Dom shuffled the papers, laying them down. “You aren’t going to discuss this?” He slid two sheets over to Harris and Gareth. “Psych evaluation at 60%. He’s not an optimal fit.”
Jesse’s stomach plummeted. There was that. Toni had said she’d done her best, but she couldn’t lie on an official document.
“He has two solid testimonials,” Harris pointed out. One from Nate, and one from Toni. “I’m willing to take a chance.”
“Well, I’m not.” Dom narrowed his eyes, flicking a glance at Jesse. “He came in looking like a mess. Fluid all over his clothes.”
He saw that? A jolt went up Jesse’s spine. And now he couldn’t decide if he hated this insane nit-pickiness that was Dom, or if he was flattered that someone had seen something aside from his scars. For the first time.
“I’m not hiring someone who can’t show up decently for an interview,” Dom said. “That’s an immediate fail.”
Jesse’s stomach shrank into a tiny lump.
For six months, he’d worked his ass off at the fire academy, taking classes at night, thinking he’d make it to the Meadowfall station and it would be the best thing, because at least he had a friend here. He didn’t know how to make friends. And he was starting to grow fond of Harris and Gareth. To fuck this up because he’d washed his face and not changed his shirt, thinking no one would notice... He hadn’t been counting on meeting someone like Dom.
I can’t give up right now. I’ve gotten this far.
“I have two things going for me,” Jesse blurted, his heart about to burst. Three heads turned to look at him. He wet his lips. “I learn things fast. All the skills you see on my resume—the basic car repairs, the driving, the GED and fire academy—I did it all in nine months.”
Dom’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly.
“What’s the second thing?” Harris asked.
This part was risky. Jesse plowed on with it anyway. “I’ve survived a huge deal of pain. You see it on my skin. Burns, punctures, poisons, drugs—you name it. I don’t have any dependents. If you need to send someone into someplace risky, if you don’t want to sacrifice the rest of your team, I’ll do it.”
For once, Dom had nothing to say to that.
Harris looked hard at Jesse. “I know we’ve been over this, but give me another answer. Why do you want to be a firefighter?”
“Because I don’t want anyone else to be in pain.”
A hint of a smile crossed Harris’ lips. “For the record,” he said, “no one gets sacrificed. We’re all family here. But thank you, Jesse. I believe we’ve come to the end of our interview. If you’ll step outside for five minutes...”
With every scar on his skin prickling, Jesse stood, excusing himself from the meeting room.
3
Dom Gets Grilled
“What was that about?” Gareth shot Dom a sideways look, his stare probing too deep for comfort. “Never seen you raze a candidate to the ground before.”
Even Harris raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
Damn it. Dom shifted uncomfortably. He’d known his questions would garner this reaction from his teammates, but he hadn’t been able to help himself—everything about Jesse Sinclair set him on edge.
“The psych eval,” he said. “60%, Harris. Really? We shouldn’t even have called him in for an interview.”
60% was on the lower end of applications they received. It didn’t mean the candidate’s personality didn’t fit. Rather, it was a number that indicated a candidate’s overall mental stability—something that would be strained during the course of the job. They usually recruited people in the 80-95% range.
Dom always looked at that number first, but he’d been distracted when he’d glanced at Sinclair’s application.
“He seemed fairly stable to me,” Gareth said.
“Discounting the short fuse,” Dom muttered.
“It’s not like you have a long fuse, either.” Harris elbowed Dom in the side.
Dom scowled. “I don’t need to babysit someone I can’t trust.”
“He isn’t Mal,” Gareth said.
Pain dug deep into Dom’s gut, stealing his breath away. That was low. If he didn’t hear that name for another ten years, it would still be too soon. “We’re not talking about that.”
“But that’s the precise reason you look at all the psych scores first,” Harris reminded him.
“We’re not talking about Mal,” Dom growled. Perks of having your best friends on your team? You could trust them 200% of the time. Downsides? They absolutely knew how to stab your most vulnerable spots. In their sleep. Even if you knew they meant well.
“Psych eval scores aren’t the only thing we consider—you know that,” Harris said. “Besides, he isn’t an omega.”
Unlike Mal, who had been one. Mal had been crazy and brilliant, and he’d had his glorious high days, when he’d grabbed Dom and danced around their living room, his smile blinding. But his low days, well. They’d gone badly, even after he’d married Dom.
Dom hadn’t been enough to stop Mal, the day Mal stepped off the roof of the tallest building.
He breathed out the sharp ache in his body, shoving those thoughts aside. “I’m not looking for an omega.”
“And yet you fixate on the psych scores,” Harris said dryly. “We’re not recruiting a lover for you.”
“I don’t need to deal with an alpha like that, either,” Dom hissed.
Except Sinclair’s scent had dug under his skin in the strangest way. Dom hadn’t smelled anyone like that before. He hated that he wanted to smell that scent again. “I’m not into alphas,” he said.
Harris, the one who was actually married to an alpha and an omega, raised an eyebrow. “Which is why you’re being weird about Jesse Sinclair.”
Dom scowled. “Doesn’t his scent bother you?”
Both Harris and Gareth looked oddly at him. “His scent?” Harris asked.
“Yeah.” Dom paused. “Didn’t you smell it?”
“Cinnamon, right?” Gareth asked.
It had been an earthy sort of cinnamon, dark and sweet in a way no alpha scent was. Alpha scents were woodsy, beta scents grassy, and omega scents were the sweet ones, because they smelled like flowers.
So when Sinclair had stepped into the station, Dom had thought an omega had
