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Zayne Steward, a member of the settled Roma clan that inhabited the south side of High Enfield.

He was a handsome chap, with the soft but rugged features his family was known for.

He had very little by way of a police record, and if intel reports were to be believed, it was his two beta brothers who were the problem children within the family.

Once he had been washed, David pulled him into several different positions so Pember could take photographs.

It was no easy feat, given that he’d spent the night in an industrial strength freezer.

He could hear Pember quietly apologising every time he took a photograph of his face or genital area.

Blake huffed, softly shaking his head as he made a note of everything.

“Right then, my love,” Chichi said, pulling on a set of blue examination gloves. She looked down at the body with a sympathetic smile. “Quite the rough night, hey?”

Zayne, of course, said nothing back.

Blake breathed a sigh of relief as Chichi began her examination, because he could formally hand the body over to the coroner’s office, meaning that any dispute the family had could be directed to them instead of the police.

Chichi cleared her throat as she began speaking into a Dictaphone.

“Body appears to have suffered catastrophic trauma to the chest, with significant lacerations to the throat and sternum, end sentence. Significant wounds to the forearms, minimal damage to the hands and fingers, end sentence. New line.”

She moved around the body, running her hands across his limbs, head dipping in for a closer look every now and again.

“Body appears to be in a state of incomplete transformation, with a light smattering of brown fur across several areas of the body, end sentence. Lupine shift appears to have been partially rendered, with moderate haemorrhaging of the blood vessels in the eyes.”

Blake’s attention perked up. Had Zayne been attempting to shift?

He didn’t have a chance to confirm as the examination began to quickly unfold.

Chichi and David worked with incredible efficiency to remove and examine the organs.

Duncan, to his credit, also moved diligently around the others, but it was Pember that Blake couldn’t take his eyes off.

His dark brows were knitted together in intense concentration, taking in all of Chichi’s instructions and carrying out the work without question. The forensic suit clung to his thighs when he bent over, and Blake’s mind began to wander back to those tiny black pants.

“Interesting,” Chichi said, her voice like a shotgun shoved against Blake’s back.

He flicked his eyes back to the clipboard, trying to figure out if he’d missed anything.

“Whilst it was most certainly the slashes to the heart that killed this poor alpha, I’m slightly concerned about the condition of his adrenal glands. ”

Blake cleared his throat. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that alphas’ adrenal glands—as in the organ that produces adrenaline—are much larger than any of the other sexes.” She inclined her head towards Blake. “It’s so you can fight harder and longer if your mate’s in danger. This chap… well, his are almost completely congested. See here?”

She brought a tray over to Blake that contained the blackened remains of something fleshy.

“A healthy alpha gland should be as large as the kidneys. Helps pump more adrenaline to your eyes, heart and lungs. His are degraded, and appear to have no decrease in lipid content, which we would expect.”

Blake raised an eyebrow. “In layman’s terms, Chi.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, walking back over to the workbench.

“It means he didn’t appear to be under duress when he died.

Granted, his body attempted to shift, but if his brain had kicked his sympathetic nervous system into fight or flight, we’d expect to see a massive decrease in glandular lipid content.

But here there just… isn’t. Like he wasn’t in a state of stress at all.

Given the number of defensive wounds across his arms, I’d have expected him to have entered that state if he was literally fighting for his life. But then again…” Her words trailed off.

“He has no defensive wounds on his hands,” Pember piped up.

Chichi nodded. “Correct. Which might suggest he didn’t put up a fight at all. In fact, I’d be very interested to have a look at his blood readings.”

Both Pember and Duncan were nodding along, making Blake feel like he was being left out of some super-secret science party.

“I wonder if he took something in the lead-up to his murder. Something that blocked the function of his adrenal glands. Or decreased his heart rate, or significantly lowered his blood pressure,” Chichi continued.

“Like some kind of anxiolytic?” Pember said, moving to stand next to the other omega.

Blake’s mouth twitched. “You mean beta blockers?”

They both looked up. “Yes!” Chichi said, folding her arms. “Get these bloods processed ASAP; I want to know what we’ve got here.”

Pember nodded and slipped the sample tubes into an evidence bag.

Blake’s mind was racing as he processed the new information.

He knew Zayne had been drinking on the evening of his death, but CCTV at the pubs he’d frequented was extremely poor quality, and the other patrons were less than helpful.

If he were feeling spiteful he might report the pubs to licensing for failing to uphold their security obligations, but he parked the thought for the time being.

Pulling out his phone, he sent a message to the other sergeants in the group chat.

‘ Possibly took something in the lead-up to his death. Have we had any positive hits from CCTV or house to house? ’

His phone pinged a moment later, and Blake almost rolled his eyes. It was Mark fucking Matthews, the most useless DS to ever exist.

