My Alpha Responder

Willa "Quit staring, Wills. You're gonna make me blush." Reid is grinning at me across the cab of Engine 9, soot already smudged on his cheek and we haven't even hit the fire yet. That crooked, easy grin that goes all the way up to his eyes. I roll my eyes so he can't see me blushing for real. "I'm not staring. I'm judging your driving." "You love my driving." I do. God, I love everything about him and it's getting pathetic. My name's Willa Rae Sutton. I'm twenty-four, an Omega, and a firefighter with Station 9 out of Copper Hollow. Which, if you know anything about packs, you know how that sounds. Omegas aren't supposed to run into burning houses. We're supposed to do clinic jobs or dispatch or stay home and pop out pups. Especially unshifted and unclaimed ones like me. I take my suppressants every morning like vitamins and scrub this nasty ash-blocker on my neck so I just smell like smoke and laundry detergent. It's the only way the chief lets me stay active. If I ever went into full heat on shift they'd bench me in a second. So I don't. I work twice as hard as the Betas and I keep my mouth shut and I pretend my biology doesn't exist. I didn't sign up to prove anything, though. I signed up because of Wyatt. Wyatt was my twin. Same birthday, same freckles across the nose, same dumb laugh. Six years ago our old barn out on Briar Patch Lane caught fire in the middle of the night. Faulty wiring, they said. He went back in for our dog. He didn't come back out. I was eighteen standing barefoot in the yard watching orange eat the sky while my mom screamed his name. I remember the heat on my teeth. I remember thinking, if I had just gone in faster, been braver, been in there instead of frozen in the yard— So at twenty-one I signed up for the academy. Everybody thought it was grief. My mom still cries every time my shift starts. My dad won’t touch my turnout bag, like if he doesn't acknowledge it I won't go. But I have to go. If I can pull one person out of what took him, then I get to keep breathing in a world he doesn't. That's the deal I made with myself. And I don't do it alone. I never have. Reid Lawson lived right next door growing up. Tate Mercer lived two houses down on the same gravel road. Same school bus, same creek behind our houses where we'd catch crawdads until our hands were numb. When Wyatt died they just... stayed. Reid was the one who sat with me on our porch steps for three nights straight and didn't make me talk. Tate was the one who taught me how to throw a punch when some senior said s**t about it at school. Now we're all at Station 9 together. Reid's twenty-six, a Beta, all blonde hair and loud laugh. The guy who can make a scared kid giggle while the ceiling's coming down. Tate's twenty-seven, an Alpha, big and quiet. He followed me into the academy without telling me, just showed up day one in the same recruit shirt and said, "Someone's gotta watch your back." And he has. Like it's his job or something. It's always been the three of us. The radio crackles and kills our messing around. "Engine 9, structure fire, 1140 Briar Patch Lane. Two-story residential, flames showing from second floor. Caller reports elderly male and juvenile possibly trapped." My stomach drops straight through the floor. Briar Patch Lane. That's our road. That's three driveways down from Mama's house. Reid stops smiling. "That's Mr. Bell's." Tate's already turning the wheel off Old Mill Road, jaw tight. He doesn't say anything. He never wastes words when it counts. I can see it before we even turn in—thin white house with blue shutters, porch sagging to one side. Mr. Bell's old Ford still in the driveway. Smoke punching out of the upstairs windows, black and fast. Mrs. Abernathy from next door is in the yard in her bathrobe, waving us down screaming something about her grandson spending the night. "Milo's in there!" she yells when Reid jumps out. "He's eight! He was sleepin' over! OMG!! Save him, please!" My blood goes cold and hot at the same time. Okay. Okay, we can do this. Tate's voice cuts right through it, calm and flat. "Masks on. Reid, you take the front door with the can. Wills with me on search. Fast and loud." We push forward. This is what we do. The three of us. Responders, Station 9. The inseparable trio. Might sound crazy, but the fire feels like home to me. The heat hits me first, even through my gear. August in Tennessee is already like breathing soup and