Chapter 7 Malachi
MALACHI
Ileft the containment level with discipline, not haste, and the door sealed behind me with steel certainty.
The control I wore for the pack slipped a fraction anyway, because her scent surged back, peaches bruised and cream turned curdled.
My alpha rose hard and immediately, and my body reacted before my mind could catch up.
I told myself it was irritation, tactical noise, a reaction I could file and forget.
Lies were useful when they kept the pack steady, and Pack Meridian required steadiness.
Peaches and cream did not belong in our lower corridors, yet it clung to the back of my throat with defiance threaded through sweetness. An omega pushed too far learned to leave impressions, and I allowed myself three measured breaths before the filtration system scrubbed the air clean.
Before I met the others I needed to get myself calm. I ducked into the bathroom, checking to make sure all the stalls were empty before closing myself in one. I undid my trousers, smelling Nyx all around me. The scent clung to my skin like it belonged there.
I stood there a second longer than I should have, jaw tight.
This was stupid.
One omega shouldn’t get inside my head like this.
But my body already knew better.
I squeezed my throbbing dick and cursed under my breath.
Every breath dragged her scent deeper into my lungs.
Sweet. Dangerous. Addictive.
My body reacted to it like it already belonged to her.
I had to be quick.
If anyone walked in here right now, they’d know exactly what she’d done to me.
My hand moved faster.
Too fast.
My control was already slipping.
Up and down my hand worked on my throbbing dick. I panted, smelling her scent vaguely as it lingered in my nostrils.
“Nyx,” I panted, the name tearing out of me before I could stop it.
My head fell back against the stall wall as everything snapped tight.
Her scent. Her voice. The way she looked at me.
It all crashed through me at once.
When it was over I stayed there a second, breathing hard.
Pathetic.
I forced myself to move.
I took a piss, wiped myself down with toilet paper, and flushed like nothing had happened.
Like I hadn’t just lost control over the scent of a woman I barely knew.
I washed my hands as I tried to calm my racing heart. It was time for me to get back under control. I couldn’t let anyone in Pack Meridian see this.
Not the way my control slipped the second Nyx walked into a room.
Not the way my body already reacted like she belonged to us.
I was known for my stoicism; I thought of my reputation as I dried my hands and walked out of the bathroom. Cool as a cucumber. They wouldn’t know I lost control in one stall.
Control was not the absence of instinct. It was command over it, the kind you practiced until it became muscle memory. I adjusted my cuffs and grounded myself in routine before moving on, because routine was how alphas stayed civilized.
Pack Meridian’s upper levels were already alive with motion disguised as calm.
Alphas moved with purpose through glass and steel, scents muted out of respect rather than submission, a courtesy that existed only because the hierarchy was unquestioned.
The pack responded to movement the way a body responded to blood loss, automatically and precisely, without panic.
The conference room doors opened as I approached, smooth and silent. They were waiting inside, and the stillness they offered me was a kind of respect that always came with teeth.
Elijah stood at the far end of the table, posture immaculate, tablet held loosely at his side.
His scent was as it always was, clean and neutral, flattened until nothing emotional leaked through, because he observed before he reacted.
Jabari leaned against the wall nearest the windows with his arms crossed, shoulders tense, and heat and smoke clung to him even under suppression.
Violence was always one grave decision away for Jabari, and he had never been afraid to make the wrong one for the right result.
Kairo remained near the door, half in shadow where he could watch without being watched. His restraint was incomplete by choice, his scent sharper and younger, carrying that raw edge that had not yet learned to dull itself. He was paying attention in a way the others were not.
They fell silent when I entered, not because I demanded it, but because hierarchy required acknowledgment. The room held its breath the way a city did before a storm.
“Report,” I said.
Elijah began immediately. “Three suppressant shipments cleared overnight,” he said. “Clinics in the south corridor remain stable. No Council interference. No audit flags.”
Stable did not mean safe. Stable meant the block was still breathing, and breathing cost money, fear, and decisions nobody thanked you for.
A monitor on the wall cycled through feeds without sound. Not just violence. Life. A line outside the south corridor clinic, shoulders hunched against the cold, Black women holding babies and paperwork.
