patrolling. Not lurking beneath windows like a gargoyle with separation anxiety.”
The silence from outside is operatic.
I can physically feel him composing and discarding responses, each one probably more profane than the last, the Commander’s internal filter working overtime to prevent the kind of insubordination incident that would require paperwork neither of us wants to fill out.
What I get is a grumble.
A sustained, multi-syllable, linguistically creative grumble that includes at least three words I’d need a Norse dictionary to fully translate, followed by the heavy, deliberate footsteps of a six-four Alpha stomping away from the window with the petulant energy of a man who has been told to sit outside the hospital room and knows he can’t argue his way in.
Let him cool off.
The fresh air will do his blood pressure a favor, and the perimeter actually does need watching. Whoever set that station on fire didn’t do it by accident, and if they know the chief’s address—which, in a town this size, everyone knows everything—Roman’s presence out there is the difference between security and assumption.
His footsteps fade. The October night absorbs his retreat into its ambient silence.
And I’m alone with her.
I return my eyes to Officer Hazel, allowing the quiet to settle around us like a second blanket. The apartment’s radiator ticks in the corner—that arrhythmic, metallic heartbeat. Outside, the wind negotiates with the building’s aging windows, producing a low whistle that threads beneath the silence without breaking it.
