Chapter 2 #3
The phrase triggers a cascade of implications I don’t have time to process in front of an audience.
Oversight means the city sent people. Means someone decided Sweetwater Falls needed supervision beyond the reassigned Omega they’d already dispatched.
Means there are agendas at play that Callahan either orchestrated or failed to prevent.
We’ll deal with that later. Right now, handle the room.
I look him up and down.
Deliberately. Slowly. The kind of full-body assessment that I normally reserve for suspects I’m deciding whether to cuff or release.
From the tactical boots—standard issue, well-maintained, recently polished—up through the dark cargo pants that fit his lean frame without being theatrical about it, past the badge clipped to his belt beside what I note is a Glock 19 in a retention holster, up the navy jacket with its oversight insignia stitched to the shoulder, to the auburn hair and green eyes that are watching me watch him with an expression of genuine, unperturbed amusement.
He’s not nervous.
Why isn’t he nervous? Everyone in this room is nervous. I just threatened to dissolve the department. The air still smells like collective panic and singed egos. And this man is standing in the doorway looking at me like I’m the most interesting thing he’s seen all week.
I walk toward him.
The bullpen holds its breath.
I can feel every eye tracking my movement—the officers at their desks, Morales still frozen in her chair, Caldwell with his fallen Rubik’s cube, Dennings pretending not to watch while absolutely watching.
The charged silence amplifies each step, my boots marking a cadence against the linoleum that sounds disturbingly like a countdown.
He doesn’t straighten from the doorframe.
Doesn’t uncross his arms. Doesn’t do any of the things that Alphas typically do when an Omega approaches with the kind of energy I’m radiating—no puffing up, no territorial posturing, no instinctive assertion of physical dominance.
He just…watches. Green eyes steady, scar-split eyebrow slightly raised, that maddening smirk still pulling at one corner of his mouth.
I stop when there’s less than two feet between us.
At this distance, the scent is overwhelming.
Candied blood orange so close I can almost taste the sugar crystallizing on citrus rind.
Cinnamon bark that radiates heat like a physical thing, warming the air between us until my skin prickles beneath my uniform.
Snow-dusted cedar grounding it all, preventing the sweetness from tipping into saccharine, adding a cool, clean depth that my lungs chase with an inhale I disguise as a steadying breath.
Same height.
The realization hits differently up close.
I’m used to craning my neck to meet Alpha eyes—five-ten is tall for an Omega but short for the men who typically claim that designation, and the power dynamics of physical height are something I’ve navigated since academy days.
But this Alpha meets me level. Direct. Eye to eye, without the literal or metaphorical looking down that I’ve come to expect from his kind.
I tilt my head, studying him the way I’d study a crime scene that doesn’t match its preliminary report.
He doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t retreat.
But I notice something. Subtle enough that anyone without a decade of reading body language would miss it entirely.
His nostrils flare—a micro-movement, involuntary, the kind of biological response that the body produces before the conscious mind can intervene.
He’s catching my scent. Processing it. His jaw tightens fractionally, the muscles along his neck engaging as he fights the instinct to lean in, to close the remaining distance, to breathe me in the way Alphas do when they encounter a scent that their hindbrain has flagged as significant.
He wants to smell me.
But he’s not moving to do it.
Interesting.
The restraint is notable. Most Alphas in his position—young, confident, biologically compelled—would have leaned in already, would have manufactured some excuse to close the gap, to inhale deeper under the pretense of casual proximity.
This one holds his ground, absorbing whatever his senses are telling him without acting on it, maintaining the boundary I’ve established by proximity alone.
Discipline. Either he’s well-trained or he’s actually respectful.
Or both.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Martinez. A pretty scent and good manners don’t mean shit in a department that’s already proved its capacity for betrayal.
“Name,” I say.
Not a question. An instruction.
His smirk softens into something more genuine—less performance, more personality—and he drops the crossed arms to extend a hand.
“Deputy Oakley Torres. Assigned to the oversight unit, specialty in community liaison and field operations.” His grip is firm, warm, calloused in places that suggest work beyond desk duty.
The handshake lasts exactly long enough to be professional and precisely short enough to be deliberate. “Ma’am.”
