Chapter 13 – FELIX
Chapter
Thirteen
FELIX
T he first thing I register is warmth. Not the clinical, sterile warmth of hospital blankets, but something alive pressed against my side.
My eyes crack open to fluorescent lights that stab into my retinas like needles, and I bite back a groan.
The second thing I register is pain—a dull throb in my thigh and arm that speaks to recent trauma and too many drugs pumping through my system.
The third thing is Juniper.
She's curled against me like a cat, her body molded to mine in a way that suggests she's been here for hours.
Her hair fans across my chest, tickling my chin with each breath.
One hand rests over my heart, fingers splayed possessively, while the other clutches my hospital gown like she's afraid I'll disappear if she lets go.
Memory crashes back in fragments. The Rut Room. Gunfire. Blood pooling beneath me while Juniper screamed my name. The alphas who should have killed us but didn't.
We're in their base. They treated my wounds. They kept us alive.
The question is why.
Juniper is obviously an omega. That one's easier to understand, but me…
I catalog my surroundings without moving, a skill honed by years of waking up in places where the wrong twitch could mean death.
Medical equipment beeps steadily beside the bed.
The room smells like antiseptic. But underneath it, I catch traces of alpha pheromones.
Multiple alphas. The ones from the club.
My muscles tense involuntarily, and Juniper stirs against me, making a soft sound that's half-whimper, half-sigh. Her eyes flutter open, hazel irises unfocused for a moment before they sharpen with awareness.
"Felix?" Her voice cracks on my name, and then she's sitting up, hands flying to my face, my chest, checking for damage. "You're awake. You're actually awake. I thought—fuck, I thought you were going to die on me."
"Takes more than a couple bullets to put me down," I rasp, throat dry as sandpaper. My voice sounds like I've been gargling gravel, but at least it works.
She makes a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, then promptly bursts into tears.
Not the delicate tears of someone playing a role, but the ugly, body-shaking sobs of genuine relief.
Her face crumples, and she buries it against my chest, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to hurt.
I let her cry. My hands find her hair, stroking through the tangled strands while my mind races through implications. We're alive. We're captive. We're being monitored—I can feel the weight of surveillance even if I can't see the cameras.
"Did they hurt you?" The question comes out sharper than intended, edged with the kind of violence I usually keep locked away.
She shakes her head against my chest. "No.
They've been... weirdly nice, actually. Like they're trying not to spook me or something.
" She pulls back, wiping her tears on her sleeve in a gesture so purely Juniper it makes my chest do something uncomfortable.
She drops her voice to a nearly silent whisper.
"They don't know, Felix. About what you are. I made sure."
Relief floods through me, though I keep my expression neutral. The synthetic pheromones must have held even while I was unconscious. For now. If they knew I was an omega masquerading as an alpha, this situation would be infinitely more complicated.
"How long was I out?"
"Fourteen hours." She settles back against my side, careful of my injuries. "The doctor said you lost a lot of blood. The golden-haired psycho gave you a transfusion."
Jackal. The one who held a gun to her head. The thought of his blood flowing through my veins makes me want to vomit, but I push the revulsion down. Survival first, disgust later.
"They haven't interrogated you?"
"They've asked questions. I didn't answer." She taps patterns on my chest, and I immediately recognize it as Morse code. Safe for now. Being watched. Play along.
A knock at the door interrupts my response.
We both tense, Juniper's hand automatically moving to where she'd normally keep a weapon.
The door opens to reveal the silver-haired alpha from the club.
The doctor. His blue eyes are calm, professional, but there's something else there too that makes my hackles rise.
"Good to see you're awake," he says, voice conversational like we're old friends instead of attempted murderer and victim. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I got shot and pumped full of drugs." I don't bother hiding the hostility in my tone. "What do you want?"
"To check your wounds, make sure there's no infection setting in." He takes a step forward, and Juniper literally growls at him. The sound is pure omega territorial instinct. "I was hoping we could speak privately for a moment."
"No," Juniper says immediately.
