Chapter Six #3
“You know better than that,” he whispered.
I saw Wolf’s eyes suddenly change with recognition, immediate and uncomfortable.
“I know.”
Jackal’s jaw clenched as he spoke up. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because she’s sitting there with your fucking gear printed around her wrists.”
Nobody looked at me. I wanted to disappear and yell at the same time.
“Jackal, please. That’s enough.”
He looked back at me.
“No.”
“I don’t need you fighting him for me.”
“I’m not fighting him for you.”
His eyes flicked toward my wrists again.
“I don’t care what fucking kink you two are into. You said no. That’s the fucking problem.”
There was too much underneath his words.
Jackal turned back toward him. “You don’t get to make somebody’s wrists a lesson because you lost your temper.”
Wolf’s hands remained loose at his sides.
“You’re right.”
That should have ended it. But Jackal moved again and Bear put one broad forearm across his chest.
“That’s enough Jackal,” Bear said, heavier this time.
“Move.”
“No.”
For the first time since I had met him, Bear’s gentleness disappeared without becoming anger.
He simply became immovable.
Jackal looked around his arm toward Wolf. “Say something else.”
Wolf’s voice stayed quiet. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t fucking know. Maybe explain why the man who loses his mind if one of us gets sloppy decided the rules don’t apply when you’re angry at Mercer.”
Wolf’s gaze dropped for a second.
“They apply.”
Jackal shook his head. “Didn’t look like it.”
“I said you’re right.”
“Yeah. After she came downstairs marked.”
I stood quickly and my shoulder objected hard enough that I winced.
Bear turned immediately. “You sit back down.”
“No. Everyone just stop.”
The words came louder than I intended. I looked at Wolf first because I was still angry enough that looking anywhere else felt dishonest.
“You fucked up.”
His eyes held mine.
“Yes.”
Then I looked at Jackal. “And I appreciate whatever this is, but I don’t need six men deciding what happens next because six men deciding what happens to me is becoming a theme I would really like to retire.”
Jackal’s mouth tightened.
The anger in his face did not disappear, but he stepped back from Bear’s arm.
“Fine.”
Bear looked at him. “Fine?”
“For now.”
Viper spoke from behind the table, his voice flat. “That doesn’t sound fine.”
Jackal looked at him. “It was the best available version.”
Normally the line would have earned a laugh but nobody gave him one. Wolf removed the loosened plate carrier without taking his eyes off Jackal, set it on the edge of the operations table and walked toward the side door.
Jackal watched him go.
The door shut and only then did the room breathe again. Bear crouched in front of me and pointed at my shoulder.
“Can I finish?”
I nodded.
He checked the joint carefully and decided it was probably a mild strain rather than anything torn or dislocated, then told me to ice it and keep the arm out of anything resembling lifting.
If the pain worsened overnight, he would look again in the morning because treating pain like an argument I could win would only make tomorrow worse.
“Anything over shoulder height is a bad idea tonight,” he said.
“Got it.”
“And don’t sleep on that side.”
“I heard you.”
Bear gave me a look.
I sighed. “I will not sleep on that side.”
“Better.”
Raven disappeared into the medical room and returned with a soft cold pack wrapped in a thin towel. He handed it to me without commentary and I immediately pressed it against the front of my shoulder. The cold hurt for about ten seconds before it started helping.
Jackal had not said anything since Wolf left.
When I looked over, he stood near the far end of the table with both hands braced against the edge, head lowered and knuckles white from the pressure.
I almost crossed the room to him, but Raven glanced at me and then away, and something in that look made me stay where I was.
Whatever had just happened inside Jackal was older than me.
It belonged to him.
◆
I changed before dinner and then skipped dinner anyway.
I shoved the bikini into the bottom of the locker, pulled on an oversized black t-shirt with soft sleep shorts and spent several minutes trying to gather my hair into a loose knot one-handed before giving up and leaving it down.
The marks around my wrists were still visible. They had faded from angry red to darker pink, which somehow made them look more deliberate. I sat on the edge of the bed with the cold pack against my shoulder and stared at them until the room started feeling too small.
The argument replayed first, but the click sound kept cutting through it, followed by the memory of Wolf’s hand closing low at my nape.
