Chapter 11 – JUNIPER
Chapter
Eleven
JUNIPER
T he helicopter's metal belly thrums beneath me, vibrations crawling up through my bones and rattling my teeth.
Felix lies still as death on the makeshift medical table, his face the color of old paper, and I keep thinking about how quiet he is.
Felix is never quiet. Even when he sleeps, he mutters kill counts and sometimes my name when the nightmares get too loud.
Now there's just the mechanical wheeze of the helicopter and the sound of my own breathing, too fast, too shallow, like I'm drowning in air.
Blood soaks through the bandages the one they call Doctor wrapped around Felix's thigh, dark red blooming like roses. I want to press my hands against the wound, stop the bleeding through sheer will, but Doctor keeps pushing my fingers away with gentle efficiency that makes me want to bite him.
"Let me work," he says for the third time, his voice calm as still water. But his hands shake just the tiniest bit when he thinks no one's looking, and I see everything. I always see everything, even the things that aren't there.
Especially those.
The shadows in the corners of the helicopter writhe, reaching for Felix with fingers made of smoke and malice. They whisper in languages I don't understand, but their meaning is clear.
Take him. Take him. Take him.
"No," I whisper, and my voice sounds small and broken in the metal cave of the aircraft. "You can't have him. He's mine."
Doctor looks at me with the same concern in his eyes as when he looks at the gunshot wound on Felix's leg, but I ignore him. All of them. The only thing that matters is Felix.
Not these alphas and their guns and their scents that scream, "Notice me!"
Winter and wine and woods and sunshine. Four scents swirling around me, begging for attention, singing a song I've never heard before, but one dangerously close to Felix's diamond crispness. Close enough I refuse to let them in.
What if those scents are trying to replace his?
The tears come without permission, salty when they pool at my lips. I wipe them away with the back of my hand, smearing blood from Felix's wounds across my face like war paint. The pink slip they dressed me in at the club is ruined now.
A white handkerchief appears in my peripheral vision, held by long fingers that could snap my neck without effort. I jolt, my gaze snapping up to meet winter-blue eyes that see too much. Winter like the scent I don't want to notice.
Jackal. The golden-haired monster. The one the shadows scream warnings about.
"Here," he says, his voice making the simple word sound like an invitation to dance with the devil. "You've got a bit of..." He gestures vaguely at his own face.
I stare at the handkerchief as if it might bite me.
Probably will. Everything about this alpha screams danger, from the way he holds himself too still to the way his smile never reaches his eyes.
But Felix is bleeding, and I'm crying, and sometimes you have to accept help from monsters when they're the only ones offering.
I take the handkerchief. Our fingers brush for just a moment, and that same electric shock from before races up my arm. He feels it too—I can tell by the way his pupils dilate and his breathing hitches just slightly.
The fabric smells like expensive cologne and something darker underneath. Something that makes the shadows hiss and retreat.
"What blood type is he?" Doctor asks suddenly, his hands moving over Felix's body with expertise. He's checking pulse points, monitoring breathing, doing all the things doctors do when they're trying to keep someone from slipping away into the dark.
"B negative," I answer without thinking. I know everything about Felix's body, every scar and freckle and the way his pulse jumps when I kiss the hollow of his throat. I know he hates needles but never complains when I have to stitch him up. I know he tastes like winter mornings and home.
I know he's dying.
Elias moves to a small refrigerator built into the helicopter's wall, rifling through bags of blood like he's shopping for groceries. His shoulders tense, and when he turns back to us, his face has gone carefully blank.
"Fuck." The word slips out quiet as a prayer. "We didn't restock after the last mission."
The bottom drops out of my world. No blood means Felix dies. It's that simple, that terrible. I make a sound that might be a whimper or might be a growl, and my hands curl into fists around Jackal's handkerchief.
"I'm O negative," Jackal says, already rolling up his sleeves with movements too fluid to be entirely human. His grin is sharp enough to cut glass. "Universal donor. Lucky lad."
