Roman, Oakley, and Alaric are different.
Their pack isn’t perfect. The bickering alone could fill a case file. Roman’s territorial aggression clashes with Oakley’s boundary-pushing charm, and both of them orbit Alaric’s composed authority with the grudging deference of planets that don’t entirely agree with gravitational law. They argue. They insult. They threaten each other with property damage and reference broken arms with the casual intimacy of people who have survived each other’s worst.
But beneath all of it—beneath the profanity and the posturing and the morning coffee disputes—there’s something that my old pack never had.
Choice.
They chose each other. Not because the department assigned them. Not because the biology demanded it. Not because a placement committee looked at their designations and decided they were “compatible.” They chose this. The fights and the trust and the breakfast routine and the three a.m. emergency responses and the knowledge of how each other takes their coffee.
Their union looks almost destined, if you look at it from that perspective.
Oakley sets the last plate down—mine, positioned with a care that makes me suspect the portion size has been calibrated to encourage eating without overwhelming a stomach that’s been running on protein shakes and spite. Scrambled eggs, bacon cooked to a crispness that suggests he did ask someone’s preference—Roman’s, probably, since the man has opinions about everything—and toast with butter already applied.
The three of them settle into their chairs.
Alaric to my left, his coffee already between his palms, the dark circles under his eyes softening as the first sip registers. Roman across from me, his ice-blue gaze no longer competitive but watchful—monitoring my color, my steadiness, the way I hold my fork, probably running the same field assessment he’d been conducting since I’d woken up against his chest. Oakley to my right, the dish towel finally removed from his shoulder, green eyes bright despite the early hour, his scent warm with the satisfaction of someone who has cooked a meal and is about to watch it be eaten.
Their combined scents merge in the small space.
Frozen pine and burnt vanilla and candied blood orange, layering over the food smells—bacon grease and fresh coffee and buttered toast—until the apartment doesn’t smell like mildew and regret anymore.
It smells like a kitchen.
It smells like the fantasy you keep locked behind bulletproof glass, Martinez. The cast-iron skillet. The herb garden. The table set for people who chose to be there.
I look at my plate.
Then at the three men who filled it.
I don’t understand why I’m calm.
By every metric that governs my emotional responses, I should be on high alert. Three Alphas in my personal space. A night of vulnerability documented by people who could use it against me. A breakfast that creates debt. A dynamic that is evolving faster than my defenses can fortify against.
But the alert doesn’t come.
The eucalyptus frost that I maintain like a moat—the defensive scent that keeps the world at arm’s length, that has been operational since I was sixteen and learned that proximity equals danger—is quiet this morning. Not absent. Not dismantled. Just…resting. Sitting beneath the surface, available if needed, but not deploying.
And the cocoa undertone—the one that I suppress, the one that only surfaces when I’m unguarded—is present. Warm. Threading through my scent with the timid persistence of something that’s been locked away too long and is testing whether the door is actually open.
I pick up my fork.
The eggs are good.
Reallygood. Seasoned with something Oakley found or brought—a hint of smoked paprika, maybe, or chili flake, something that gives the scramble a depth that convenience-store protein shakes have been failing to provide for longer than I want to calculate.
I take another bite.
And another.
The bacon crunches between my teeth with the specific, satisfying resistance of something prepared with attention. The toast is buttered edge to edge. The coffee—two sugars, splash of milk, a decade-old memory served in a new mug—is warm in my hands.
I don’t know what any of this means.
Don’t know whether this breakfast is a beginning or an anomaly, whether these men are a chapter or a footnote, whether the calm I’m feeling is genuine safety or the deceptive stillness of a body too exhausted to maintain its own defenses.
I don’t know if the corkboard on the wall will yield answers. Don’t know if the station fire was targeted or random. Don’t know if the suppressants are going to kill me or if the investigation back home will clear my name or if the missing Omegas of Sweetwater Falls are connected to the new Omega sitting in my old chair.
I don’t know any of it.
