Page 4 of Strays
But it’s not the unfairness of this situation that breaks me. Not even the discomfort. What pushes me over the edge is the resignation on my brothers’ faces.
Like there’s nothing they can do but accept it.
I can smell their rage, their outrage, hanging thick in the air, sharp with aggression pheromones. But still, they don’t move. Don’t speak. Faces blank, bodies bent, doing everything they can to stay docile. To obey, taking this humiliation like we did something wrong.
My chest aches knowing this is all on me. If it had been their choice, we’d have left the force in our first year. But I kept us here.
I’d wanted to be a cop since I was eight years old. My mother had been missing for a year by then, and it never once crossed my mind that the police, including my dads, wouldn’t find her. Not until the day they sat me down and told me her case was being closed. All the leads had gone cold, and there was nothing more they could do.
That day, I hated my dads for the first time. And I made myself a promise: I’d become a cop and find her.
Twelve years later, when my pack graduated and joined the force, I knew the odds of reopening her case were just above zero.
But I tried anyway.
I didn’t know back then that we’d be treated like scum by the human cops and every aegis pack we crossed paths with. It was brutal. Every single day. But I spent every spare minute studying her case, chasing leads, digging for anything that could give me a reason to reopen it.
At the time, I thought everything we endured was worth it. But eventually, it was my turn to give up on her, just like my dads had all those years ago. I didn’t want to. But I had tortured myself with every piece of evidence, every angle, every dead end. There was nothing left. It was time to move on. And I was ready, I had done everything I could.
We had one foot out the door when the force gave us a reason to stay: a scent bond.
There’s nothing an aegis wants more than a scent-bonded nyra. The perfect mate. But they’re rare, more than half of all packs never find one. Most settlefor weaker, non-scent bonds, like my dads did with my mom.
Some aegis mate with humans. Some even try to mimic human marriage, living as couples apart from their pack, like Jay’s father tried to do.
And some packs stay unmated.
Waiting.
Hoping.
Like my brothers and me.
The same week we decided to leave the force, they announced the Matching Program to help law enforcement packs find their scent-mates. So we stayed.
But that was over three years ago. Since then, we’ve kept our phones close, hearts pounding every time they rang, but the Matching Center never called. Not once. Jay and Shane gave up hope a long time ago, but before today I hadn’t. I made us stay until the last possible moment, just in case she showed up.
She didn’t.
And now, I have to stop dragging us through this for the sake of ghosts.
My brothers deserve better.
I deserve better.
After six years, I’m finally tapping out. The weight of it presses against my chest like a stone.
The cruiser rolls to a stop in front of Nine’s station and the Greenster Two officers don’t say a word. They don’t even kill the engine, just wait.
Shane opens the door first, squeezing out with a grunt, and the rest of us follow.
One officer taps something into his MDT, probably logging the drop-off. The other one jerks his chin toward the building. “Your Captain’s expecting you.”
Of course he is.
We head inside, still stiff from the ride. The lobby’s quiet, but a couple of uniforms glance up, pure disgust in their expressions. Word’s already out.
We go straight to the captain’s office.
