I nod.
And reach for her face.
Gently. My fingers find a few strands of icy blue hair that have fallen across her forehead—drying now, curling slightly at the ends in the way that hair does when it’s been freed from the tyranny of regulation buns and allowed to exist as it naturally wants to. I tuck them behind her ear. Then lift her chin.
Just slightly. Just enough that she’s looking up at me, her hazel-brown eyes meeting mine from a distance that is neither professional nor intimate but somewhere new. Somewhere that doesn’t have a name yet.
“No more feeling like shit,” I say, and my voice carries the quiet authority of a man who has made a decision and does not intend to revisit it. “You’re going to feel empowered. The way you project empowerment to the world when you wear that uniform—that’s not the performance. That’syou. We’re just going to make sure the woman inside the uniform gets the same standard of care that the Chief demands for everyone else.”
We share a look.
Long enough for the October light to shift angles through the window. Long enough for the residual scents at the table to settle into something that smells less like three separate Alphas and more like a combined signature—frozen pine and burnt vanilla and candied blood orange blending into a composite that my brain files ashomeand my professional judgment files asdangerousand my heart files somewhere between the two.
“How long will you guys be here?” she asks.
“Seems like less than three weeks for now. Or as long as the investigation requires.”
She nods. “Same timeline. Hopefully.”
“Then let’s do this.” I allow the corner of my mouth to lift. “Temporary pack life with us officers, Chief.”
She cringes.
Full-body. The physical recoil of a woman whose aesthetic sensibilities have been so thoroughly offended by a sentence that her entire nervous system has participated in the objection.
“Eww. That sounded so cringe.”
I chuckle.
Low. Warm. The sound surprises me—not because I’m incapable of laughter, but because genuine, un-performative amusement is a rarity in my operational catalogue, and this woman has produced it twice in the span of a morning.
“Hey. I’m ‘old,’” I say, deploying the word Oakley uses with the air quotes it deserves, “but that didn’t sound weird at all.”
“It’s your tone,” she says, and there’s a flicker of something in her expression—the ghost of a smirk, the faintest evidence of a woman who knows how to play and hasn’t had anyone safe to play with. “Your tone makes it sound creepy.”
“My tone is distinguished.”
“Your tone is a true-crime podcast narrator.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
She huffs.
But her hand moves.
Slowly. With the tentative, exploratory motion of someone reaching for something they’re not sure they’re allowed to touch. Her fingers find mine—not grabbing, not holding, just…making contact. The pads of her fingertips against my knuckles, the lightest possible version of reaching for another person’s hand.
“Can I have one more hug?” she whispers.
And the question—the fact that she asks, the fact that she uses the wordcanas if permission is required, as if hugs are something she needs to apply for rather than simply receive—tells me everything the case files didn’t.
I smile.
Not the smirk. Not the investigator’s controlled expression of professional satisfaction. A real smile. The kind that reaches the eyes, that activates the muscles around the orbital bone that lie-detection training says cannot be faked. The kind that I haven’t produced in long enough that the muscles involved feel stiff from disuse.
“You can have as many hugs as you desire, Hazel.”
She steps into me.
