The rain obscured some of his view from his unmarked car, but Lidon recognized a drug transaction when he saw one. Two betas, a blond one and the dealer—a tall guy wearing a faded baseball cap—meeting on the street, Blondie looking around before he approached the other guy. A short, but intricate handshake—undoubtedly an agreed upon code. A minute of supposed chatting and catching up, but the dealer was even worse of an actor than Blondie. Then another handshake, too slow and too obvious to hide the exchange of money for whatever Blondie was buying.

It was the sixth transaction they’d witnessed the dealer making, meaning they had enough evidence to arrest him. Lidon waited till they completed exchange, then signaled his partner. Showtime. They stepped out the car, each going after their target. Within minutes, they had the two betas handcuffed in the back of their car.

Blondie sobbed as Lidon secured him in the car and closed the door on him. “You don’t understand. It’s not drugs. I need these for my husband.”

Lidon slid behind the wheel again, glad to be out of the pouring rain. He was still wearing the gloves he’d put on before extracting the little ziplock bag from Blondie’s pocket. He retrieved it from the evidence bag he’d put it in to study it. The beta was right that it didn’t look like any standard hard drugs. The ziplock contained little pink pills, about thirty of them.

“What are they?” his partner asked him. He’d only joined Narcotics a few months ago, and Lidon still taught him stuff on a daily basis. Still, Sean was a good kid at the core and a fast learner.

“I don’t recognize these,” Lidon said. “Looks like some kind of illegal pharmaceutical drug. The lab will find out. Let’s head back to the station and book these two.”

“Please, I need those for my husband. He’ll die without these.”

Lidon started the car. He’d been with Narcotics for three years now, and he’d seen it all. Still, cases like this got to him. They’d investigated the dealer they’d arrested for a while. Their surveillance showed he sold any hard drug known to man. It was Blondie's rotten luck he’d gotten arrested as well. If Lidon had known he was buying meds and not hard drugs, he would’ve waited for the next customer before making the arrest.

“What are they?” he asked Blondie, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.

The beta replied without hesitation. “Heat suppressants.”

“Your husband’s an omega?” Lidon asked.

“Yes. And he needs these. His heat is starting and it’s bad. Please. I need to get back to him.”

Something tickled Lidon’s brain. “What do you mean his heat is bad?”

For the first time, Blondie hesitated and he cast his eyes down. As a cop, Lidon had always relied on his instincts. When you dealt with assholes and criminals all day long, you learned to recognize the victims, the innocent. Everything in him screamed that Blondie was telling the truth.

“Give me a minute,” Lidon told Sean. “Stay in the car.”

He took the little bag with the pink pills with him as he got out of the car. He opened the back door and gestured Blondie to step out. His trembling body told Lidon the beta was scared. Lidon waited till he’d closed the car door again before speaking. “I’m not gonna hurt you. Walk with me for a sec.”

He found a dry spot under the entrance to an apartment complex. “Talk to me. What’s wrong with your omega and what’s the name of these meds?”

“He’s…he’s young, sir. Twenty. This is his third heat. We got married less than a year ago, before his first heat. I love him, sir. We’ve always been in love, ever since we met in school. But during his heat, he’s…he’s different, sir.”

“Different how?”

Blondie blushed, two flaming red spots burning on his pale skin. “He’s insatiable, sir. We had plenty of sex before his first heat, but never like this. I can’t… He needs more than I can give him, sir.”

Lidon frowned, his unease growing. “Hire a caretaker.”

“We did, sir. Last time. It didn't help much. It’s two days before his heat and he’s already climbing the walls…” he swallowed, and his eyes were trained on the wet pavement as he rushed out the next few words. “I already had intercourse with him three times today, sir, and it’s not helping. I ordered a caretaker for tomorrow, but I’m scared.”

“What are the pills? I’ve seen heat suppressants, but these are unfamiliar.”

“They’re a new generation suppressants, sir.”

“Illegal?”

Blondie sighed. “Yes, sir. They’re still in clinical trial, but they have been for years and there’s no news on when they may become available, even though the trial results are promising. They’re called X34.”

Lidon couldn't ignore the similarities. The beta's description of his omega sounded too much like Vieno. He had to ask. “Has your omega ever been tested for the Melloni gene?”

Blondie’s eyes shot up to meet his. “No, sir. What is that?”

Lidon couldn’t do it. He couldn’t arrest this kid and not only fuck him over, but his omega as well, all because he was trying to do what was best for him. He wasn’t a druggie, but a husband doing whatever his omega needed. “Give me a few minutes to make a call. Stand here and don’t fucking move.”

