Not Theo. Not the diner exhaust or the car fumes or the dry Colorado cold that has a smell all its own, like stone and altitude. Something else. Something that cut directly through all of it and landed in the back of my throat like a warning.
Alpha. Close. Deliberate. Familiar in a way that did not make sense, because I did not know this scent. I had never encountered it before in my life, which meant my instincts were working on information my brain had not caught up to yet.
I stopped walking. Theo took two more steps before he noticed and turned around. "Elliot?"
"Someone is watching us," I said quietly. I did not look around. Looking around tells the watcher that you know. I had learned that in the facility from a woman named Denise, who had been inside three times and treated survival like a curriculum. "Blue truck, across the lot. He has been there since we came out."
Theo's jaw tightened. He did not look either, which meant he trusted me, which was the correct decision. "You sure?"
"I can smell him from here. Alpha, unfamiliar. But he is not being subtle about his position, which means he either wants me to know he is there, or he is bad at surveillance."
"Could be both," Theo said.
"Could absolutely be both."
We got into the Honda. Theo started the engine with the careful movements of someone trying to look ordinary. I buckled my seatbelt, adjusted the visor mirror, and used it to look directly across the parking lot at the blue truck without turning my head.
The man behind the wheel was looking right back at me.
He was alpha in the way that hits you before the details do. That particular gravity some of them carry, like the air around them has different rules. Dark hair, cut short on the sides. Sharp jaw. A jacket I could not identify from this distance. He was not hiding. He was not pretending to be on his phone or reading something. He was just watching, with the specific stillness of someone who has made a decision and is waiting for the right moment to act on it.
And then he did something I was not expecting.
He nodded. Not a threat. Not a greeting, exactly. Something in between. Acknowledgment. Like he was confirming something to himself.
Theo pulled out of the lot. I watched the blue truck in the side mirror until we turned onto the street and it disappeared from view.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
Theo was quiet for exactly one second too long.
"Theo?"
"His name is Caden Reyes," he said. "He is an alpha. Independent, not pack affiliated. He moved to Colorado Springs about eighteen months ago." Another pause. "He is also the one who has been quietly asking questions about your case for the last year."
I turned to look at Theo directly. "Someone has been investigating my case?"
"Asking questions. Quietly. He has not filed anything or made any official moves. But he has been talking to people. Old neighbors, the clerk from the original trial, a property manager who lived in your building." Theo kept his eyes on the road. "I only know because Darian told me. Darian has been keeping an ear out."
I processed this for a moment. Outside the window, Colorado Springs continued doing its ordinary afternoon thing, deeply unbothered.
"Why?" I said. "Why would an independent alpha I have never met spend a year asking questions about a closed omega conviction?"
"That," Theo said, "is the part I do not know."
I faced forward. The mountains were visible from the highway stretch we had turned onto, steady and enormous and still entirely unbothered. I was starting to feel a complicated kinship with those mountains.
Someone had been pulling threads on my case for a year without contacting me, without filing anything official. Just quietly, carefully asking questions in exactly the places that would build a picture if you already knew where the frame was. That was not random curiosity. That was method.
And the fact that he showed up in that parking lot within three hours of my release, watching me with that calm, deliberate nod, meant that Caden Reyes had known I was coming before I arrived. Which meant someone told him. Which opened a very interesting and slightly alarming set of questions about who was watching whom, and why, and whether I was walking into someone else's operation or whether someone had been holding the door open for mine.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number again — different from the first two messages. A new unknown.
Welcome back, Elliot. We should talk. I know what the lighter actually remembers.
I stared at the screen. Then I looked up at the road ahead and said, very calmly, "Theo. Tell me everything you know about Caden Reyes. Right now. Do not edit."
Theo exhaled slowly. "I was afraid you were going to say that."
"You should have been afraid of that three exits ago. Talk."
Theo talked for the entire length of the highway stretch and halfway through the residential roads leading to his apartment.
Caden Reyes. Thirty years old. Alpha. Born in Santa Fe. He relocated to Colorado Springs eighteen months ago under circumstances Theo described as unclear but not suspicious, probably. Former investigative consultant for a private legal firm in New Mexico that specialized in wrongful conviction cases. Left that firm quietly. No scandal, no paper trail. Just a resignation letter and a forwarding address that landed him two miles from the Aldean pack compound.
"That last part," I said. "Say that again."
"He lives two miles from the Aldean compound."
"Theo, that is not a coincidence. That is a choice."
"I know."
"A very specific, very intentional choice made by a man who used to investigate wrongful convictions and is now living within walking distance of the family that put me in prison."
"I am aware of how that sounds."
"Does it sound like someone who is working against me, or someone who positioned himself deliberately close to the problem?"
Theo turned into his apartment complex and parked with the careful precision of someone buying time before answering. "Darian thinks he is clean. Darian has good instincts."
"Darian also thought Marcus was a decent person for two and a half years."
Theo winced. "Fair."
I got out of the car and followed him up the exterior stairs to his second-floor apartment, running the information through every angle I had. An independent alpha with a wrongful conviction background who moved close to the Aldeans, spent a year quietly gathering evidence, showed up in that parking lot within hours of my release, and then texted me from an unknown number claiming to know what the lighter remembered.
There were two explanations. Either Caden Reyes was an ally who had been building a case from the outside while I was building one from the inside. Or he was connected to whoever framed me, close enough to know the details of the evidence, and was now attempting to control my next move before I made it.
Both explanations required me to meet him. Only one of them required me to be careful about what I touched.
Theo's apartment was exactly what I expected. Small, clean, slightly cluttered in the way of a person who was organized about important things and relaxed about everything else. A bookshelf that was genuinely being used. A kitchen that smelled like someone cooked real food in it. A couch with a blue blanket folded over the back that I recognized from three years ago, which meant Theo was a person who kept things, which meant he was also a person who felt things quietly for a long time without saying so.
I did not comment on the blanket. But I noted it.
He made coffee while I sat at his kitchen table and typed back a response to the unknown number. Three words. Where and when?
The reply came in under a minute. Riverside Park, east pavilion, one hour.
I looked at the timestamp. It was 4:58. One hour put the meeting at six, which would be dark enough for discretion and public enough that I was not walking into an enclosed space alone with an alpha I did not know. Reasonable. Almost considerate. I did not trust consideration from strangers, but I respected the logistics.
"He wants to meet in an hour," I told Theo.
Theo set a mug in front of me and sat down across the table. "I am coming."
"You are absolutely coming. You are also staying twenty feet back so I can read the interaction without your anxiety contaminating the air."
He opened his mouth.
"Theo, your stress has a scent. It is not subtle. I need to be able to read him clearly."
He closed his mouth. Then, "That is a deeply unfair ability."
"I know. I did not design it."