Page 88 of Defiant Beta

“Channeling a detective as I work out this mystery.”

“Name one detective who stroked their chin like that,” Vincent says.

I glare at him. “Stop distracting me.”

I return to stroking my chin as Levi flashes me a grin.

They’re hunting a killer. A killer who has chosen an omega-only school to hide out. No one would think to look for that killer there. Unless…

“What was the designation of the victim?” I ask.

Their silence tells me everything I need to know.

“Omega.” Even as I say it, my mind is whirling.

Why would two—scratch that,threealphas—be at Haven Academy, hunting out a killer?

“Youromega,” I say slowly. “Someone killed your omega, and they’re hiding out at the one place no one would think to look foran omega killer: a school for them, and you went in undercover, pretending to be teachers to track them down. Right?Right?”

Vincent sighs, defeated, as he turns to Levi. “You see why I told you keeping things from her wouldn’t work? She’s bright.”

I bounce my gaze between them. “Why is it such a big deal for me to call him Vincent? He was Professor Vincent already.”

Silence.

Okay, so there’s more to this thing with names than I’m seeing.

Levi puts his coffee cup down. “Vincent told you something valuable. That information could mean his life if the wrong person found out.”

“I don’t care about his name. I just care what he can do for me.” Shit. Talk about cold-blooded. I clear my throat. “That, uh, didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. Who's on your shortlist?”

No one says a word.

I press my palms on the counter and scowl at them. “Look, this won’t work unless you tell me the stuff I need to know. Do you want my help or don’t you?”

Vincent leans against the counter and crosses his arms. I’m briefly distracted by his muscled forearms straining the white cotton of his shirt. “We’ve narrowed our suspect list to anyone over forty.”

“Why?” I shake my head. “Wait, how did you even know the killer was at the school?”

I leave the question of how their omega died alone.

I’m nosy, but some things are so personal that it’s wrong to demand answers, and this is definitely one of those situations.

“Learning about more dead omegas helped,” Vincent says flatly.

I push my toast farther away when I have another flashback of trying to breathe with my head held down in a toilet. “Were there a lot of them?”

“Twelve over the last ten years,” Levi says.

I rake a hand through my hair to hide how cold this conversation is making me. “So why didn’t you go to the cops?”

“We tried,” Vincent says. “They couldn’t find Aly’s killer. The murders afterward resembled accidents, so the cops dismissed them.”

“Each body was within a five-mile radius of the academy. All the murders except Aly’s. Guess what’s at the center of that radius?” Levi asks.

I don’t have to guess. “Haven Academy.”

“Aly…” Vincent’s voice almost immediately trails off. He looks at me, reminding me of the time we were in the kitchen when he was figuring out how much he would tell me.

---