"Juney." I touch her arm, feel her vibrating with tension. "Go get some coffee."
She turns to stare at me like I've lost my mind. "Felix?—"
"I'm not going anywhere." I keep my voice steady, reasonable, even though every instinct screams to keep her close. "Five minutes. That's all."
She looks between me and the doctor, clearly torn. Finally, she slides off the bed with obvious reluctance. "If you hurt him," she tells the doctor, voice sweet as arsenic, "I'll use your own scalpels to turn you into modern art."
The doctor's lips twitch. "Noted."
She shoots me one last look— be careful —then stalks out of the room like a cat who's been forcibly removed from her favorite sunbeam.
The door clicks shut, and suddenly the room feels smaller. The doctor moves closer, but maintains a respectful distance. Smart man.
"Do you normally let people who try to kill you roam your base freely?" I ask, genuinely curious about their security protocols. Or lack thereof.
He actually smirks. "Neither of you can take a breath without being monitored. She knows it, you know it, we all know it. Seemed pointless to lock her in a cage when she'd just pick the lock and come right back here anyway."
Fair point. Juniper's lockpicking skills are legendary, and her separation anxiety where I'm concerned borders on pathological. Not that I'm any better.
"What do you want?" I repeat, cutting to the chase.
"To do a more thorough examination now that your bodyguard isn't here to threaten me with improvised weapons." His tone is mild, but those blue eyes are sharp as a scalpel. "The initial treatment was emergency triage. I need to check for internal damage, make sure the repairs are holding."
"No."
The refusal is automatic, instinctive. A thorough examination means removing clothes, means hands on skin, means potential discovery of what I've spent years hiding. The suppressant I wear is good, but not perfect. The prosthetic isn't designed for medical scrutiny.
He sighs, pulling out a tablet. "I'll make a note that you refused additional treatment."
I blink. "That's it? You're not going to force it?"
"We're not in the business of forcing medical treatment on unwilling patients." He taps something on the screen. "Though I should warn you that refusing treatment could lead to complications. Infection, internal bleeding, death. The usual."
"I'll take my chances."
He studies me for a long moment, and I can practically see the gears turning in his head. He knows something's off. Maybe not the specifics, but he's picked up on the inconsistencies. The question is whether he'll push it.
"Your choice," he says finally. "But the offer stands if you change your mind."
The door bursts open before I can respond, and Juniper stumbles in with her arms full of coffee supplies. Not just coffee, but an entire carrier of cups, multiple containers of cream, and what looks like every variety of sugar packet known to man.
"They have the good stuff," she announces, dumping her bounty on the foot of my bed. "Like, actual espresso machine good. And hazelnut creamer. And those little vanilla syrup things that make everything taste like happiness."
I watch her sort through her collection with the intensity of someone performing complex surgery, and something in my chest loosens fractionally. This is Juniper in her element— finding joy in small pleasures even when the world's gone to shit around us.
"You're going to put yourself into a diabetic coma," I observe, watching her dump the fourth sugar packet into a single cup.
"Worth it." She takes a sip and makes a sound that's borderline obscene. "Oh fuck, that's good. Here, I made you one too. Black, like your soul."
The doctor makes a sound that might be a laugh, and I notice the way his eyes track Juniper's movements. Not with the predatory interest I'm used to seeing from alphas, but something softer. Admiration. Fondness.
Absolutely fucking not.
A growl builds in my chest before I can stop it, low and territorial and completely inappropriate for the situation. But the doctor's attention snaps to me, and for a moment, something flickers in his expression. Surprise?
"Sorry," I say, not sorry at all. "Protective instincts. The drugs, probably."
"Understandable." But he's looking at me differently now, like I'm a puzzle he's trying to solve.
Probably wondering why, if I'm so protective of Juniper, I haven't marked her yet.
The door opens again, and the rest of them file in like they've been waiting for an invitation. The mountain of an alpha with a big forked scar all the way down the left side of his face—Bane, I think—takes up position by the door.
"Gang's all here," Juniper mutters into her coffee. "Fantastic."