I release his hand and give him a second assessment—slower this time, recalibrating my initial read with the additional data of his name, rank, and the practiced ease with which he delivered both. Deputy. Not senior. Not lead. Which means—
“You’re not the lead, huh.”
He grins. Full wattage now, the kind of smile that probably makes waitresses forget his order and bartenders lose count of his tabs.
“Nah.” The word comes out easy, unbothered, utterly devoid of the resentment that most officers carry when acknowledging they’re not the one in charge. “Too young for that, apparently.”
“How old are you?”
“Thankfully, I’m thirty.” He shrugs, the motion rippling through his lean frame with the casual athleticism of someone whose body is a tool he maintains without obsessing over. “But I probably don’t look it. Genetics.”
He delivers the word like a punchline, that lopsided grin punctuating it with the kind of self-aware charm that straddles the line between cocky and endearing.
Thirty.
Only two years younger than me.
Why does he look like he should still be carded at bars?
I roll my eyes—the genuine article, none of the restrained, professional eye movements I employ for public consumption—and let out a huff that carries more amusement than I intend.
“You’re a cocky fucker, aren’t you, Oak?”
The nickname slips out before I can censor it—an abbreviation born of the same impulse that makes me shorten every colleague’s name within the first five minutes of knowing them.
A dominance thing, according to my old department’s psychologist. A familiarity thing, according to Jamie.
An inability-to-waste-syllables thing, according to me.
He laughs.
Not a chuckle. Not a polite exhale. An actual, full-bodied laugh that crinkles his green eyes at the corners and makes the scar above his eyebrow dance and sends a ripple of his scent—blood orange and cinnamon, warmed by genuine amusement—rolling through the space between us.
“Sometimes,” he admits, the laughter settling into a smile that doesn’t fully fade. “Depends on the topic and time of day. I’m not a morning person, though, so without coffee, I’ll be a tamed zombie.”
Then he straightens—fully upright for the first time since I spotted him, shoulders squaring in a way that adds an unexpected dimension of formality to the exchange—and lifts his hand to his forehead in a salute that’s crisp, regulation-perfect, and completely at odds with everything casual about the interaction so far.
“And I personally disdain ‘Oak.’” The salute holds as he delivers this with mock solemnity. “Reminds me of Professor Oak from Pokémon and makes me feel like I’m an old geezer dispensing starter creatures to ten-year-olds.” The hand drops. The grin returns. “Oakley is cool.”
I stare at him.
For longer than is strictly professional.
Long enough that somewhere behind me, someone lets out a snicker that they fail to disguise as a cough.
Long enough that whispers begin circulating—the particular frequency of colleagues muttering predictions about how badly this newcomer has just miscalculated.
He’s probably just pissed her off—
—oh man, she’s gonna eat him alive—
—did he really just reference Pokémon to the woman who threatened our holiday pay?
But the thing is—and this is the thing that catches me off guard, that disrupts the rhythm of authority and distance I’ve maintained since walking through the department’s doors eight days ago—he’s not asking me to like him.
He’s asking me to respect a boundary.
A small one. Insignificant, maybe, in the grand hierarchy of professional demands and institutional power dynamics.
Just a name. Just a preference for how he’s addressed.
The kind of request that gets steamrolled a hundred times a day in departments like this, where rank determines what you’re called and who you are matters less than where you sit on the org chart.
He didn’t ask me to call him Deputy. Didn’t demand a title or posture for respect he hasn’t earned yet. He just told me what he doesn’t like being called and trusted that I’d care enough to listen.
When’s the last time someone asked you for the bare minimum and actually expected to receive it?
I turn away from him.
“Oakley it is.”
The words are directed over my shoulder as I walk back toward the center of the bullpen, my back to him, my scent settling into something more temperate—the frost still present but the edges softened, the cocoa undercurrent no longer actively suppressed into extinction.
Then, without stopping, without turning, I add: “Though I’ll taunt you with ‘Oakie Dokie’ if you try to be foolish with me, yes?”
His chuckle follows me across the room like the tail end of a warm current.
