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“We have the authority,” Caitlin said, cautiously placing a piece of paper in front of Pember. It read Covert Surveillance Authorisation - Police Personnel, Pember McArthur. There was a swirling signature at the bottom of the page, followed by a load of numbers and words Pember didn’t understand.

“Who signed it?” Blake snapped.

“The chief con himself,” Caitlin replied, stepping back into the corner of the room. She glanced at the inspector, but didn’t seem particularly interested in backing him up.

Pember could feel the anger radiating off Blake as his hand twitched against his cheek. He tried to ignore it, letting his eyes skip over the words in front of him.

“You underhanded bastards,” Blake snarled, “Sending me away so you could approach the chief about putting him in danger? You bunch of fucking cowards.”

“DS Smith!” the inspector shouted, slamming a hand on the table. “Continue with that tone and I shall ask you to leave.”

“Good luck with that, boss,” Mark said, pretending to inspect the back of his hand. “I told you he’d pull a face about it.”

Pember swallowed. “You want to use me to get to them ?”

Blake wrapped his knuckles against the sheet of paper. “Yes. They want to put you in danger to?—”

“It would be regulated.” Caitlin cut across him, though she glanced nervously back and forth between Blake and the inspector. “We’d give him an earpiece, and instr?—”

“A fucking earpiece isn’t going to save him from a den of fucking vipers, Cait!”

Blake’s voice was tremulous, and Pember could feel the cords of his arm tensing across his shoulder. Anger poured off him and into Pember, making a sour heat twist in his gut. Rising to his feet, he clutched Blake’s hand and slowly turned to walk out of the office.

The scraping of chairs across the carpet told him others also stood. “I want an answer, Mr McArthur,” the inspector said, his voice hard.

Blake tensed again, his fangs popping out as his head jerked round.

“With all due respect,” Pember said quietly, running a hand up Blake’s abdomen before he could say something he’d regret. “You are not my supervisor, nor are you my mate.”

All three alphas glanced up at Blake again, then back to Pember.

The inspector scoffed. “But I am your senior officer, and you?—”

“I’m a civilian,” Pember continued. “You cannot order me to do anything.” Although he sounded assertive, his confidence was quickly fading. The inspector glowered, clearly unused to being told ‘no.’

Sniffing, Pember slipped his hand into Blake’s. “I need time to think about it. I’ll give you an answer by the end of the day.”

“Pem—” Blake growled.

“The end of the day,” he said again, giving each of them a hard look.

Without another word, he led Blake out of the police station and through the car park.

They walked in silence, taking the track towards the dog kennels.

Bailey jumped straight into Blake’s arms, sending him barrelling backwards towards a bush.

Pember caught his elbow just before he became intimately acquainted with a conifer.

Bailey hopped to the ground and ran into the woods with George.

Blake brushed the dog hair and slobber off his shirt, the tension in his eyebrows softening just a little.

“Your anger is making them uneasy.” Pember’s voice cracked as he unwound the leads from around the steel bars. “And me.”

That part was barely above a whisper.

Blake’s jaw was clenching and unclenching, his breaths heavy as Pember handed him the leads. He was practically rooted to the spot, his feet planted as though he were getting ready for a fight.

Pember swallowed. “Let’s follow them, yeah? Go on one of those walks we’ve talked so much about.” Yanking his arm, Pember finally got him moving, albeit stiffly. “It’ll be good for your blood pressure. Let’s just stay nice and calm.”

Blake finally let out a long breath, his arm curling around Pember’s waist.

“Sorry,” he said, kissing his head. “That just… It blindsided me. I knew they could be underhanded, but that ?” He let out another breath and shook his head.

“I know,” Pember replied, leading them into the woods. “I wasn’t expecting it either. Come on.”

The trees swayed in the morning breeze, the multitude of oaks and silver birches creating a thick canopy above the path, cloaking it in shadow. It was well away from the shifter run, and it was quiet, despite the chaos of the police station at the bottom of the hill.

“Better?” he said, glancing up at Blake. The alpha gave him a thin-lipped smile, eventually loosening his grip on Pember and letting him walk ahead.

The floral scent of jasmine wafted through the woodlands, and Pember hummed when he saw a patch of the wild white flowers peeking through a sunny break in the trees. Reaching into his inner jacket pocket, he pulled out a plastic shopping bag that he kept in case of emergencies.

“Are you pilfering the local flora again?” Blake said, watching with a lopsided smile as Pember picked bunches of jasmine and placed them into his bag.

“What?” he said, softly punching Blake’s shoulder. “You said it’s not stealing so long as I don’t fell the whole plant.”

Blake huffed and started picking the flowers with him. “More moonshine?”

“Yeah, jasmine and elderflower sounds pretty good. I’m going to get another brewing kit from the supermarket after work.” He shook the bag to make more room.

Blake snorted. “You’re going to have a whole distillery at this rate.”

Sighing, Pember pressed a fragrant branch to his nose. “That’s the dream.”

There was a poking sensation next to his right ear, and he realised Blake had slid a small stick of jasmine into his hair.

“I’m a real princess now,” Pember said with a grin.

Running his tongue over his teeth, Blake sighed. “Pem, do you realise what they’re asking you to do?”

