He produces a tablet from inside his jacket and turns the screen toward me. Espie and Aubrey on the sunroom floor under the duvet. My scent goes sharp.
He swipes.
Kev bolting a beam, shirt stretched across his shoulders. Lex beside him with a level, that look he gets when he's drowning his own thoughts in someone else's project. Ezra in the kitchen window, blurred by glass.
Mine. Every one of them is mine.
He swipes.
Espie planting strawberries.
He swipes.
Aubrey alone. Sitting in the sun on the patio. His damaged hand resting on his knee.
“Stop.”
His eyebrow lifts a fraction.
He swipes anyway.
Aubrey and Espie at the nursery looking scared, Ezra, Lex and Kev surrounding them as they hustle them down an aisle, a full cart forgotten behind them. Air turns to cement as I try to draw it in.
He swipes. The next image is a grainy still and I understand what I'm looking at.
The loading dock. Security-camera angle, top-down. A woman in tac gear moving through the frame with a small body in her arms. Me. The night I pulled Espie off his table.
The cameras I clocked on entry that night. The ones I knew were wrong for an abandoned building and walked past anyway. I noted them. I moved through them. I told myself the east side had a blind spot I could exploit.
He kept the footage. The blind spot was never a blind spot. It was a view.
“I lost three of my alphas and a very valuable specimen the night you came through my door.” His voice has gone quieter. Almost fond. “I have watched that footage more times than I should probably admit, Ms. Vidal. I have been paying close attention to you ever since.”
He has been sitting in the dark watching me hunt him, and I didn't know. And I led him straight to them.
Fuck.
“You know where they are,” I say. “Why haven't you gone in.”
He uncrosses his ankle from his knee and leans forward slightly, the posture of a man settling in to give an answer he's thought about.
“Kev Dawson's home is defensible. Three male alphas on protected ground, scent-matched omegas, a healer with combat training, the Canton network a phone call away. I estimated losses at sixty percent of my assets to secure the targets alive. The nursery was worse. Public space, witnesses, Ronan's people twelve minutes out.”
He tilts his head. “Draw is cleaner than siege. You know this. You'd do the same in my position.”
I would. It's much easier to have your target come to you. Better to defend when you're set up for it.
“Kev Dawson. Alexander Cheng. Ezra Whitfield.” He reads the names like a menu. “And these two.” He taps Espie's face on the tablet with a manicured nail. “Esperance Durant. And Aubrey Turns. Both scent-matched to all three alphas. And to each other. And to you. Quite the interesting pack you have here.”
The basil in my scent goes sharp enough that I can taste it on my own tongue.
Wallace inhales once, slow. “Do you understand what your pack is, Ms. Vidal? What it represents biologically?”
I don't answer.
“Scent-matched packs are rare. A pack with four matched alphas is exceptional. A pack with two matched omegas is effectively unheard of. A pack of six all scent-matched.” He lets it hang. “The research potential is extraordinary.”
“You've got it wrong. I'm not scent-matched to the male alphas. The omegas are. I'm scent-matched to the omegas. That's it. You've wasted the operation.”