A glimmer of hope sparkled in Blondie’s eyes. “Yes, sir. I’ll stay right here.”

Lidon signaled Sean he was making a call, then whipped out his phone to call Enar. He made sure to step out of hearing distance from Blondie, while keeping an eye on him to ensure he wouldn't take off.

“Lidon, what’s up?”

Enar sounded tired, but he usually did. Five hours of sleep constituted a luxury for him, he’d once confided to Lidon. The man needed to take better care of himself, but he never would as long as patients needed him.

“I have a question,” he said, skipping formalities. One thing he could appreciate about Enar was his ability to focus on the important stuff, niceties be damned.

“Shoot.”

“New generation heat suppressants called X34, still in clinical trial. Ever heard of those?”

Enar hesitated. “You need an official or unofficial answer?”

“If I wanted the official one, I would’ve called you from the station.”

“Yeah, I'm familiar with them. They’re rumored to be a big improvement in suppressing heat.”

“Have you used them on patients?”

“Two, with good results. Better than the standard ones.”

“Would they work on someone with the Melloni gene?”

“I don’t know. There are still too many unknowns about what the specific effects of the gene are to determine if the meds will work, or if they will interact with whatever hormonal process the gene is triggering during heat.”

“Would you recommend an omega try these suppressants unsupervised?”

“Hell, no. Under no circumstances. Lidon, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Lidon sighed. “Not me. I arrested a beta for buying them illegally for his omega. He hasn’t been tested for the gene, but it sure sounds like he has it. the beta is scared to death for his husband.”

He wasn’t asking, but he didn’t need to.

“Tell him to call me as soon as you release him. I’ll help his omega.”

Lidon shook his head. “How do you know I intend to release him?”

“Don’t try to fool me, Lidon. You wouldn’t arrest a man for trying to keep his partner safe. I assume you have to keep the meds?”

Enar knew him too well. “Yeah. We busted his dealer, so I need it as evidence.”

“That’s okay. I’ll figure something out for his omega. Tell him I’m ready, awaiting his call.”

Lidon had to ask, because his mind wouldn’t let go otherwise. “Have you heard from Palani and Vieno?”

Enar sighed. “No.”

“It’s coming up again, right?”

As if he didn’t know. As if he hadn’t marked it on his calendar, making sure he was off those two days. As if his body wasn’t shouting at him to call Vieno right fucking now and make sure he’d be the one knotting him again.

“Yeah. Little over two weeks from now.”

“Maybe if this X34 works for this omega, you could try it on Vieno?”

“Is that what you want, Lidon? Something tells me you’d be all too happy to be of…service again.”

“Fuck you,” Lidon said, but without any real anger behind it. Enar did know him too well. He was conflicted about Vieno finding another way to quench his sexual appetite during his heat than through Lidon. How fucked up was that, considering they’d had only one encounter? True, it had lasted almost two days and they’d fucked like rabbits, but why couldn’t he erase the little omega from his system?

“I’ll check in with them and casually mention you’d be willing to help out, how’s that?”

A shiver danced down Lidon’s spine. “Yeah.”

He broke off the call without another word. Enar had been right; there was no way he was arresting Blondie. Not when all he did was looking out for his husband. Sure, he’d bought illegal meds, but to Lidon there was a huge difference between buying cocaine and buying heat suppressants.

He walked back over to Blondie, who’d been nailed to the spot Lidon had left him in. He bit his lip as he searched Lidon’s face, probably trying to gauge his chances.

It was the right thing, letting the beta go. Nonetheless, he’d better explain it to Sean—outside of the dealer’s hearing—before the kid jumped to the conclusion Lidon had other motives. With all the rumors flying around about dirty cops, he had to be careful in protecting his reputation.

“I’m gonna let you go,” Lidon said. He held up a finger when Blondie opened his mouth to speak. “I can’t give you back your meds, because I need those as evidence. But there’s a doctor you can call who will help you.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. But, sir, a doctor?”

Lidon put his hand on the beta’s shoulder. “He’s a good man, one you can trust. Just don’t ever mention to anyone I referred you to him, okay? He’ll help your husband, I promise.”

* * *

A death notice in the paper had caught Palani’s eye. A young male omega had passed away, and the wording suggested suicide as the cause of death. That in itself was sad, but the veiled mention of him joining his brother who had passed away only weeks before had piqued Palani’s curiosity and prompted him to look up the family.

The McCains were a low-on-the-totempole family that boasted mainly omegas. Palani did a double take when he looked at their public statistics. Their omega-rate in the current generation stood at almost eighty percent, with only three percent alphas, and the rest betas. As rates went, that was highly unusual.

