Page 79 of Foxy Filthy Omega

Did he really have to bethisbeautiful? It just wasn’t fair.

“You have this way of intimidating alphas even without using your pheromones,” Soren explained. “It triggers our instincts when you get that look on your face and makes anyone who was misbehaving in any way feel defensive. It seems like that feeling puts everyone else at ease. Their instincts must be telling themyou’ll take care of whatever it is they’re worried about when it comes to alphas. That’s really impressive.”

The impressive one here was actually Soren.

I was pretty sure no one else other than my father had ever made that observation before and I’d beensurehe was lying to try to make me feel better. Now some random rookie who’s barely spent any time with me said the same thing?

Maybe they were right, but that didn’t change anything.

I would never really be good enough. All I could do was try my best and hope that my pack wouldn’t deteriorate under my rule.

My father was still trying to protect me from all the madness going on, but he couldn’t do that forever.

The Lopez pack was testing me. They were trying to see if I had what it took to be their alpha and I couldn’t let a single drop of weakness show or they’d tear me apart.

If I couldn’t gain their trust the same way I’d gained Leslie’s, I’d deserve it.

The world of legacies was different from the rest of the world. It still held on to archaic ideologies and expectations. If I failed to meet those expectations, nothing could save me. Not even the law.

I shook my head and picked up the pace.

Letting my father keep me out of pack business wasn’t going to help me. I had to find a way to convince him to let me help find out who was behind my uncle’s death.

I had to prove I was capable even without my father’s support and the only person who could help me do that was Leo.

At least solving this case without Lucy would prove my competence if nothing else.

This I could do with my eyes closed, but dealing with Leo?

Leo was a problem for a different day.

CHAPTER 24

Frankie

We gotlucky with the security footage. I’d expected the cameras around the parking lots and the office building, but I hadn’t expected the cameras inside the actual park itself.

Apparently this area was popular for wildlife monitoring and research. If we were really lucky, there’d be something we could use.

I’d honestly had no idea that state parks had all those cameras everywhere and I highly doubted the killer did either. I tucked the drive with all the footage over the last week in my pocket and zipped it up.

They’d send the footage over digitally as well, but getting it straight from the source before anyone else got their hands on it was always our goal.

Too many times digital evidence was tampered with, or edited, and that immediately made it useless.

“You can go through the footage yourself,” I told Soren. “But we have interns to help with this sort of thing. It’s a tedious, time-consuming job and our time is better spent doing something no one else can.”

Like digging into the app I’d planted on the hiker’s phone, or the dash cam on her car.

Soren checked the map on his phone again when we reached one of the trail entrances. “I can also write a program to do it for me.”

“Technically,” I agreed as I tightened my ponytail. “But what if it doesn’t find anything? Are you positive it won’t miss the tiniest detail that might lead us to the suspect?”

He looked up from the map and considered me for a moment. Something about his expression said he wanted to argue with me, but Soren would know better than almost anyone that a guarantee was impossible.

There was always the chance something could be missed.

Obviously humans missed shit all the time too, but a program couldn’t understand nuance.

---