A folding table near the entrance stacked with cases of water and grocery bags, the quiet care that kept people standing when the city pretended it did not see them. Two older men posted at a card table under the awning, spades laid out, eyes lifting every time a car slowed too long.
Elijah tapped his tablet and the clinic feed filled the screen. Fresh plywood where glass used to be. A sidewalk scrubbed too hard, too clean. One of our men stood by the door with his hands in his pockets, body loose, gaze sharp. He looked like security.
“They tested us at shift change,” Elijah said, tone still flat. “Two vehicles. Shots fired.”
The feed showed it in pieces. Headlights sweeping the lot too slow. A window dropping halfway. A popping sound. People hitting the ground on instinct, bodies shielding bodies. One of ours stepping into the open without rushing, pistol low until it was not.
“They did not breach the building,” Elijah continued. “The staff is alive. The supply is intact.”
He did not say how many bodies made sentence true, because in Meridian we did not perform grief in conference rooms. We performed results.
“Dock?”
Elijah’s thumb stilled on his tablet. He didn’t look up, but the pause was its own alarm, the kind you learned to hear if you lived long enough in my world.
“Container eight-seventeen,” he said. “Seal code does not match our manifest. It was changed by someone who knew exactly which number to touch.”
Jabari pushed off the wall with that slow, polished ease that never matched what he did with his hands. “Yes, sir,” he said, voice warm with manners. “The yard’s under control. That crew won’t act brave twice.”
He smiled when he said it. He always smiled when he said it.
“Under control is not the same as resolved,” I replied. “Not if the proof got scrubbed.”
Jabari’s smile stayed. His eyes sharpened a fraction.
Elijah tapped the screen and the monitor wall lit up, split into camera angles. The dock was a harsh yellow grid under floodlights, metal and shadow and wind that cut through the feed in silent gusts. You could see the water in the distance, black and cold.
The yard was alive the way a place got alive when money lived there.
A circle of men threw dice on cardboard near a pallet stack, bills folded tight in fists, laughter loud enough to pretend the cold could not touch them.
Off to the side, a spades table sat on two overturned crates, hands slapping cards down hard, trash talk bouncing between men who looked relaxed until you saw their eyes.
Then the feed caught the shift.
Bodies tightening. Heads turning. The dice game stalling mid-yell. The spades player holding a card in the air.
Two outsiders cut toward container eight-seventeen with a bolt cutter and guns held too high.
The image time-stamped forward, and Jabari appeared on the screen.
He didn’t run at them. He didn’t rush. He walked up like he’d been invited, shoulders relaxed, hands loose at his sides, suit coat moving with the wind.
The man lifted his gun.
Jabari’s hand moved.
It was one clean motion, too fast to be messy, too controlled to be rage. The gun jerked, the man’s wrist bent wrong, and the weapon clattered to the ground.
The dock feed jumped.
Not a camera glitch. Not a bad angle. A deliberate cut. The time stamp skipped forward three seconds, then another four, then two, enough to show bodies changing position but not enough to reveal faces.
Elijah’s voice stayed flat. “Archive scrubbed at the source. That is not dock staff.”
Kairo stayed near the door, posture too still, the way the youngest did when he was trying to prove he had patience. His jaw worked once, then locked back down.
“Vehicles,” I said. “Now.”
Elijah’s eyes flicked up. “Sir, Nyx is still in containment.”
“She stays there,” I replied. “This isn’t a field trip.”
Kairo’s irritation flashed behind his eyes, but he swallowed it. He understood hierarchy, and understanding kept him breathing.
We moved the way Meridian moved when the city tried to test our borders. Quiet. Efficient. No wasted motion, no wasted words.
The farther south we drove, the less the city pretended. Streetlights blinked and the air got thicker with exhaust, fryer grease, and cold metal.
The docks were lit up, floodlights washing everything yellow and unforgiving. Diesel and salt hung in the air, and the wind off the water cut through coats and pride the same way.
Meridian people were already spread through the yard, not in uniforms, not in formation.
Near a stack of pallets, the craps game was still posted up, dice snapping against cardboard, cash flashing in quick hands. The spades table was still running too, cards hitting wood with a smack.
That noise thinned the second our vehicles rolled in.
It wasn’t fear. It was recognition.