2. Wes Osprey
Wes Osprey
Sweet Tooth Bakery looks right at home in a town trying too hard.
Pink flowers fill the windows. Heart-shaped decorations hang over the counter.
Every available surface promises forever in one form or another: sweetheart cakes, honeymoon blend coffee, carved charms near the register.
Half the signs reference the Everlasting Pack, leaning hard into the town myth that Sweetheart Haven bonds last longer, hold stronger, and survive what ordinary packs can’t.
It’s cute. Suspiciously cute.
The kind of cute that usually means somebody is hiding a body, a money trail, or a public-relations nightmare beneath all the whipped frosting and rose petals.
Beside me, Roman makes a thoughtful sound.
“Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
His hazel eyes warm with amusement and too much understanding.
He looks relaxed, all rolled-up shirtsleeves and easy charm, with the worn leather sketchbook he carried for most of the drive tucked under one arm.
His dark-blond hair falls across his forehead like he hasn’t spent the last six hours reviewing case files full of broken bonds and alpha psychosis.
That’s Roman’s gift. He knows how to carry ugly things without letting them turn him ugly.
I’ve never mastered that trick.
His shoulder brushes mine as we move farther into the bakery.
The contact is easy and familiar, another version of the hand he rested on my thigh twenty miles outside town when I asked him to read the victim summaries aloud.
Roman knows when touch will settle me and when it feels like a demand.
We’ve been a pack long enough that he rarely guesses wrong.
Right now, settling is not happening. An omega stands near the counter holding a pale-purple iced coffee. Her scent hit me the second I opened the door.
She smells earthy and herbal, like sage crushed between fingers and the fresh electric hint of rain on the horizon. Threaded beneath both is honey so faint it reads less like sweetness and more like something carefully kept.
My body responds with a hard, immediate pull.
Underneath her scent runs another note, one I know from the field.
Sometimes an omega’s scent carries a low frequency that speaks to a system running out of sync.
I’ve scented touch-deprived omegas after bond-psychosis cases, when everything has already gone wrong.
This is similar but older. It’s worn into her scent the way chronic pain becomes someone’s baseline. Whoever she is, she has been living without what her body needs for so long that deprivation has become normal.
Want and the need to protect tangle together so tightly that separating them takes conscious effort. My alpha demands I fix it and take her under my protection. The instincts ride me hard, making it difficult to look anywhere else.
The omega has long auburn waves spilling over one shoulder, pale freckled skin, green eyes, and a fitted green dress that makes the whole sweetheart-pastel bakery look washed out around her.
Pretty isn’t the right word. Pretty feels too tame, too polished.
She’s beautiful in a way that doesn’t ask permission.
She also looks at me like I personally did something wrong by walking through the door.
Roman pauses beside me.
I glance at him. His scent changes with a warm, unmistakable spike of interest. Recognition moves through our bond.
“You feel it too,” I say.
His gaze stays on her. “Yes.”
Roman’s interest widens mine, but it doesn’t settle any of the questions underneath it. Before either of us can say more, the blonde behind the espresso machine straightens.
“Morning. What can I get y’all?”
“Coffee,” I say. “Whatever’s good.”
“Cardamom cold brew,” Roman says without hesitation, already pulling the pencil from behind his ear. “Two, please.”
I glance at him. “You ordering for me now?”
“You drank mine at the last gas station.”
“You left it unattended.”
His mouth curves.
My hand settles briefly at the small of his back as we step closer to the counter. “Order the coffee.”
The redhead watches the exchange. Her attention moves from Roman to me, then back again. Interest warms her scent before she reins it in.
My scent responds to hers.
The curvy blonde beside her whispers something that makes the omega choke lightly on her coffee.
Roman coughs into his fist.
I give him a look.
“What?”
“That was a cough?”
“It was.”
“Convincing.”
The redhead’s eyes narrow at both of us.
Junie, according to the name stitched across the blonde’s apron, starts preparing the drinks. “Anything else?”
Roman looks toward the display case. “Yeah, two of whatever smells so good.”
Her professional smile warms. “Honey cakes.”
“Then we should probably start there.”
I should be focused on the bond drugs that brought us to this town. I’m the lead investigator on this one and with the rising stack of victim case files, we need answers.