‘ Not yet. One witness said they saw him chatting to a pregnant omega earlier in the night, but that was about it. ’

Blake sighed and slipped the phone back into his pocket. There was no intel to suggest he had a pregnant mate, but then again he might not have told his family if the person in question wasn’t Roma.

It took another half hour for the body to be closed and locked back in the storage unit, and there was an air of excitement between Duncan and Pember as they made their way back to the locker room.

“What do you think, Pem? Could it be amitriptyline, doxepin or imipramine? Oh, oh! Maybe he took some kind of souped-up cannabis, or maybe ketamine?”

Pember’s head bobbed along as they stripped off their suits and boots. “Hm, I’m gonna say some kind of benzo, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate. Or maybe even Diazepam if he was feeling fancy.”

Blake sniffed as he peeled off his own forensic suit. Despite the chilliness of the morgue, the material still made him sweaty as hell.

Something twisted in his gut as he listened to Duncan and Pember chatting away, something intense and irrational.

He had the most absurd desire to slap Duncan across the back of the head with his clipboard and bundle him into one of the corpse containers.

He wouldn’t, of course, but he did take some pleasure in imagining how he might do it.

“Are you… okay over there?” Pember said, hanging his forensic suit over a peg.

He could hear Duncan pestering the medical techs back in the examination bay.

Blake grumbled as he rammed his toe into the heel of his other boot, trying to dislodge it from his foot. Gripping the side of a locker, he tried to pry the boot off, but with little success.

“It’s stuck,” he said, hopping on the spot. “Damn thing’s like a vacuum around my foot.”

Pember raised a hand, hiding a grin behind his fingers.

“Stop laughing,” Blake huffed, bending down to tug at it.

Pember snorted. “I’m not laughing, just… mildly amused.” He made a show of propping his own successfully removed boots on the shelf next to Blake’s head. “Besides, you know what they say about people with big feet.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Big shoes,” Blake said flatly.

“Exactly. Should’ve waited for them to bring you another pair. But now I suppose you’ll be stuck wearing off-white Wellingtons for the rest of your life.”

Sighing, Blake hobbled towards a plastic chair in the corner of the room.

He held up a leg and wiggled his foot in the omega’s direction.

Pember raised an eyebrow, sucking his bottom lip as a small smirk slowly tugged at the edge of his mouth.

Blake wanted to bite that lip, to see how it tasted between his?—

“Are you going to help me, or not?” he snapped.

Pember crossed his arms and pouted. “Hm. On one condition.”

Letting his arms hang at his sides, Blake’s top lip slowly peeled back over his fangs. Pember’s eyes instinctually dropped to them, and the faintest of flushes began to creep up his neck.

“Y-you have to have dinner with Val… and me. Tomorrow evening. Even if something happens at work, you have to come home.”

Blake’s mouth went dry, his jaw opening and closing several times.

“And if you don’t,” Pember continued, “I’ll leave you like that forever.”

Blake tilted his head. “Deal, but with one further condition.”

Pember nodded and drifted towards him.

“You make more apple pie.”

Wrapping his hands around Blake’s ankle, Pember wrinkled his nose. “Again? What about cheesecake?”

“Anything you want,” Blake replied, voice low as he ran his tongue over his teeth. “But make it sweet.”

Pember’s nostrils flared and he yanked at the boot.

“Jesus!” Blake yelped as the omega nearly pulled him off the chair. “Are you sure you don’t want to take up rugby?”

Pember laughed and pulled again, that time leaving Blake half hanging over the floor.

When Pember went to do it for a third time, Blake yanked back, but wildly underestimated the strength of Pember’s grip.

The air exploded from his lungs when Pember crashed face first into his chest, cracking the heart rate monitor under his shirt.

“O-oh my God!” Pember said, touching his forehead whilst frantically patting Blake’s chest. “I’m so… I’m so… sorry!”

Blake closed a hand over Pember’s shoulder. Worry was plainly written in his green eyes, causing Blake’s alpha senses to roar at him to placate the omega, soothe the omega, make him smile again. But the closed-off divorcee side of his brain told him to push Pember away.

Letting out a breath, he grabbed Pember’s fingers. “It’s not a pacemaker,” he said, his other hand gripping his chin. “It’s a monitor. I have atrial fibrillation.”

“Arrhythmia?”

“Yeah.”

Pember’s eyes widened, the tips of his fingers curling into Blake’s shirt. “That’s why you knew about the anxiolytic? The beta blockers?”

Blake nodded, eyes trailing to the freckle at the corner of Pember’s jaw. “Yeah. I quite literally have a broken heart.”