The job fills the gaps and I know these cases matter, regardless of how small they seem. I’ve built a career on knowing that they do. The problem is that I had been pulled from the case of a lifetime, a fucking serial killer investigation into Hex, that had become my entire reason for existing.
Until the leads dried up after catching Marcus Reynolds. He was just a link in the whole chain and we’ve not been able to find anything else that mildly points us in a useful direction. So, I was pulled back here until further notice.
Caldwell doesn’t call much, not unless he thinks he has a lead which usually ends up in false help. So, I stay busy and I can livewith that. I’m a grown adult with coping mechanisms, several of them unhealthy, all of them reliable.
Still, I drag my phone out and check anyway. There’s nothing. If the task force had found anything worth dragging me into before midnight, I’d know. If they hadn’t, I’d still stare at my phone like it had personally failed me. I shove it back into my pocket and head toward my desk, carrying the coffee more out of stubbornness than desire. The first sip was awful. The second will probably be worse. I’m hoping the third circles back around to tolerable through sheer exhaustion.
I fall into my seat and pull one of the reports closer, and read the same sentence three times without absorbing it. It isn’t that the case is complicated. It’s that my brain keeps looking for larger patterns where sometimes there are only people being petty, scared, desperate, or all three before lunch.
The coffee is halfway to my mouth when the front of the station seems to shift. Across the bullpen, Reyes steps out of the hall with her attention already locked forward, and the look she gives me says assault before she opens her mouth.
“West Talbot,” she says as I stand. “Units are bringing in a suspect. Victim’s an Omega.”
I leave the cup on the nearest desk and move toward intake, stopping short when I see the Alpha they’re leading in, his hands cuffed behind his back. He’s tall, broad, and built with the kind of solid weight that makes the officers flanking him seem smaller than they are. Tattoos cover his throat, disappear beneath his damp shirt, and run down his forearms to his hands, black ink stark against skin and the pale streaks of white dust smeared all over.
His pale blue eyes are focused off to the side and I almost ask what’s going on when his scent hits me. I hold back a groan as cedar and whiskey cut through the station’s usual scents. Iswallow carefully, hating the heat running through my body as I unconsciously lean forward.
Falling for a criminal, Skylar. How very professional of you.
I manage a chuckle, trying to ignore the restlessness in my chest but every step closer, I can’t deny my own biology. Fate has a really funny way of giving me what I don’t want. There’s no fucking way he’s my mate.
He doesn’t seem to notice my crisis, his eyes moving through the bullpen again. I follow his gaze to an Omega sitting on the bench near the wall, wrapped in a gray trauma blanket that swallows his shoulders and most of his hands. His head is down, dark curls damp and flattened along one side, silent tears slipping off his chin like he doesn’t know they’re falling.
Red marks stand out near his mouth and along his cheek, that same white powder covering him as well. I grit my teeth as his scent wafts into my personal space as well, a lovely little hell forming in my chest alongside the vanilla and honey scent taking over my senses.
This. Isn’t. Happening.
I shake my head to put myself back into gear. I can think about biology later. Reyes comes up to my side. “You’d think they were in love or some shit the way that Alpha keeps looking at the Omega, right?”
I don’t answer that as a pang of jealousy swells in my chest. “What is all the white stuff? I didn’t think we had that amount of coke wandering the streets in Ansdale.”
Reyes snorts. “Sky, it’sflour, apparently.” I glare at her and she throws her hands up. “What? I was bored and listening to the comms.”
I shrug her off and move toward the intake counter, Reyes a step behind me. “Who’s primary?” I ask Bell, keeping my voice level through force of will and whatever dregs of professionalism survived the last ten seconds.
“Morgan and Vale brought them in,” he says, glancing up from the intake screen. “Assault on West Talbot. They found the Alpha wrapped around the victim. He had some identification on him and we’ve confirmed it’s Kade Rourke.”
I really don’t like the way they’re talking about the Alpha like he’s not standingright here.I chance a glance over at Kade and immediately regret those pale blue eyes staring back at me. “Wrapped around him, how? Like giving him a hug?”
As terrifying as this man looks, he also seems rather... harmless. Granted, that’s mostly the biology talking so I couldn’t explain that to a room full of officers if I tried.
Bell’s expression tightens. He doesn’t have a good answer for that, which is already its own answer, and Reyes shifts beside me like she’s considering whether to step on my foot before I make this worse.
I twist to look over at the Omega again, holding back the urge to shoo everyone away when one of the uniforms crouches too close with a bottle of water. It’s small, a full-body jump he can’t contain before he curls tighter beneath the blanket. Kade sees it at the same time I do. His body goes rigid, the officers placing a hand over their guns before yelling at him not to move.
Kade softens his stance immediately, but his jaw is still set.What the fuck?Needing more context, I move toward the Omega, making sure he can see me before I get anywhere near his space. I stop a few feet out and lower myself into a crouch with enough distance that he doesn’t have to feel trapped by another body. “Hi,” I say quietly. “I’m Detective Skylar Grayson. I’d offer a more impressive introduction, but the department keeps refusing to add ‘coffee machine negotiator’ to my title.”
The Omega manages a small smile before it disappears, his eyes darting to the two officers behind me.
“Jesus, back up a few feet, yeah?” I yell behind me, waiting for them to comply. The Omega’s fingers tighten in the traumablanket when the room shifts, but his breathing changes too, hitching less often.
I sit back onto my ass and rest my arms across my knees, trying to make myself smaller for the Omega. “You don’t have to tell me everything right now,” I say. “I’m going to ask one question, and you can answer it or not answer it. Both work.”
His gaze flicks past me toward Kade, then back again.
“Do you want Kade Rourke out of your line of sight?”
If my suspicion is right, as far-fetched as it is, there’s a possibility that Kade isn’t who everything thinks he is. I’ve never been wrong before but...
