"You're not a Beta." Dean's laugh came out wet, blood between his teeth, my knee still grinding into his sternum, both of us bone-on-bone against the tile.
"Shut up." I didn't move off him. Couldn't. My hands wouldn't stop shaking long enough to trust them anywhere else on his body.
"Cedar." He said it slow, rolling it around like he wanted the taste. "Under the blood. Under the sweat. You smell like an Omega three hours into heat, Ward. Badge says Beta. Badge is a lie you've been telling this whole department."
"Badge keeps this board running." I ground my knuckles into his collar, felt his pulse jump hard against my thumb. "You out me, I lose the console. You lose every channel in this city for the next ten seconds. That's the trade. Go ahead. Make it."
Behind us the board wouldn't shut up — three precincts talking over each other, a dispatcher two seats down screaming for backup that wasn't coming fast enough. The Faraday seal had killed every phone in the building an hour ago. No calls in. No calls out. Just the hardline and my voice deciding who got saved first.
Dean's eyes stayed on my face, steady even with his split lip. "You'd deafen a whole precinct to keep one secret."
"Watch me."
"I believe you." Wrong thing to say. It loosened something behind my ribs for half a second, and half a second was all he needed.
His palm slapped flat on the tile, hips rolled under me, and the whole room tipped sideways with him. My elbow clipped the console leg, bone cracking bone, and then gravity did the rest of the work he started — his weight rolling through mine, flipping the whole fight, until my spine hit the floor and the air left me in one hard punch.
His forearm came down across my collarbones. Knee wedged between mine so I had nothing left to push off. Full weight, full lock, pinning me flat to the tile like the room itself had decided whose side it was on.
"Get off." Flat. No shake in it, even with my skull still ringing.
"No." Just as flat. Not cruel. Just done arguing.
His face dropped close enough that his breath slammed into mine, both of us breathing like we'd sprinted six flights, chest to chest, nothing between us but soaked cotton and heat. The suppressants were dead in him too now. I could smell it under the copper and the sweat — something scorched and dark, leather left in a July sun too long. Alpha. Not a rumor anymore. Not a guess I could talk him out of.
The tile under us had gone slick — sweat, some blood, God knew whose. Heat kept climbing, vents dead along with everything else the seal killed. My shirt stuck flat to my spine. Every time I shifted, his knee ground harder into the space between mine, and every time it did, that scorched-leather scent hit the back of my throat and burned out whatever plan I still had for getting free.
"Say it," he said against my jaw. "Say what you are."
"Say what you are first, Commissioner. Whose leak is sitting in your draft folder with my name typed on it?"
"Ellis." Quieter now. Almost gentle, which was worse than the growl. "I'm not asking to hurt you."
"Could've fooled me." My wrist throbbed under his grip. I didn't say that part out loud either.
That landed. His jaw ticked once. The lock on my collarbones eased — an inch, maybe less — and I felt it, and I almost bucked out from under him right there. I got one hand free, drove it up under his ribs, tried to roll the weight back my way the way I had thirty seconds ago. For a second it worked. For a second we were both up on our hands, chest to chest, neither one winning, pure push-pull, muscle against muscle with nothing decided.
Then he found the angle. His hand caught my wrist, slammed it flat over my head, and his whole body dropped its weight down through my hips in one clean motion — a real pin this time, no half measures, gravity doing exactly what he told it to. My spine flattened against the floor. His knee drove between mine, pinning them wide. I had maybe twenty percent of my own body left to move.
"Ellis." First time he'd used my name without the rank stapled to the front of it. "Stop fighting this for one second."
"So outing me's easier?"
"So I can figure out if I'm about to do something I can't undo."
His hand slid up my throat instead of answering, wrapped it, thumb pressing under my jaw, tipping my head back like he was checking a wound for depth. His mouth dropped to the cord of muscle in my neck — not a kiss, lower, teeth resting against skin gone tight and hot right over the gland. My whole body locked under him like I'd forgotten how breathing worked.
"Dean." My voice cracked down the middle.
"Yield," he said into my throat, low enough the board's noise swallowed it before it reached anyone else. "Yield, or I finish this right here, on the floor, in front of God and dispatch, and you get to explain the mark to the review board in the morning."
"You wouldn't."
"Five seconds, Ward." His weight didn't lift. It settled harder, hips flat against mine, both of us slick with sweat and blood and something under it neither of us was saying out loud. "Yield, or I take it. Your call, not mine."
A new voice cut into the board behind him — some patrol unit begging for a channel I wasn't there to give them. I didn't look. Couldn't have looked away from his mouth on my neck if the ceiling came down on both of us.
His teeth pressed harder. Skin held. Barely.
My free hand found his ribs again, dug in, tried once more to buy leverage. Didn't matter — he'd already read that move. His hips pinned mine flatter, weight dropping harder through his knee, and the console lights strobed red across both of us, some unit finally getting routed, some life somewhere getting saved without me touching a single switch. For once the board ran itself. For once I couldn't spare it a single thought.
"Last chance." His voice had gone rough at the edges, like it cost him something to keep talking instead of finishing it. "Say no and I stop right now. Say nothing—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to. I felt the exact second his canines started to break the skin, sharp and deliberate, his whole body still gravity-locked over mine, and I still hadn't said either word.