The air in the Quantico bullpen had shifted. It wasn't just the smell of stale coffee and toner anymore; it was charged with something else, something Will Graham had only ever read about in old, dusty textbooks. Alpha.

And not just any alpha. She was a living relic, a force of nature dropped right into the middle of their world, and her presence had thrown the entire department’s omega population into a quiet, desperate frenzy.

To put it simply, she was devastating. The way she filled out her FBI-issue uniform should have been its own class at the academy. Every omega in the building, from the greenest analyst to the most grizzled agent, was trying and failing to act normal. The line for the coffee machine near her desk was suddenly a mile long, and the hallway past the women’s locker room had become a major traffic jam. She was nice, too. Impossibly nice. She helped anyone who asked, her patience clearly being taken advantage of by omegas inventing problems just to be near her. She invited the lonely, the isolated, the ones with no place to go, to her house for dinners. She was building a pack, and every single omega in the building was desperate to be in it.

Will, who always felt like a live wire in a world of insulated circuits, was no different. His inner omega, a frantic, neglected thing usually drowned out by the screams of killers, was sitting up and begging. And she… she paid attention to him. Not with Jack Crawford’s clinical curiosity or Hannibal Lecter’s predatory fascination, but with a genuine, grounding kindness that felt like a lifeline. He ate it up, a starving man finally offered a feast.

It was that very desperation that hardened his resolve. He’d seen the way Hannibal looked at her during their one brief meeting—not as a person, but as the rarest of artifacts to be acquired and placed on a shelf. Will knew, deep in his bones, that he couldn’t let that happen. He would throw himself between them. He would be her most devoted, her most useful omega, if it meant keeping her safe from Baltimore’s most sophisticated predator.

Now, in her office with the door closed against the prying, envious eyes of the bullpen, he felt the full force of her presence. Her scent—a calming blend of rain-soaked earth and warm linen—wrapped around him, soothing the usual static in his mind. He stood before her desk, his posture unconsciously softening, his shoulders slumping into a more yielding line. He was a stray dog being offered a warm hand, and every instinct told him to roll over and present his belly.

"I just wanted to check in," he said, his voice a low, hushed rush of sincerity. "See how you're doing."