Chapter 12 Walls Down #3
Two words that cost her more than any of the thousands she’s spoken in her career—more than the commands and the case closures and the departmental speeches and the morning briefings delivered on bruised legs.
Two words that are not a confession but a correction.
An amendment to a decade of official records that listed the events under “normal pack dynamic” and “biological protocol” and “that’s just how it works. ”
Hurt me.
Not helped. Not managed. Not the convenient, system-sanctioned euphemism that everyone uses when they don’t want to name what happened.
Hurt.
I nod.
Slowly. Giving the word space to exist without rushing past it, without immediately filling the silence with solutions or reassurances or the kind of well-meaning but premature comfort that communicates I heard you, now let’s move on when what she needs is I heard you, and I’m staying right here.
“Do you like hugs?”
She thinks about it.
Actually thinks. The question isn’t rhetorical and she doesn’t treat it as one. I watch her search for the answer the way someone searches a room they haven’t entered in years—carefully, uncertain of what they’ll find, aware that the contents may have shifted since the last time they looked.
“I…used to,” she whispers.
The past tense lands against my sternum like a fist.
Used to. Before touch became synonymous with violation. Before arms around her body became a cage rather than a shelter. Before the distinction between being held and being restrained collapsed under the weight of repeated evidence that they were the same thing.
“Would you want one?”
She thinks again.
Longer this time. The deliberation visible in her eyes—the risk calculus, the vulnerability assessment, the deeply embedded protocols that govern every interaction between her body and another person’s hands.
I wait. Don’t prompt. Don’t encourage. Just stand in the space between the question and the answer with the patience of a man who has spent his career waiting for people to trust him enough to tell the truth.
“Yes,” she whispers.
I pull her in.
Slowly. Arms opening first, the invitation clear and unambiguous, giving her the physical space to close the distance on her own terms. She steps forward—one step, then another, then the final half-step that brings her body against mine with the tentative contact of someone who is relearning how this works.
And then she squeezes.
Hard. Suddenly. With a force that contradicts her frame and her fatigue and every physical limitation her body is currently operating under.
Her arms lock around my torso with the desperate grip of someone who has been drowning in open water and has just found something solid—not holding on for comfort but holding on for survival, her fingers digging into the fabric of my crewneck with enough pressure that I can feel the tremor in them.
When was the last time someone held you, Hazel?
When was the last time you were touched by arms that wanted to comfort rather than claim?
When was the last time you allowed yourself to need this?
I hold her.
My arms close around her carefully—firm enough to communicate security, gentle enough that she could break the contact at any moment without resistance.
My chin rests above her head, the damp blue strands cool against the underside of my jaw.
Her scent is unguarded again—the eucalyptus frost softened to nothing, the dark cocoa pouring off her skin with the warmth of something that’s been kept in a sealed container and is finally breathing.
The hug lasts.
Not briefly. Not the perfunctory, socially mandated three-second contact that most embraces consist of.
This one extends through the seconds and into something that doesn’t have a measurement, something that exists outside the temporal framework of two professionals in a kitchen and instead occupies the timeless, borderless space of two people who are both carrying more than they can hold and are, for this moment, sharing the weight.
I wait until her grip eases—marginally, the desperation settling into something steadier—before I speak.
“I want you to get scanned as soon as possible.”
I keep my voice low. Close. The words delivered against the top of her head where the vibration of my chest will carry them through her body as much as through the air.
“If the suppressants are showing detrimental side effects—and based on what I’ve seen, they are—you need to stop taking them. But before we make that call, you need a full diagnostic. Bloodwork. Cardiac panel. Neurological assessment. The whole scan.”
She pulls back.
Just enough to look up at me. Not breaking the hug—her arms still around my torso, my arms still around her shoulders—but tilting her face upward until her hazel-brown eyes meet mine from approximately five inches away.
The proximity is close enough that I can see the individual threads of amber in her irises, can see the residual moisture that she hasn’t allowed to become tears, can see the way her expression shifts from vulnerable to practical as the officer resurfaces to address the logistical impossibility of what I’m proposing.