then you add live fire on top and it sits right on your chest. My mask fogs for a second. I hear my own breathing loud in my ears. Reid kicks the front door in on the second hit. "Fire department! Mr. Bell! Milo!" Smoke rolls out low and mean. Living room's clear but the stairs are glowing orange at the top. You can hear it up there breathing, chewing through the hallway carpet. "Bedrooms upstairs!" I shout. I know this house. I used to sell Mr. Bell lemonade for fifty cents on that porch when I was eight. Reid goes left, I go middle, Tate takes my right like a wall. Always on my right. He does that without thinking, puts his big body between me and the worst of it. I elbow him in the ribs out of habit. "Quit hovering, Mom." He just huffs and pushes me forward by the air pack. That's just Tate being Tate. "Mr. Bell!" Reid's Beta voice carries, bright and steady even in all that roar. "Sir, yell out so my girl Wills can find you!" My girl Wills. My heart does that stupid flip and I bite my lower lip hard to kill it. I'm twenty-four and one dumb line from Reid still ruins me. My lip's probably half scar from all the years of biting back I love you around him. We hear coughing from the back bedroom. We found them together—Mr. Bell on his knees by the bed in his undershirt, arm locked around little Milo, both coughing, both terrified. Mr. Bell's clutching a photo album to his chest like it's a life vest. Stubborn old man went back for his wife's pictures and the smoke cut him off. Reid drops straight down to Milo's level. "Hey, buddy. Hey, superstar. You doing so good. You like piggyback rides?" Milo nods, tears cutting clean lines through the soot on his face. Reid looks at me, and God, his eyes are so blue even through the visor. "I got the kid. You get Mr. Bell?" "Got him," I say. Tate doesn't say a word. He just bends and hauls Mr. Bell up like he weighs nothing, album and all, and settles him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Then he nods at me—go. The ceiling pops above us. Embers rain down and Tate steps sideways, just enough that they hit his helmet and shoulders and not me. He always does stuff like that. I don't even think about it anymore. We move as one down the hall. Reid in front with Milo on his back, talking to him the whole way down—"you're brave, man, you're braver than me, hold on tight"—me with a hand on Reid's pack so I don't lose him in the smoke, Tate behind with Mr. Bell, one huge hand hovering at the back of my air pack the whole way like he's ready to yank me back if the floor goes. Left, right, center. Same as when we were kids playing flashlight tag in the woods. The stairs groan. The heat kisses my exposed wrist and I don't even flinch. Flames have never scared me the way they should. Maybe because a part of me died with Wyatt in one. Or maybe because my suppressant is melting off my neck and my skin is on fire for a whole other reason. Pre-heat prickles under my skin. Damn omega biology. If my scent leaks in here—sweet, aroused—both of them will smell it. I sprayed double the burnt-ash blocker before shift. Now I'm choking on it. Reid glances back to check on me, sees I'm good, winks. That wink goes straight through me. Outside the night air slams into us like ice water. Red and blue lights everywhere. Crickets screaming in the dark past the sirens. Paramedics rushing in with a stretcher. Reid sets Milo down gentle as anything and rips his mask off, hair plastered to his forehead, breathing hard. Milo immediately latches onto his turnout coat and won't let go. Mr. Bell's coughing but he's awake, he's alive, he's holding my glove so tight while the medics put oxygen on him. "He's okay, Mr. Bell," I tell him, kneeling down, shoving those photo albums I grabbed back into his hands. "I got 'em. I got 'em all." He starts crying when he sees them. Alive. They're both alive. I'm shaking now. Adrenaline always hits me late. My braid's coming undone, soot in my teeth, hands won't stop trembling. Reid rips his helmet off and laughs—that breathless, alive laugh that I have loved since I was fourteen. Then he reaches out and tugs my braid. Quick. Brotherly. His fingers brush my hot cheek by accident and my whole body lights up hotter than the house we just walked out of. "Good job, little Wills," he says, soft now. Just for me. "You were awesome in there." My throat closes up. I bite my lip so hard I taste blood again. Say it. Say it now, you coward.