The three of them frown.
Simultaneously. In unison. Three separate men with three separate faces producing the exact same expression of concerned disapproval at the exact same moment, like a synchronized team of emotional responders who have been trained to deploy frowns in formation.
It would be funny if it weren’t aimed at me.
It would be funny if the genuine concern on three Alpha faces—faces that belong to men who have known me for less than a week—didn’t make something fragile and long-neglected ache behind my ribs.
I clear my throat.
“Why don’t we eat so the food doesn’t get cold,” I say, because redirecting a conversation away from my personal failures and toward practical logistics is a skill I’ve been honing since I learned that vulnerability invites exploitation and self-disclosure invites judgment. “Um…is there anything I can help with?”
The offer feels clumsy in my mouth. I’m a woman who commands departments and orchestrates investigations and has navigated institutional politics with the strategic acuity of a chess grandmaster, and here I am, standing in my own kitchen, asking three men if there’s something I can contribute to a breakfast I didn’t know was being prepared in a home I’ve been treating like a storage locker.
“Actually, let me go get my wallet,” I add, already turning toward the nightstand where I keep it. “So I can pay you guys.”
“Pay?”
Three voices.
In unison.
Again.
The word ricochets through the apartment like a rubber bullet, bouncing off each Alpha with identical incredulity. I stop mid-turn, caught between the nightstand and the kitchen by the wall of synchronized disbelief that three men have just erected in my path.
Roman speaks first, because Roman always speaks first when the emotion is outrage-adjacent.
“Why thefuckwould you pay us?”
I blink.
The question seems self-evident to me. “You guys clearly took care of me last night. Went out and bought food at some point. Bought other groceries.” I gesture at the counter—the eggs, the berries, the bread that is producing its fourth roundof toast. “And cooked breakfast for everyone. The least I can do is compensate you for the time spent. I can cover the groceries too?—”
“Hazel.”
Oakley’s voice cuts through my fiscal planning with the gentle, absolute firmness of someone who is not going to negotiate.
“You’re not compensating anyone. Just sit down.”
The instruction is simple. Unadorned. Delivered without the edge of command or the softness of pity, just the straightforward expectation of a man who has made breakfast and would like the person he made it for to sit at the table and eat it.
I frown.
The expression is reflexive—my default response to being told what to do by anyone, regardless of their intentions. Compliance without resistance goes against the fundamental operating principles I’ve maintained since I was old enough to understand that accepting things from people creates debts, and debts create vulnerabilities, and vulnerabilities create the specific kind of leverage that has been used against me by everyone from academy bullies to a drug lord father who treated generosity as a collar.
Nothing is free, Martinez. You know this. Everything has a price, and the price is always calculated after you’ve already accepted the gift.
But Alaric is moving.
He crosses the small space between the counter and the table with the unhurried grace of a man who navigates rooms the way he navigates conversations—deliberately, with awareness of exactly how much space he occupies and what that occupation communicates. His hand finds the back of the chair—the one at the head of the table, the position of authority in any seating arrangement—and pulls it out with a single, fluid motion.
Then he gestures.
Just his hand. An open palm, angled toward the chair, the universal invitation that doesn’t demand or assume but simply…offers. His dark eyes meet mine with the steady, patient expression of a man who is not going to argue or insist or explain. He’s just going to stand there, holding a chair, until I decide what to do about it.
He pulled out the chair at the head of the table.
Not a side seat. Not the chair closest to the kitchen. The head.