“That’s new,” he says, and I can hear the grin in his voice without needing to see it. “Sure, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
The exchange should end there. Professionally, logistically, it has concluded. He’s introduced himself, I’ve established the dynamic, we’ve exchanged the appropriate information, and the interaction can be filed under handled.
But the bullpen has other plans.
“Why are you respecting his stupid request?”
Dennings. Again. The man has apparently mistaken my previous look for a warning shot rather than the final one.
I stop mid-stride.
The side-eye I give him this time is slower, more deliberate, calibrated with the precision of someone who has spent eleven years perfecting the art of communicating disappointment without raising her voice.
“When someone,” I say, each word landing with the weight of a dropped gavel, “has the balls to tell me their boundaries, I can be a good fucking person and respect them.”
I let the silence grip the room.
“Doesn’t matter what position we’re in. Doesn’t matter what rank, what title, what designation sits on either side of the conversation. He’s asking for the bare minimum—to be addressed the way he’s comfortable being addressed—and everyone deserves respect at that level.”
My eyes narrow, and I watch Dennings’ throat work as he swallows.
“Got a problem?”
He bites his tongue. Literally—I can see the muscles in his jaw shifting as he physically restrains whatever ill-advised response was about to escape. His head shakes once, tight, the motion of a man who has belatedly realized that the hill he chose to die on has an active volcano.
“No, Chief.”
“Good answer.”
I roll my eyes—directed at the room in general, at the entire collective failure of professionalism and basic decency that apparently constitutes the Sweetwater Falls Sheriff’s Department—and raise my voice just enough to ensure every corner receives the message.
“Get back to work. All of you. Those task assignments are due by end of day tomorrow, and if I hear one more excuse involving scheduling conflicts, training rotations, or any other creative fiction, I will personally hand-deliver performance reviews to the county board with my professional recommendation attached.”
Movement. Immediate, motivated, the kind of sudden productivity that would be gratifying if it weren’t so pathetically overdue.
I stride toward the side exit, pausing only to address the Alpha still standing in the doorway, watching me with those green eyes and that barely-contained grin that I refuse to find disarming.
“Park the cruiser next to the horses.” I don’t slow down, don’t stop, just deliver the instruction in passing with the directional efficiency of someone who has places to be and precisely zero time for additional conversation.
“Not hard to miss in this small-ass town with its small-ass parking lot.”
“Copy that, Chief.”
The title rolls off his tongue with something that sounds dangerously close to genuine respect—not the reflexive, rank-mandated variety that I’ve been extracting from this department through threats and force of will, but something earned.
Offered. Given freely by someone who apparently decided I deserved it before I demanded it.
Don’t read into it, Martinez.
He’s oversight. He’s here to evaluate you, monitor you, report back to whoever sent him. That smile doesn’t change the politics. That scent doesn’t change the situation.
That scent.
Stop thinking about the goddamn scent.
The autumn air hits my face as I push through the department’s side exit, cool enough to chase the lingering traces of candied blood orange and cinnamon from my sinuses.
I stand on the concrete step for a moment, letting Montana wind replace the claustrophobic cocktail of institutional stagnation and unexpected pheromones with something cleaner. Something I can control.
My hand rises to my face. Discreet. Practiced.
No blood. My nose is dry.
Small mercies.
Inside, I can hear the muffled sounds of a department reluctantly returning to function—chairs rolling, keyboards typing with actual purpose, the tentative hum of people who’ve been reminded that the woman in charge is not, in fact, going to tolerate their carefully cultivated incompetence.
The board at home waits for me. The missing Omegas. The shell companies. The new Omega smiling from her pinned photograph at the center of every question I haven’t answered yet.
And now, an oversight crew.
Sent to assist.
Or sent to watch.
An Alpha with auburn hair and green eyes and a scent that made my biology sit up and bark for the first time in years stands somewhere behind me in that building, and I don’t know yet whether he’s a complication or a resource or both.
Deputy Oakley Torres.
Not Oak. Not the lead. Thirty years old with a Pokémon reference and the only set of boundaries anyone’s stated to my face since I got here.
I exhale through my nose, watching my breath mist in the October air.
At this rate, I doubt my patience is going to last another week of this level of ignorance…