Quietly.
“It is a big deal,” I say, and the words feel strange in my mouth—foreign, like a phrase in a language I’m learning for the first time despite having all the vocabulary. “And I’m…scheduled for an appointment. By the end of the week. To see an Omega specialist. To check things out.”
He nods.
Slowly. The approval in the gesture is quiet but present—not the patronizing kind, not thegood girl, you’re doing the right thingvariety that would earn him a second karate chop to the forehead. Just the acknowledgment of a man who heard a problem, asked about the plan, and is accepting the answer without trying to improve upon it.
“Is there anything that makes it better?”
I think about it.
Actually think, the way I’d thought when Oakley asked about kissing my cheek and when Alaric asked about talking with walls down—with the genuine, searching effort of someone excavating an answer from terrain they haven’t explored because exploring it felt like admitting the terrain existed.
“Uh.” The sound is inelegant, the verbal equivalent of rummaging through a drawer for something you’re not sure is there. “I’m not sure. Not really?”
A pause. My brain offers fragments.
“I mean…I probably need to invest in a humidifier or something. It gets stuffy in the apartment at night—the radiator runs like it’s trying to cook the place, and the windows don’t seal properly, so it’s this weird cycle of too hot and too cold. I wake up in cold sweats regardless, so the air quality isn’t helping.”
I pick at a thread on my sleeve—the charcoal henley, the one I’d put on this morning after a shower that was warm instead of punitive, after a night that ended in an apartment that smelled like three Alphas and scrambled eggs instead of mildew and isolation.
“That, or maybe my sheets. The ones that came with the apartment are thin as paper and they hold moisture like a sponge when the sweats hit. I’ll figure it out.”
I look at him.
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer.
The silence sits between us with the specific weight of a man who has asked a question, received an answer, and is now processing the information through whatever internal system Roman Kade uses to convert data into action. His jaw works—the subtle, rhythmic motion of a man clenching and releasing, the physical manifestation of thoughts being compressed into something too dense for words.
I pout.
The expression is involuntary—the same unguarded facial response that had surfaced in the kitchen when Alaric asked if we could talk. The pout of a woman who is accustomed to being in possession of all relevant information and does not appreciate encountering gaps in the briefing.
“You were never this intrigued with my life when we were young, jeez.”
The words carry more truth than I intend. At the academy, Roman’s interest in me had been exclusively competitive—scores, rankings, the tactical one-upmanship that defined every interaction from morning drills to midnight study sessions. He’d known my capabilities. My weaknesses on the obstacle course. The way I held a firearm and the micro-adjustment I made to my stance that he’d copied without admitting it. But the personal inventory—the sleeping patterns, the health concerns, the question of what makes the nightmares better—that was territory he’d never entered.
Or territory he’d entered and I hadn’t noticed.
Or territory he’d wanted to enter and Maggie Tots had built a wall across the threshold.
Or territory he’s entering now because the woman he competed against at twenty is falling apart at thirty-two and the competition doesn’t matter anymore when the competitor is bleeding.
I don’t wait for his answer.
I open the door.
The October air hits my face with the bracing clarity of a Montana morning that doesn’t care about emotional complications. Cold, clean, carrying the distant scent of horse and the closer scent of smoke residue from the station’s damaged wall. I swing my legs out, my boots connecting with the gravel, and the physical act of exiting the vehicle feels likea transition—from the warm, pine-scented cocoon of Roman’s proximity to the cold, public reality of a chief who has a department to manage and an arson to investigate and a body that may or may not be systematically failing.
“Make sure you check in once you finish whatever errands you have to do, Officer Kade,” I say over my shoulder, deploying his title with the deliberate formality of a woman reestablishing professional distance because the personal distance has been compromised beyond regulation and someone needs to reinstall the perimeter.
He corrects me instantly.
“Commander.”
The word carries the competitive edge that has defined every interaction we’ve had since the first morning of cadet school—the reflexive insistence on rank, on position, on the hierarchical specificity that Alpha males treat as the verbal equivalent of territorial marking.
