Chapter 11 What We Call It When It Happens To Us
What We Call It When It Happens To Us
~HAZEL~
I’m finishing my third plate.
My third.
The number registers with the slow, bewildered arithmetic of a woman who normally treats meals as a logistical inconvenience and is currently scraping the last remnants of scrambled egg from a ceramic plate that wasn’t here yesterday, in a kitchen that hasn’t produced food since before she moved in, at a table set by three Alpha men who are sitting across from her in silence that she hasn’t bothered to interpret because all of her cognitive resources have been allocated to a single, all-consuming task.
Eating.
Not the perfunctory, fuel-station eating that has defined my nutritional existence for the better part of a decade—the convenience-store protein shake consumed in four sips between case files, the gas-station sandwich eaten over a steering wheel, the bakery donut that the kind Omega wraps in a napkin and presses into my hands with an expression that suggests she knows it’s the only meal I’ll have before midnight.
This is different.
This is the kind of eating that happens when a body that has been running on emergency reserves suddenly encounters actual sustenance and responds with the single-minded, primal urgency of a system making up for lost time.
My concentration has been solely on the plate—fork to eggs, eggs to mouth, fork to bacon, bacon to mouth, toast deployed as a vehicle for jam that Oakley had procured from somewhere I don’t want to question—the cycle repeating with a mechanical intensity that has left no bandwidth for conversation, observation, or the basic social awareness that suggests one should occasionally acknowledge the other humans at the table.
I have devoured this food like I’ve been fasting for three days and three nights.
And the thing that’s twisting something behind my sternum—the thing I don’t have the vocabulary for, or won’t allow myself to name—is how simple it is.
Eggs, bacon, toast with jam. Coffee. The most basic combination a kitchen can produce, the kind of meal that exists in every culture’s catalogue of “things you make when you’re not trying to impress anyone, you’re just trying to feed them. ”
When was the last time someone just tried to feed you, Martinez?
When was the last time a meal existed without a transaction attached—without a performance review or a networking obligation or the silent expectation that accepting food from someone meant owing them something you hadn’t agreed to pay?
I set my fork down on the empty plate.
And immediately begin the internal debate.
One more plate. The pan still has food. There’s more bacon. More toast. Oakley made enough for a small battalion, which is either a reflection of Alpha metabolism requirements or a deliberate overshoot designed to ensure I couldn’t eat my way to the bottom even if I tried.
But three plates. Three plates is a lot. Three plates is the kind of intake that generates commentary, the kind that makes people look at an Omega and think “she hasn’t been eating” and then the looks change from impressed to pitying and pity is the one thing I will not fucking tolerate—
But the eggs were really good.
And there’s jam left.
One more won’t kill you, Martinez. Nobody’s keeping score.
Fourth plate. Yes or no. Make the call.
I look up from the plate.
All three of them are staring at me.
Not eating. Not talking. Not engaged in the low-grade bickering that has served as their communication default since I met them.
Just…staring. Three sets of eyes—ice-blue, dark brown, green—fixed on me with an expression that I would catalogue as shock if shock didn’t imply something dramatic and this seems more like the quiet, stunned variety.
The kind of expression people wear when they’ve witnessed something unexpected and are still in the processing phase.
Roman’s fork is suspended midway between his plate and his mouth, where it has apparently been frozen for an indeterminate amount of time.
Alaric’s coffee cup is raised but un-sipped, held at lip height like he’d started the motion and then forgotten to complete it.
Oakley has both elbows on the table, chin resting on his interlaced fingers, green eyes wide with something I can’t immediately categorize.
They’re looking at me like I’ve grown another head.
I blink.
Several times, the rapid flutter of someone who has been jolted from a private activity into the sudden awareness that the private activity was being observed.
Heat rises to my cheeks.
Actual, physical, blood-to-the-surface heat that I cannot attribute to the fever because the fever broke hours ago and this is something else entirely—the specific, mortifying warmth of a woman who has been eating like a feral animal in the presence of three men and has just realized that the reason nobody was talking is because they were all watching her.