So was their death rate. Their fertility rate was insane, with their omegas averaging four children, but after Palani had picked his jaw up off the floor from processing that statistic, his eye fell on the mortality rate. He frowned as he looked through the listings of the many omegas from this family who had died young. Late teens and early twenties…and all of weird causes. Car accidents. Accidental electrocution. Drowning. None of them from known illnesses.

Why would healthy omegas from the same family all die at such a young age? And what happened to this latest young man…and to his brother? It wouldn’t let Palani go.

After an hour of online research that only resulted in more questions rather than satisfying answers, he walked over to his boss’s desk. “Mr. Franken, can I speak to you for a moment?” he asked.

Franken was an alpha, but he treated Palani with relative respect considering his junior status.

“What’s up?” Franken asked.

“I’ve stumbled across a family with an unusual number of deaths amongst young omegas, all from non-natural causes.”

Franken leaned forward in his chair, cocking his head. “Give me the elevator pitch.”

Palani recapped his findings, a skill he’d learned in the three years since working for the paper. Franken had little patience and always wanted the bottom line first. Palani had developed the ability to summarize anything in under a minute.

“What are you thinking?” Franken asked.

“Honestly, I have no theories at this point, other than that this can’t be a coincidence. It’s an anomaly I can’t explain.”

Franken pursed his lips, then nodded. “Okay. I agree this could be something. You can spend four hours on this today, see where it leads you. After that, I want your preliminary findings to see if it’s worth investigating further.”

Palani nodded, his face breaking open in an excited smile. This was the part he loved best about being a reporter, the investigative part.

“And Hightower, try not to piss any alphas off, if possible. You seem to excel at that...”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Palani nodded.

Minutes later, he was on the phone with his contact at the police, to see if suicide was the cause of death for Colton McCain, the twenty-two-year-old whose death notice he’d spotted in the paper. Sadly, his instincts had been spot on. Colton had hung himself. And his younger brother’s death had been a suicide as well, a self-inflicted GSW to the head, his police source shared with Palani without prompting.

He hung up the phone and looked at his notes. What possessed two omega brothers to commit suicide so shortly after each other? Something in their family situation? Abuse?

A quick research uncovered that Colton’s brother Adam had worked at a nursing home as a nurse’s aide but quit a few months before his death at age twenty. Palani decided to pay the nursing home a visit to see what he could discover about the McCains.

“A real tragedy,” the nurse supervisor, Nancy, told him. Palani caught her at the right time, minutes before her scheduled break, so she was happy to talk to him as long as she could smoke a cigarette outside.

“How long did Adam work here?” Palani asked.

“He started right after high school as part of our in-house training program. He was a sweet kid and popular with our residents.”

“Why did he quit?”

Nancy looked around, even though they stood outside, perched under a small overhang to protect them from the miserable rain that had been coming down all morning. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she said.

Palani knew how to play this game. “How about I ask questions and you answer with a yes or no?”

After a slight hesitation she nodded, then took another drag from her cigarette.

“Did he do something wrong that would’ve gotten him fired?”

“No. It was not his fault.”

“But something did happen?”

She nodded, tapping with her foot and avoiding his eyes.

In Palani’s experience, most issues arose from three origins: power, money, and sex. Since he’d been an omega, power wasn’t the most logical reason. That left money and sex. But Nancy had said he hadn’t done anything wrong, so money wasn’t likely either.

“Something sexual?” he guessed.

“Yes.” Her cheeks colored red.

“But it wasn’t his fault, you said. Was he assaulted?”

“They claimed they couldn’t help themselves, that he was irresistible…” Nancy clamped her mouth shut.

“They? More than one alpha assaulted him?”

She nodded, her lips still pressed together.

“Two?”

A head shake.

“Three?”

She affirmed his question with a slow nod.

Why would three alphas sexually attack an omega at work? That didn’t make sense. Sure, sexual assaults on omegas happened, but the majority was either by acquaintances at home or in public places, or in social settings like at parties, in clubs, and such. For three alphas to assault an employee, something extraordinary had to have triggered it.

Nancy had said they’d claimed they couldn’t help themselves. They were blaming the victim, the omega. Had he come to work during his heat? Even then, it shouldn’t have been that much of an issue. Unless…

Palani’s gut churned. “They claimed he was irresistible?”

“They’d never smelled anything like it, they’d said. Sex daze. They were barely aware of what they did to him, but they…”

Again she stopped, terror on her face.

“I won’t tell anyone what you told me,” Palani said.

“But you’re a reporter,” she protested. “Sooner or later this will come out.”

“Even then, I’ll never betray you as my source.”

Her jaw set. “It wasn’t right, what they did to him. Blaming him, then making him quit.”