The Bond Enforcement Special Task Force was created six years ago as a regional branch of the DEA, after illegal bond-manipulation compounds started surfacing across the South.
We handle the cases that refuse to stay inside one jurisdiction: trafficking rings, black-market suppressants, counterfeit bite-removal drugs, and compounds that cross state lines faster than local departments can follow them.
State and local agencies are required to coordinate when a qualifying case becomes ours.
GatorX is different from most of what reaches us. For several years, dealers sold it as a temporary escape from the bond. One dose bought a few hours without the connection screaming in the back of someone’s mind. It was dirty and dangerous, but usually temporary.
Then the permanent cases started. Three months ago, a bonded beta outside Miami took it and woke unable to recognize his mate.
Two weeks later, an omega in Atlanta became convinced her pack had been replaced by strangers and nearly burned down the pack house trying to escape.
Then an alpha in Pensacola tore apart a motel room because he swore somebody had ripped the bond straight out of his chest.
The latest samples all carry the same wetland signature: plant material, mineral residue, compounds consistent with swamp environments. Enough to keep pointing us toward this part of Florida but not enough to tell us why.
Blood on tile flashes across my memory before I can stop it. A terrified omega shaking so hard her teeth chatter. The burnt-sugar scent of panic clinging to a bond that had already collapsed by the time we arrived.
I was minutes too late on that case. Minutes should not be enough time to destroy somebody’s life. Apparently, with GatorX, they are.
Roman’s fingers catch my wrist. “You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The one where you leave the room without moving.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re lying.”
“Professionally speaking, I’m good.”
His expression stays mild. “Avoiding the truth doesn’t become healthy because you phrase it like a police report.”
I shoot him a look that should end the conversation. It doesn’t
Roman’s thumb brushes once over the inside of my wrist. The contact pulls me fully back into the bakery, along with his cardamom and cinnamon. The warmth of him has meant home longer than any address we’ve shared.
“You slept wrapped around me last night,” he says.
“That is irrelevant.”
“You also stole the blanket.”
“You run hot.”
“You had your face buried in my neck.” Roman’s expression is perfectly innocent, but affection runs through the bond between us, warm and familiar. Roman has never been afraid of loving me.
I lift his hand and press my mouth briefly to his knuckles before letting it go.
“Better?” he asks.
“No.”
“Liar.”
A quiet laugh comes from somewhere near the counter.
I look up.
The redhead is trying not to smile.
Junie sets one of the cold brews in front of Roman. “Are you visiting for the festival?”
“Work,” I answer.
Roman gives her an apologetic smile. “We’re investigating some incidents in the region that may connect back to Sweetheart Haven.”
Junie’s hands pause for half a second before she keeps pouring. “Incidents?”
“Bond related.”
The bakery hushes in that small-town way where nobody actually stops talking, but everybody starts listening. The redhead’s fingers tighten around her lavender drink.
“We’re trying to understand why cases involving GatorX are showing signs of permanent bond damage,” I say.
At the drug’s name, Junie’s face closes.
The curvy blonde loses every trace of her earlier playfulness. “No one here takes that trash.”
“I’m not implying they do.”
“So what exactly are you implying?” Junie asks.
“The batch we’re tracking contains compounds tied to wetland environments, and Sweetheart Haven sits close to the swamp. We’re here to follow the connection.”
“What kind of compounds?” the other blonde asks.
Roman accepts his coffee with a quiet thank-you. “Plant material. Mineral residue. Enough to narrow the region but not enough to identify where it was produced.”
The redhead sets her drink so fast it spills over the top onto her hands.
Junie looks at her. “Scarlet.”
The omega shoots her a warning look.
Scarlet. The name is one I know from our research.
Roman and I read it in the local material during the drive down.
Scarlet Sage is a local historian with an archeology degree and several books on regional folklore.
More interestingly, her name keeps appearing around bond failures, usually accompanied by some version of local residents claiming she knew something was wrong before everybody else did.
I had filed most of that under small-town superstition.
Despite Scarlet’s warning look, Junie adds, “Scarlet is the best person in town to talk to.”
“No,” Scarlet says. The word is calm, but her scent tightens.
The other blonde slides closer to her. “You do know more than anybody.”
“That has never improved my life or anyone else’s in this town.”
Roman’s expression gentles.