Chapter 3 #3
“Our goal,” he continues, “is to monitor, observe, and gather evidence regarding this station’s performance. What needs to be improved, what needs to be gutted, and what needs to be investigated beyond the scope of a standard audit.”
I lean back in my chair—the leather creaking, still carrying traces of his body heat—and cross my arms.
“Okay.” I tilt my head, studying him the way I’d study a map with missing roads. “And what happens if they don’t reach satisfactory? Because I can speed that process along and tell you right now—they’re all a bunch of dead weight who couldn’t investigate a missing cat, let alone missing persons.”
The laughter that erupts from Alaric Venezuela is loud enough that I’m certain every officer sitting in the bullpen down the hall hears it through the door I left partially open.
It’s full-bodied and unrestrained, the kind of sound that cracks the professional veneer entirely and reveals the man beneath the title—someone who, despite the silver in his hair and the weight of his experience, is capable of genuine, uncalculated amusement.
The scent of his laughter is almost worse than the scent of his stillness. The burnt vanilla warms. The cedarwood deepens. The bourbon takes on a toasted-sugar quality that makes my hindbrain sit up and purr in a way I haven’t experienced since—
Since never. Lock it down, Martinez. Immediately.
“Well then.” He recovers with the practiced ease of someone who laughs often but strategically, wiping the corner of one eye with a knuckle before settling his expression back into composed amusement. “If it doesn’t meet standards? Say goodbye to this entire station.”
I frown.
Not because the possibility surprises me—I threatened the same thing twenty minutes ago in the bullpen—but because hearing it from an outside authority transforms the hypothetical into something real.
Dissolution. An entire department dismantled, officers reassigned or terminated, the institutional infrastructure of Sweetwater Falls’ law enforcement reduced to whatever whoever rebuilt it decided it should be.
And everything those officers were hiding would be buried under the rubble.
Alaric reads my frown with an accuracy that makes my jaw tighten.
He shrugs—a deliberate, calculated motion that manages to convey both indifference and precision simultaneously.
“I’ll make sure,” he says, and his voice drops half a register, “that if the station doesn’t meet our standards, your investigation back home is hopefully resolved by then. One way or another.”
A pause.
Then the smirk returns—slower this time, edged with something I can’t quite classify. His hands slide into the pockets of the beige coat, the motion pulling the fabric against his frame in a way that highlights the lean architecture of his torso and the controlled way he carries his height.
“If not,” he adds, “you can always stay with us and transfer to our station.” The dark eyes hold mine with an intensity that goes beyond professional recruitment. “We need proper Omega officers in command positions. The kind who don’t quiver when a man raises his voice.”
Don’t smirk.
Don’t you dare give him the satisfaction of a smirk, Martinez.
I fight the expression with every muscle in my face, channeling the effort into a neutral mask that costs me more than it should.
Because the compliment hidden in his offer isn’t the generic, patronizing “You’re so strong for an Omega” variety that I’ve heard a thousand times from Alphas who think acknowledging competence is the same as respecting it.
This is specific. Targeted. He’s not saying I’m strong despite being Omega.
He’s saying his station needs officers because they’re Omega. Needs the perspective. The steel.
When’s the last time an Alpha said he needed you instead of telling you what you need?
Stop it.
“Alright,” I say, channeling every thought into the word like a weapon. “What’s the plan?”
Alaric straightens from the visitor’s chair, the motion fluid, the coat settling around him like it was tailored for standing. The transition from seated negotiation to operational briefing happens seamlessly, the investigator and the strategist merging into a single, focused presence.
“I’d love for you to meet the rest of the team,” he says, gesturing toward the door with a motion that’s more invitation than instruction.
“Since they’ll be around the office, blending in with your officers for the duration of the assessment.
Better you know faces and names now so you’re not blindsided later. ”
He pauses at the doorway, glancing back.
“My packmate is just parking the cruiser with our rookie, so we can meet them out back.”
Packmate.
More Alphas. More scents. More complications folding into an already overcrowded situation like cards being dealt into a hand I didn’t ask to play.
I shrug—a deliberately casual motion aimed at communicating exactly the amount of investment I’m willing to display, which is none.
“Sure. Why not.” I push up from the desk, flattening my palms against the surface that still carries traces of his warmth.
“Not like I have shit to do. This department’s been giving me busy work and blank stares for eight days.
Meeting the people actually capable of conducting an investigation might be the most productive hour I’ve had since arriving. ”
Alaric’s smirk sharpens.
“You’re more intrigued by knowing who to make their lives a living hell than you are about the investigation itself.”
It’s not a question.
I don’t answer.
But something cold and precise files itself alongside my growing catalogue of observations about Alaric Venezuela: This Alpha is extremely observant.
He reads me too well, too quickly, with too little data.
That’s either a skill set I can leverage or a threat I need to neutralize, and I haven’t determined which yet.
We walk the hallway in a silence that feels less like absence and more like mutual assessment—two professionals who recognize the other’s competence without verbalizing it, who are both running calculations behind composed expressions, who understand that the most important conversations often happen in the spaces between words.
The bullpen is conspicuously productive as we pass through.
Officers who were scrolling phones twenty minutes ago are now typing with suspicious enthusiasm.
Morales has actual documents open on her screen.
Even Caldwell’s desk is Rubik’s-cube-free, the incriminating puzzle presumably shoved into a drawer to await a less volatile moment.
Amazing what the threat of unemployment does for workplace motivation.