“Did he press charges?”

“No. My friend works in HR, and she told me they put pressure on him not to. Told him it was useless, since he’d never said no. They claimed he begged them to…to have sex with him. That doesn’t sound like him at all. He was shy, socially awkward. But so sweet. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. I can’t imagine him begging three practical strangers, including our boss, for sex.”

“When he started working here, had he experienced his first heat already?”

“He hadn’t. He told a coworker of ours once that he was a late bloomer, that most omegas in his family were.”

She took a last drag of her cigarette before putting it out and throwing it in a trash bin. “They told us he suffered from depression, but I can’t help but think it was because of what they did to him.”

“Thank you, Nancy. I appreciate you telling me this.”

Fifteen minutes later, he was at the flower shop where Lance McCain, a cousin of Colton and Adam, had worked before he’d died of an accidental drowning at age twenty-one.

“You wanna talk about Lance?” the owner, a forty-something beta named Larry, asked Palani. “Why? It’s been two years since he died.”

“Just a follow up,” Palani said. “What can you tell me about him?”

Larry scratched his head, then went back to bundling sweet-smelling roses into small bouquets. “He was a good kid. Worked hard, good sense for arrangements, very friendly to customers, and always willing to go the extra mile.”

“How old was he when he started working here?”

“Right out of high school. I was looking for an apprentice and his dad is my cousin twice removed or something. Said his son needed a job and that a flower shop would be perfect.”

“Lance liked flowers?” Palani asked.

Larry shrugged. “I guess. I think he needed a job where he wouldn’t be around a lot of people the whole day. His dad said he didn't like interacting with people. He worked the back room, making flower arrangements like funeral pieces or bouquets made to order.”

Palani’s stomach rolled a little from the overwhelming scent of all the flowers. “Doesn’t the smell bother you?” he asked.

“No. You get used to it, become desensitized. I can’t even smell when my wife’s in heat, you know?”

It was all the confirmation Palani needed. The gene. They all had to have had the Melloni gene, the same one Vieno had. What had happened to Lance? He’d been safe here with Larry, a beta who could barely scent him, but what had changed?

“The last months before his death, was Lance the same? Or can you think of anything that was different?”

Larry looked up from his roses, releasing the flower he'd been holding. “He was different after what happened to him, of course.” He studied Palani for a few seconds. “You didn’t know, did you? That he was assaulted?”

Palani shook his head. “No, I didn’t. But I’m not surprised. Can you tell me more?”

“I leaned hard on him to press charges, but he ended up dropping them after the alpha who…” Larry’s jaw tightened. “He raped him. He claimed Lance wanted it, that he begged him for sex, but I don’t believe it for a second.”

Palani’s air left his lungs with a whoosh. Oh, god. There was a pattern. “What happened?”

“Lance didn’t usually do deliveries, because I used a self-employed driver for that, but it was a last-minute order. A man wanted to make nice with his wife and ordered two dozen roses. So I sent Lance. I don’t know what happened, but the man ended up raping him…for hours. He denied up and down it was rape, said it was consensual, but that never made sense to me. I mean, the guy was married, for fuck’s sake…and Lance was a virgin. Lance pressed charges at first, but I guess the cops convinced him it was useless and he dropped them. He was never the same after, a shadow of himself.”

Palani swallowed. “And then he drowned.”

Larry scoffed. “You and I both know that wasn’t an accidental drowning. My guess is he took an overdose of the sedatives he was prescribed after his rape and drowned himself.”

Back in his car, Palani was too shaken up to start the engine. He watched his hands tremble, then lowered them and took a few deep breaths.

It had to be the gene. Adam had been fine at work at first because he hadn’t had his first heat yet. As soon as he’d come close, he’d been irresistible to the alphas around him. And Lance had been fine in the flower shop where the scent of the flowers would have overpowered his omega smell. But his mistake had been to do that delivery.

Both of them had been raped. Both of them would have been traumatized. Depressed. Much like Vieno… Palani swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. Was Vieno at risk for the same?

His agoraphobia might have ended up saving him because it had prevented a repeat of his first heat. And Palani was not only a beta who lacked the sexual aggression alphas had, but he was also used to Vieno’s smell, having grown up with him.

But even so, the depression was lurking under the surface. And his health problems had been getting worse until he’d had Lidon take care of him. The thought of Vieno ending up like these young men, it took Palani’s breath away.

But he wasn’t done yet. He hadn’t found out yet what had happened to Colton. He’d been older than the others, so what had caused him to commit suicide? Had he too been cursed with the gene? Before concluding the gene was at fault, Palani had to know.