The last part comes out quieter than I intended.
Starting over.
I've been starting over for fourteen months and I'm tired of the phrase.
I think about them. Briefly, because that's all I allow—brief visits, not extended stays. Dante, Kieran, and Seb. My former pack.
Dante, who smoked indoors despite knowing it aggravated my scent sensitivity, whose cigarette habit was the least offensive thing about him. Kieran, who drank with the dedication of someone training for a competition, who started at noon and called it a lifestyle. Seb, who gambled with money that was never entirely his, who had a mouth that ran fast and a temper that ran faster, who made the kind of enemies you don't make by accident.
The three of them together were a specific type of catastrophic—the kind that generates charming footage for the first six months and wreckage for the six years after. Big personalities, bigger egos, the absolute certainty that theirproblems would sort themselves out because they always had before, which was easy to believe when the person quietly absorbing their consequences had her name on none of the original agreements and her fingerprints on all of the cleanup.
Pleading. That's what I remember most. Standing in offices with people who didn't know my face, explaining situations I hadn't created, asking for extensions on deadlines I'd inherited. Begging, in the particular way that isn't theatrical—the quiet, humiliating, paperwork-flavored begging of a person trying to hold a structure together that three other people have already abandoned.
Don't.
It makes your shoulders tense. You have three more hours on shift. Leave it.
A shot glass appears on the table in front of me.
I look up. Danny is standing there with the bottle already retreating, the expression of a man who has decided something without consulting me.
"On the house," he says.
I pick up the glass. It's whiskey—not the rail, the good one Danny keeps on the second shelf for himself and the regulars he actually likes. Deep amber, the color of late October light through glass, and the scent hits before the drink even touches my lips: caramel first, then the smoke underneath it, peat and something almost floral that good Scotch has and bad Scotch only approximates. I hesitate.
"You're encouraging me to be an alcoholic," I say.
Danny's laugh comes from deep in his chest, the full version, the one he reserves for things that genuinely amuse him. "Yeah right. I know your tolerance—it's closer to a sailor's than anyone your size has any business having."
"It's a professional liability," I tell him. I set the glass down without drinking. "Hazard of the industry."
"Unless it's whiskey," he says, watching me.
I point at him. "Whiskey is the exception. Whiskey hits me differently and we don't talk about it."
"Not even Scotch?"
"Danny." I put one finger up. "Don't. Do not bring up Scotch. That is a conversation for someone who is not currently on a break at three in the morning and needs to finish a shift before a twelve-hour stretch."
He raises both hands, mock-surrender, the grin embedded in the corners of his mouth.
I pick up the shot glass and take it clean—tilt, swallow, the burn tracking from tongue to throat to sternum in one smooth line. Not Scotch. A blended Irish, warm and easier, nothing that catches at the back of my memory the wrong way. Relief is the right word. The tension I've been carrying since I thought about Dante and Kieran and Seb loosens by a degree.
"There it is," Danny says, satisfied.
"Hit me fast so I can keep ignoring the letter," I tell him.
He shakes his head, but the smirk doesn't go anywhere. "You should look into it," he says, and his voice shifts into the register he uses when he has information and has been waiting for the right moment to deploy it.
I look at him.
"I've been listening to the floor tonight." He leans back against the wall, arms folded, the posture of a man who hears everything in his own bar and keeps track of most of it. "This one's different. It's not the standard government mixer. From what I've heard, it's some kind of ball—organized by a private society, top-tier operation. Invitation only. And from what the lads were saying, the organization is hand-picking the Alphas."
I go still.
"Hand-picking?"
"That's the word." He nods once. "Which means you're not getting every bum, cheater, and useless smug off the block. No one walks in off the street. They're vetted, invited, specifically selected." He pauses. "Some of my regulars actually want to go. But apparently it's not open to them. Invite only on both sides."