Alaric notices. I catch his eyes sweeping the room with the same systematic assessment I’d applied earlier, and the slight tightening of his jaw tells me he’s arriving at similar conclusions about the department’s baseline functionality.
We exit through the rear of the building, the October air hitting my face with a clarity that makes the office’s recycled atmosphere feel like a crime in retrospect.
The back lot is gravel and grass, bordered by a split-rail fence beyond which three patrol horses mill in a paddock that doubles as the department’s most absurd jurisdictional asset.
The horses—a bay, a dapple gray, and a chestnut that has the temperament of a middle-manager denied a promotion—are currently expressing their displeasure with an agitation that I can hear from the doorway.
Ears pinned. Hooves stamping. The chestnut is actively circling the far end of the paddock with the focused irritation of an animal whose personal space has been violated.
The reason is immediately apparent.
A black cruiser—unmarked, tinted windows, the kind of vehicle that screams federal oversight without needing a badge on the hood—is parked approximately four feet from the paddock fence.
Close enough that the engine heat and foreign scent are radiating directly into equine territory, triggering every territorial instinct in the three animals who consider that grass their sovereign domain.
I roll my eyes.
“Can you at least park properly so you’re not crowding the horses?” My voice carries across the lot with command-grade projection, cutting through the sound of agitated hooves and gravel displacement. “They need personal space. Something your driving apparently didn’t account for.”
The driver’s door opens.
A boot hits the gravel—black, tactical, polished with the kind of military precision that makes regulation standards look like suggestions.
Then a leg, clad in dark tactical pants that fit over dense muscle with the tailored efficiency of someone whose physical presence is a weapon they maintain as deliberately as their sidearm.
Then the full body emerges, and I stop walking.
Mid-stride. Right foot forward, left still anchored, momentum dying in the space between one step and the next.
Because I know that silhouette.
Before the face. Before the scent. Before the eyes that I already know are ice-blue and carrying the same competitive fury they’ve burned with since the day I beat him for top rank at the academy—I know the shape of him.
The way he stands like the earth was poured specifically to support his weight.
The way his shoulders occupy space that isn’t just physical but atmospheric, creating a perimeter of authority that most people instinctively step back from without understanding why.
Six-foot-four of broad, dense muscle that moves with a precision bordering on mechanical. Every motion calculated. Every gesture deliberate. The body of a man who has trained his physicality into a language and speaks it fluently.
His hair catches the October sun first—platinum blonde, lighter than nature intended, bleached from what I remember as dark blonde into something almost white at the tips.
It’s shorter than it was at the academy, cropped close at the sides but left longer on top, pushed back from a forehead that frames a face I’d successfully convinced myself I’d forgotten.
Liar.
The jawline is sharper than I remember—or maybe the years have just stripped away whatever softness the academy’s youth had provided, leaving nothing but angles and authority.
Clean-shaven, the kind of bare jaw that makes the bone structure a statement rather than a feature.
A face assembled from precision and arrogance in equal measure, designed by genetics that understood that intimidation doesn’t always require size.
Though the size certainly doesn’t hurt.
His left arm is visible where the sleeve of his dark tactical jacket ends at mid-forearm, rolled up with deliberate casualness that’s anything but casual.
Norse runes trace the skin from wrist to elbow, intricate linework winding between wolf iconography that I’d only ever seen in glimpses during academy physical training.
The tattoo sleeve is fuller now, the designs denser, the imagery bolder—years of additions mapping something personal across skin that I once watched from the other side of a sparring mat.
And then his eyes find mine.
Ice blue.
The color of glaciers and held grudges and the particular shade of cold that burns hotter than heat.
I know those eyes.
Watched them narrow across academy firing ranges when my scores posted higher than his.
Saw them darken in lecture halls when instructors called my name before his.
Felt them drilling into the back of my skull during graduation when I walked across the stage first, top of the class, and he followed second with a jaw clenched tight enough to fracture stone.
And now they’re staring at me across a gravel parking lot in the smallest town in Montana, and the expression in them hasn’t changed.
Not one goddamn degree.
His scent arrives a half-second later—carried on the October wind like an ambush I should have been prepared for but wasn’t.
Snow-covered pine, sharp and cold, the kind of forest air that makes your lungs expand on instinct.
Smoked oud, dark and resinous, layering beneath the pine with a complexity that borders on hostile.
Frozen leather, mineral-sharp, the olfactory equivalent of a locked door.
And underneath—peppermint bark and black tobacco. The undertones of a man who has never once in his life made peace with second place.
My confusion calcifies into something harder.
Something older. The expression on my face shifts without permission—the professional mask cracking along fault lines that were created over a decade ago and apparently never fully healed—and what emerges is a look of pure, unfiltered, grudging recognition.
The kind that says I know you and I didn’t ask for this and you’ve got to be fucking kidding me all in the same breath.
His eyes lock onto mine across the gravel lot.
Neither of us blinks.
The horses continue their agitated circling.
Alaric pauses somewhere behind me, undoubtedly reading the tension that has just detonated across the parking lot like a chemical reaction neither party consented to.
Oakley is somewhere near the cruiser’s passenger side, his citrus-bright scent a distant note beneath the avalanche of frozen pine currently colonizing every receptor in my sinuses.
And Commander Roman Kade—my academy rival, the Alpha who graduated second because I graduated first, the man whose competitive fury I’d felt like a physical force for the entirety of our training—stands in the gravel lot of the Sweetwater Falls Sheriff’s Department, staring at me with ice-blue eyes that haven’t forgiven me for a ranking that was decided over a decade ago.
The universe just enjoys taunting me…