“I don’t have—”
“We’ll register as your pack.”
The words exit my mouth with the decisive clarity of a man who has already run the calculation and arrived at the only viable solution.
“Even if it’s temporary, a registered pack gives you access to medical services.
A full scan. Diagnostics. Treatment authorization without bureaucratic interference.
” I hold her gaze with the steady, unwavering focus that I deploy when presenting findings that I will not see dismissed.
“If the suppressants are literally harming you, you will stop them. That’s not a request.”
A breath.
Softer now.
“And when you stop, we can make sure you’re in a safe space for your heat. With the tools you need to be comfortable. We’d make sure you drink water and eat. And most importantly—”
I let the word settle with the weight it deserves.
“—that you’re safe.”
She’s quiet.
Thinking. I can feel the gears turning through the residual contact between our bodies—the slight tension in her frame as her brain processes the proposal, weighing the logistics against the risk against the desperate, unvoiced need for exactly what I’m offering.
“What if the heat is harder than normal?” Her voice is small. Careful. The voice of a woman who is terrified of the answer but more terrified of not asking. “Because I’ve…suppressed it. For so long. I’ve heard that the longer you suppress, the more intense the breakthrough can be, and I don’t—”
She bites her bottom lip.
The gesture is nervous. Nervous. From a woman who has threatened to dissolve departments and karate-chopped sleeping Alphas and stared down entire bullpens without a flicker of uncertainty.
Nervous and vulnerable in a way that is clearly costing her everything, every ounce of pride and independence and the carefully maintained fiction that she doesn’t need help and doesn’t want help and would rather solve her own biological crisis with her own hands and a nightstand accessory than admit to three men that she’s afraid.
“Then we can help,” I say. “With your permission.”
Her eyes search mine.
Looking for the catch. The condition. The fine print that always exists when someone offers an Omega something that sounds too good to be safe. The specific clause that transforms generosity into leverage and transforms care into debt.
I meet the search with everything down.
No investigator. No analytical distance.
No professional persona filtering my expression through layers of strategic composure.
Just Alaric. The man who catches women when they fall and carries pagers because he trusts obsolete technology and smokes cigarettes he knows will kill him and has spent his entire adult life in a field that systematically fails the people it’s supposed to protect.
“Everything is by your rules,” I say, and each word is a contract. “You don’t want something, we stop immediately. You only want to cuddle, we only cuddle. You want to fuck, we fuck. Everything—every single moment, every touch, every decision—is controlled by you.”
I hold her gaze.
“Your consent is the ultimatum.”
The word consent lands in the space between us with the gravitational weight of a term that should be a given and has instead become, for this woman, a revelation.
She takes a breath.
Nervous. Shaking slightly at the edges.
“You guys’ Omega isn’t going to approve of this, Alaric.”
I smirk.
“Well. Good thing we don’t have one.”
She frowns.
The confusion that crosses her face is immediate and genuine—the wrinkled brow and narrowed eyes of a woman whose assumptions about the world have just been challenged by information she didn’t anticipate.
“Wait. What happened to Maggie?”
I shrug.
“You’ll have to ask Roman that. Neither Oakley nor I know a Maggie, and Roman practically seethes at every Omega who tries to go near his personal orbit. We’re not exactly lucky in that department.”
She stares at me.
“So…you guys have been Omegaless this whole time?”
“The whole time,” I confirm. “Hasn’t bit us in the ass yet, so—”
“Oh my god.” Her eyes widen. “You’re supposed to knock on wood!”
I shrug.
“Nah. I don’t believe in that.”
“But you believe in karma?”
“That’s more of an Oakley influence than a personal conviction, but sure.”
She groans.
The sound is exasperated and warm at the same time, the groan of a woman who is finding, against every defensive protocol she maintains, that bantering with me feels more natural than it should and more comfortable than she wants to admit.
She shakes her head.