Pember nodded. “They want to use me as an undercover operative or something.” He lifted a brow. “Not very undercover, though. They know who I am.”

“It’s not like that,” Blake said, gently tugging Pember’s shoulder. “They want to use you to get information. They’ll ask you to arrange a meet, maybe even more than that.”

Pember shook his head. “Maya wouldn’t meet up with me. She looked mad as hell when I tried to take Ru away.”

“She’ll be desperate. She’s made out like she’s in heat, thinking no one will come near her, but she’ll want to know what’s happening on the inside, what direction the police are taking.

I think… I think it’s getting to the point that the inspector will use any method necessary to avoid outright arresting her.

Once that happens and the press gets wind of a police employee being involved, the whole town will go to shit.

There’ll be protests, protests will turn to riots, riots will turn to outright chaos.

We’ve seen it in the cities. West Newton will be no different. ”

Pember let out a breath. “West Newton is all farmers. What are they going to do? Stage a protest with their tractors?”

“Not them,” Blake growled. “The university students. They’ll find a cause in anything. Most of them aren’t even local—they won’t give two shits about the damage to the town.”

Pember shuddered, gripping the bag to his body. “I get that, but Maya… How bad could a meeting with her really be? Cait said it’d be monitored?—”

Blake let out a sharp breath and held up his fingers as though counting. “One, lethal overdose. Two, ripped to shreds in his own living room. Three, stabbed in the neck and drowned. Four—” Blake shivered. “—throat cut and thrown into a pit. Do those sound like the actions of a rational person?”

Pember grimaced. “I guess we never really know a person, do we?”

Blake shook his head and pulled Pember against his chest. “Only what we want people to see.”

Silence passed between them, rays of sunlight warming their faces through the dense canopy. Pember closed his eyes as he listened to Blake’s heart, the beat of it almost as erratic as his own.

“Please don’t do it, Pem,” Blake whispered, wrapping his arms around him. “Please don’t put yourself in danger like that. Yesterday was bad enough.”

“It won’t be anything like yesterday,” he said, running his fingers across Blake’s ribs. “It’ll just be a conversation. One that you’ll all be listening to, I assume.”

“But it won’t, will it? You’ll be in a room with a murderer. You have no negotiation training, no protection and no control over what she decides to do.”

Shaking his head, Pember gripped the lapels of Blake’s coat. “And what about all the omegas that’re going to be affected because of this? What protection do they have? Would we have targets on our backs from the alphas when all is said and done?”

Blake’s gaze drifted off into the woods. “If the press put an ‘omega uprising’ spin on the killings, those who are already at risk from their alpha mates might?—”

“Be in even more danger, if they feel like they’re losing control,” Pember said, standing on his tiptoes to bring his face level with Blake’s. “Which is why the police need to keep control of the narrative.”

Blake’s jaw had gone back to clenching and unclenching. “You’re going to try and convince me this is a good idea, aren’t you?”

Pember smiled softly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. But I would do it for other omegas. Not all of them are as lucky as me.”

He would never have said that a month ago. In fact, he’d almost convinced himself that he should have just followed Imogen all along. Dead sister. Dead father. A mother who seemed hell-bent on making his life a misery.

But then, somehow, he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d got a job that he enjoyed, moved into a house that was all his own, found a man that he chose.

Blake exhaled into this hair. “I’m going to rip that authority to shreds line by line. I don’t care if the chief constable’s signed it, he can sign it again once I’m happy that they aren’t throwing you under the bus. That anything you say during that meeting won’t be held against you.”

Pember sighed and turned back towards the jasmine. “It was only a page long, what’s to pick apart?”

Blake huffed. “You underestimate police paperwork. Alongside that authority will be a two-hundred-and-fifty-page policy document. One that I guarantee the chief only skimmed.”

“You guys really love paperwork, huh?”

“If it stops us getting sued, yes.”

They wandered back through the woods, finding George and Bailey sniffing around a tree stump that was infested with wild mushrooms.

“Don’t eat those!” Pember called, shooing them away. As he got a little closer, he realised they were brown capped chestnut mushrooms. “Nice,” he muttered, pulling a few from the ground and putting them in the bag. The feel of the cool earth beneath his fingertips was soothing.

Blake chuckled behind him.

“What?” Pember said, glancing over his shoulder.

“Nothing.” Blake covered his mouth. “You just look like a woodland nymph crouching between the trees, picking mushrooms.”

Pember scowled. “Instead of taking the piss, come and help me gather a few more. Do you think Val would like mushroom soup?”

Blake bent down beside him. “I think she’d like anything you make.”

“Here,” Pember said, opening Blake’s pocket and dropping a handful of mushrooms inside. “Christ, your pockets are like the Tardis. You can fit loads in there.”

“Pem, I’m setting up a meeting with the chief. I can’t turn up with my pockets bulging with mushrooms.”

Pember frowned. “Oh. So you won’t be home until later?”

Blake sighed. “No. I don’t want to stay on, but for this I will.”

Silence hung between them as Pember gripped the mushroom in his palm.

“What should I tell them?” Blake said.

Pember took a breath. “Tell them I’ll do it.”