I eye him warily as Doctor sets up the transfusion equipment with practiced ease. There's something wrong about this whole situation, about accepting help from the men we were sent to kill, about trusting these alphas who smell like violence and justice in equal measure.
But Felix needs blood, and Jackal has it, and sometimes survival does mean making deals with devils. I don't know what the price will be, but whatever it is, I'll pay it.
Whatever it is, it's worth it.
The needle slides into Jackal's arm and he doesn't even flinch.
Just watches me with those predator eyes while his blood flows through clear tubing toward Felix's still form.
It's intimate in a way that makes my skin crawl, this sharing of life between my Felix and this beautiful monster.
I have to bite back a growl when I watch the blood go into his veins.
"Feral little thing, aren't you?" Jackal asks, and I realize I didn't swallow it, after all.
"Viper, how long to base?" Bane's voice cuts through the helicopter's noise, rough and commanding.
"Twenty minutes," comes the reply from the pilot's seat. The brown-haired alpha—Viper, they called him—keeps the plane steady despite the wind buffeting us around like a toy.
I can feel them watching me. Bane with his mountain-sized presence and hazel eyes that miss nothing.
Jackal with his unsettling smile and blood flowing into my Felix.
Even Archer keeps glancing back from the pilot's seat, his warm brown eyes soft with something that might be sympathy.
And Doctor, who keeps working diligently, focused but glancing my way every so often.
They want answers. I can practically taste their curiosity, sharp and insistent.
"So," Bane says, settling his massive frame into the seat across from me. He's trying to sound casual, conversational, but there's steel underneath the words. "You two brother and sister?"
The question hits me like a slap. I see Viper's shoulders tense at the controls, see the way Doctor's hands pause for just a moment in their work. Even Jackal's grin falters slightly, replaced by something sharper.
They're all listening. Waiting.
"No," I say simply, not offering more. Let them wonder. Let them guess. Felix and I don't owe them our story.
Bane clears his throat, and I can smell his discomfort mixing with something else. Something that makes my skin prickle. "Mates, then?"
The word hangs in the air between us. I know what he's really asking, what they all want to know.
But even if I told them, it wouldn't be the full answer.
The truth that the bond between Felix and me defies their understanding of how the world works, how alphas and omegas are supposed to fit together.
"Yes." I lift my chin, meeting his gaze directly. "What about it?"
"Why aren't you marked?" Jackal asks, his voice deceptively casual. The others shift uncomfortably—clearly they disapprove of the question but want to know the answer just as much.
Heat flashes through me. "That's none of your fucking business."
"We're just trying to understand the situation," Bane says in a gentler tone that makes me want to lunge at him and add a few extra scars.
"The situation is that Felix is bleeding out while you play twenty questions," I snap, turning my attention back to the transfusion. Jackal's blood flows steady and red through the tubing, and I find myself silently thanking him even as I want to rip his throat out.
"Tell us about your work," Doctor says without looking up from his patient. His voice is clinical, professional, but I can hear the curiosity underneath. "Might help to keep your mind off it. How long have you been in the business?"
I glare up at him through the curtain of hair that's fallen into my face. "Long enough."
"Did Felix recruit you?" Bane asks. "Get you into this life?"
The implication in his words makes something savage wake up in my chest. They think I'm some helpless omega who got dragged into this world by an alpha with bad intentions. They think Felix corrupted me, used me, turned me into something I wasn't meant to be.
If only they knew.
"We're partners," I say, each word sharp as broken glass. "Equals. I'm not some victim he picked up off the street."
Bane's eyebrows rise toward his hairline. "Equals?"
"You seem surprised." I bare my teeth in what might charitably be called a smile. "What, you think omegas can't be killers? Can't make their own choices?"
"That's not what I—" Bane starts, but I cut him off.
"We choose our targets. We plan our jobs together. I'm just as good with a knife as he is with a gun." The words pour out of me like poison, bitter and true.