My mind kept circling that part even while I tried to keep my anger clean.
My shoulder hurt because he had restrained me without permission, and my wrists were marked because I had fought against something I never agreed to.
Those facts were simple.
The way my body had responded when he pulled my hair was not.
I knew enough about myself to recognize attraction, and I had liked being held down before when everyone involved understood what was happening.
This had not been that. My body could like one sensation and still reject the way it had been forced on me.
That reaction did not turn the rest of the scene into something I had wanted.
I eased onto my left side, and even after I settled into the least uncomfortable position I could manage, I knew sleep was going to be a lost cause.
Around one in the morning, I gave up and went downstairs for water.
Most of the operations floor was dark, with only the emergency lights and two sleeping monitors throwing enough glow across the concrete to keep me from walking into furniture. The kitchen refrigerator hummed in the corner. I had almost reached it when I heard something quiet near the windows.
A melody drifted through the dark, only a low tune hummed under someone’s breath without any words I could make out.
Jackal sat on the floor beside the far window with one knee drawn up and his back against the wall.
The moonlight caught one side of his face and left the other in shadow.
He had changed into a dark t-shirt and gray sweats, and his hair fell over his forehead, messy enough that he looked younger.
He was holding something between his fingers.
A narrow strip of red fabric.
The ribbon looked old, worn soft along the edges from being handled far more often than something that small should have survived. Jackal rubbed it slowly between his thumb and forefinger while he hummed.
I stopped.
The man in front of me did not resemble the one who stole Raven’s shampoo or announced that each Froot Loop had a different flavor. I had the uncomfortable sense that I had walked in on something private, and when I started to turn away the floor creaked beneath my foot.
Jackal looked up immediately, the humming cutting off as his hand closed around the ribbon until only a thin piece remained visible between his fingers. Neither of us said anything for a moment before he looked toward the kitchen.
“You sneaking food?”
The humor had returned, but only around the edges.
“Water.”
“Disappointing.”
I opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle, then grabbed a second one without asking. When I crossed the room, Jackal watched me set it on the floor beside him.
“Peace offering?”
“Hydration. Bear seems emotionally invested in it.”
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it as I sat against the wall a few feet away, careful with my shoulder.
Jackal glanced at the movement. “Hurts?”
“A little.”
His eyes went to my wrists. I pulled the sleeves of the oversized shirt down even though they did not reach far enough to cover them.
“I’m okay,” I said.
He looked out the window. “Didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
“Maybe.”
We sat without speaking for a while. The red ribbon stayed hidden inside his fist.
Eventually he said, “You don’t owe me an explanation for why you hesitated downstairs.”
My head turned toward him but Jackal kept looking at the window.
“I asked whether you said yes,” he continued. “You didn’t. That’s the part I care about.”
His words were too precise for the man who usually turned every uncomfortable silence into a joke. He looked at me before I could decide whether asking would be cruel or merely nosy. Whatever sat underneath his anger was his and his alone until he chose otherwise.
“I wasn’t planning to give Wolf a pass,” I said.
“Good.”
“I also wasn’t planning to let you kill him.”
That almost brought him back.
“I wasn’t going to kill him.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Jackal considered it. “Probably.”
“Very reassuring.”
He opened the water bottle I had brought him and the ribbon disappeared into his pocket before he used both hands.
“If you tell anyone I was sitting down here humming like somebody’s grandmother, I’ll deny it.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
Jackal looked at me for a long second.
Then he nodded.
“Good answer, Mongoose.”
I left him by the window about ten minutes later, and by the time I reached the stairs the melody had started again behind me.
I kept walking.
Upstairs, the balcony door at the end of the upstairs corridor stood slightly open, and the smell of cigarette smoke reached me before I saw him.
Wolf stood outside with his back partly toward the building, forearms resting on the concrete railing while smoke drifted into the dark beyond the perimeter lights.
He had changed out of the plate carrier and field shirt for a black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, its sleeves ending high enough to leave the snake wrapped around his forearm fully visible.
His hair was uncovered and loose around the zig-zag headband. The lower edge of the mask had been pulled above his mouth so he could smoke, giving me only a partial view of his jaw.
I could have gone back to my room. Instead, I stepped outside and let the door close quietly behind me.