"You're awake, which means we need to talk," Bane says without preamble. "About who hired you."
"Pass," I say flatly.
"You tried to kill us," he points out, like I might have forgotten. "The least you can do is tell us why."
"Professional courtesy prevents me from discussing client details." The lie rolls off my tongue smooth as silk.
Jackal laughs, the sound sharp as breaking glass. "Professional courtesy. That's rich, coming from someone who was pretending to be a human trafficker."
"Method acting," Juniper pipes up, now on her second cup of coffee. "Felix is very committed to his roles."
The doctor's lips twitch again, and I catch him looking at her with that same soft expression. My hand finds Juniper's wrist, pulling her closer to me on the bed. Mine, the gesture says. Back the fuck off.
"Someone wanted us dead," Bane continues, ignoring the byplay. "Someone with resources and connections. We need to know who."
"Get in line," I tell him. "We make it a point to know as little about our clients as possible, and half the criminal underworld wants you dead. You're not exactly subtle in your operations."
"Neither are you, apparently." Archer speaks for the first time, his voice mild. "The Tucson job was yours, wasn't it? Senator Fairview?"
Juniper goes still beside me. I keep my expression neutral, but internally I'm calculating exit strategies. They know too much. This is going to end badly.
"Never heard of it," I say.
They clearly know it's bullshit.
"Here's what's going to happen," Bane says, using his tough voice. "You're going to stay here as our guests?—"
"Prisoners," I correct.
" Guests ," he insists, "until we figure out who's targeting us and why. You'll have freedom of movement within reason, access to food and medical care, and we won't harm you as long as you don't try to harm us."
"And if we refuse?"
"Then you stay here anyway, just with less pleasant accommodations."
Juniper snorts. "So our choices are minimum security prison or maximum security prison. How generous."
"It's better than a bullet to the head," the golden-haired alpha points out cheerfully. "Which is what you'd get from anyone else in our position."
He's not wrong. Any other crew would have executed us on sight. The fact that we're having this conversation at all is bizarre. There's something else going on here, something they're not telling us.
"Why?" I ask, genuinely curious now. "Why keep us alive?"
They exchange glances, some kind of silent communication that speaks to years of working together. Finally, Bane shrugs.
"Call it professional curiosity. An omega and an alpha who work as equals, taking down high-profile targets with barely a trace? You're either the best partnership we've ever seen, or there's more to the story."
There's definitely more to the story, but they don't need to know that.
"Fine," I say, too tired to argue. "We'll play your game. For now."
"Excellent." The doctor stands, gathering his tablet. "I'll have food sent up. Real food, not just coffee and sugar packets."
"Sugar packets are food," Juniper protests, but she's already eyeing the door like she's planning our escape.
They file out one by one, but Jackal pauses at the door, those blue eyes finding mine with unnerving intensity.
"Try not to make any sudden movements. Those stitches are fresh."
It's a warning with a double meaning, and we both know it. Like Juniper said, they're watching.
He leaves, and I finally let myself breathe. Juniper immediately curls back against me, her body a warm weight that grounds me in the present.
"He knows something," she whispers.
"Maybe. Doesn't matter." I press my lips to her hair, inhaling her scent. "We'll figure it out. We always do."
"Felix?" Her voice is small, uncertain. "They're… different. From our usual targets. Why?"
It's a question I've been avoiding since I woke up. These alphas who kept us alive when they had every reason to kill us. They're not the monsters we expected. In this world, even the so-called heroes are usually just tyrants by another name. If people end up on our list, they deserve it.
Usually.
"Doesn't matter if they're good or bad," I tell her, meaning it. "They're not us. That's all that matters."
She nods against my chest, but I can feel her doubt like a living thing between us. The shadows she sees are whispering again.
I hold her tighter, ignoring the pull of stitches and the ache of healing wounds. These alphas might not be monsters, but that doesn't make them safe. Nothing is safe except us, together, against the world.
Just the way it's always been.
Just the way it has to stay.