Silence falls over the helicopter except for the steady thrum of rotors and the quiet beep of medical equipment. They're staring at me as if I've grown a second head, these alphas who think they understand the world and how it works. After all, it was made by and for them.
"What are you going to do with us?" I ask, changing the subject before they can ask more questions I don't want to answer.
Bane leans back in his seat, considering. "I meant what I said back there. Neither of you will be harmed while you're in our custody."
"But we're not going anywhere," I finish for him.
"Not for a long damn time," he confirms. "You tried to kill us. That tends to complicate things."
I want to argue, to fight, to demand they let us go. But Felix is still unconscious, still pale as death despite the blood flowing into his veins. We're not in any position to make demands.
"We're approaching the base," Viper calls from the pilot's seat. "Juniper, I'm going to need you to put this on."
He hands back a black cloth—a blindfold. I stare at it like it might bite me.
"Security measure," Bane explains. "Nothing personal."
I take the blindfold with hands that only shake a little.
At least they're not planning to kill us.
You don't blindfold people you're going to murder—you just shoot them and dump the bodies.
The fact that they're worried about me seeing their base means they plan on keeping us alive with the possibility of escape.
That's something, I guess.
The fabric is soft against my skin as I tie it around my eyes, plunging the world into darkness. Immediately, the shadows start whispering louder, their voices a chorus of warnings and threats that make me flinch.
Danger, they hiss.
"You alright?" Doctor asks, his tone gentle. concerned.
"I'm fine," I say through my teeth. I've never liked the dark. Not when I was little, not even now. Felix is the only one who can hold me tight enough to make the shadows quiet down.
My stomach clenches with a fear that has nothing to do with our capture. These alphas don't know what Felix really is. They think he's one of them, an alpha protecting his omega. But Felix would rather die than have that secret discovered, and I'm terrified they're going to find out.
The helicopter begins its descent, and I grip the edge of the medical table where Felix lies unconscious. His breathing is steadier now. But he's still so still, so quiet.
What happens when he wakes up? What happens when they run more tests, do more medical procedures?
Felix has been hiding what he is for so long, using artificial pheromones and careful deception to pass as an alpha.
But these men are professionals. They notice things.
They ask questions. And if their exams get any more invasive, they'll notice he doesn't have a knot at the very least.
And if they find out the truth about Felix, if they discover he's been lying about what he is...
I don't know what they'll do. I don't know if their promise not to hurt us extends to omegas who masquerade as alphas. I don't know if they'll see it as just another deception or something worse.
All I know is that Felix would rather die than be exposed. And I would kill every single one of these alphas before I let that happen.
The helicopter touches down with a soft bump, and I hear the rotors beginning to wind down. Voices call out instructions, feet move across metal flooring, and the smell of the outside world creeps in through opening doors.
"Easy," Doctor says as they transfer Felix to what sounds like a gurney. "Watch the IV line."
I stumble along beside them, one hand on the gurney's rail to guide me through the darkness. The blindfold makes everything disorienting, turns the world into a maze of sounds and smells and textures. When a hand rests on my shoulder, only touching enough to guide, I flinch.
Viper. The pilot. The one who smells like sunshine. I tolerate his touch and let him lead me alongside Felix.
We're moving through what feels like a large space—I can tell by the way sound echoes off distant walls. There are other people here, their voices a low murmur of conversation and concern. The smell of coffee and gun oil and antiseptic.
"Room three is prepped," someone calls out. A woman's voice. Curt and professional.
"Good," Doctor replies. "Let's get him stabilized."
They're taking care of Felix. That's what matters. Whatever else happens, whatever they discover, at least they're trying to save his life.
But as we move deeper into their base, as the sounds and smells of their world surround us, the shadows whisper their warnings louder and louder.
They'll find out, they hiss. They'll know. And then what will you do?
I don't have an answer. All I can do is hold onto Felix's hand and hope that when he wakes up, we'll still have our secrets intact.
Hope that we'll still have each other.