“What?” The word comes out as a whisper, which makes the blush deepen because Hazel Martinez does not whisper and does not blush and is currently doing both simultaneously at a breakfast table. “Do I…have jam on my nose or something?”
My hand moves toward my face reflexively, checking for evidence of the kind of culinary indignity that would explain the intensity of their collective attention.
Alaric speaks first.
“I’ve never been so fascinated watching a woman eat before.”
The statement is delivered with the quiet, observational sincerity that characterizes everything Alaric says—not as a joke, not as mockery, but as a genuine declaration of data. As if my consumption of three plates of scrambled eggs constitutes a phenomenon worthy of academic documentation.
Oakley nods.
Slowly, his chin still balanced on his fingers, the green eyes carrying something warm and something sad in equal measure.
Roman lowers his suspended fork.
“Why don’t you just…try to eat like three times a day?” he asks, and the question is delivered with the frustrated directness of a man who has encountered a problem he considers solvable and cannot understand why the solution hasn’t been implemented.
I blink.
“I don’t normally have time to eat period, Roman.
” The response is automatic—not defensive, just factual, the recitation of a reality I’ve accepted so thoroughly that questioning it feels like questioning gravity.
“I eat whatever’s available at the station during shifts.
If there’s nothing, I don’t eat. It’s not complicated. ”
Oakley tilts his head.
“Doesn’t your pack try to bring you food? On their breaks or whatever.”
I frown.
The expression is genuine—not the strategic frown I deploy in professional settings but the unfiltered contraction of facial muscles that occurs when the brain encounters a statement that doesn’t compute.
“Why would they do that?”
The question leaves my mouth with the sincere confusion of someone who has genuinely never considered this possibility.
Packs don’t bring you food. Packs share heat cycles and household expenses and the institutional benefits that come with documented partnership.
Packs are functional units designed to navigate a system that penalizes packless Omegas and rewards compliance with biological norms. Packs serve purposes.
They don’t serve lunch.
The three of them exchange a look.
It happens fast—a triangulated glance that moves from Alaric to Roman to Oakley in the space of a second, communicating something in the nonverbal shorthand of men who have been reading each other’s expressions long enough to hold entire conversations without opening their mouths.
What was in that look?
Concern? Confusion? The dawning recognition that my definition of “pack” doesn’t match theirs?
I choose not to find out. I rise from the chair, plate in hand, the motion carrying the decisive finality of a woman redirecting a conversation she doesn’t want to continue.
I’ll assess the fourth-plate situation after the dishes are done. Strategic delay. Tactical digestion assessment.
Alaric’s voice follows me to the sink.
“Do you mind explaining how your dynamic was with your old pack?”
I turn on the tap.
The water runs warm against my fingers, and I let the physical task anchor me—soap, sponge, plate, the methodical process of cleaning something that has already served its purpose.
Behind me, the apartment holds its breath, three Alphas waiting for an answer to a question I don’t understand the relevance of.
“Why?” I ask, keeping my gaze on the water. “Think they’re behind my lovely ‘temporary’ leave?”
“Maybe,” Alaric concedes, his voice carrying the measured weight of a man who is building a case and needs information the way a foundation needs concrete.
“Or maybe they’re related to whoever targeted the station last night.
The fire wasn’t accidental, Hazel. Accelerant was used.
Someone wanted that building to burn, and the timing—your first week as chief, your first night of medical vulnerability—suggests this isn’t random. ”
Oh fuck.
Right. The fire. The actual, literal, station-is-on-fire fire that Alaric had come to tell me about before my body staged its latest rebellion and I missed the entire event because I was unconscious in a bed being used as a human heating pad by my academy rival.
“Oh, right. Yeah. You have to—explain what happened with that.”
“I’ll explain in the car,” he says, the investigator reasserting itself over whatever personal concern had been driving the question. “But answer mine first.”
I shrug.
The gesture is aimed at the soapy water, the plate, the small kitchen of a small apartment in a small town where I’m being asked to dissect the architecture of a relationship I’d rather leave in the rearview mirror.