Chapter 19 – JUNIPER
Chapter
Nineteen
JUNIPER
T he forest breathes around us like something with too many lungs, each exhale carrying the scent of pine needles and decay and Felix's blood trailing behind us like breadcrumbs for wolves.
My feet have gone num, which is probably a blessing considering how far we have to go.
Felix leans heavy against my shoulder, his weight dragging us both down with each step, and I can hear his breathing getting wetter, more ragged.
Run, little rabbit, the shadows whisper, dancing between the trees. Run before the hunters find you.
"Shut up," I hiss at them, but my voice comes out broken. "You're not helping."
Felix's head lolls against my neck, and his scent hits me wrong—the artificial alpha pheromones are fading faster now, stress and blood loss stripping away his disguise layer by layer.
Underneath, I catch hints of something else.
Diamond-sharp winter, yes, but softer somehow. Sweeter. Like frost on flower petals.
We stumble into a small clearing where moonlight pools like spilled milk, and I ease Felix down against a fallen log. His skin has gone the color of old paper, and when I press my fingers to his throat, his pulse flutters weakly.
"Felix?" I pat his cheek, probably harder than necessary.
"I'm fine," he insists, slumping forward on his knees. "Just need a minute."
The compound's alarms have gone quiet, which is worse than the shrieking. Quiet means they're hunting. Quiet means they've stopped announcing their presence and started stalking. I learned that from Felix—the loudest predators are usually the ones you don't need to worry about.
I tear a strip from the bottom of Bane's huge shirt and try not to think about how disappointed I am that his scent is fading from it. I press it against the reopened wound on Felix's thigh and the blood soaks through immediately, warm and sticky against my palms.
"Please," I whisper to no one in particular. Maybe the shadows. Maybe the trees. Maybe whatever twisted deity thought it would be funny to make us like this. I don't even know what I'm asking for.
Rescue? Liberation?
A branch snaps somewhere to our left.
My head whips around so fast my vision blurs, but I see them—shapes moving between the trees, deliberate and coordinated. Not the Psychos or their guards. These ones move different, sharper somehow, like knives pretending to be people.
Not the same, the shadows shriek. Different hunters. Dangerous.
The smell hits me before I see them clearly—alpha pheromones, but wrong. Synthetic. Weaponized. It coats the back of my throat like oil, makes my skin prickle with artificial heat that's more biological warfare than desire.
Felix leaps to his feet with false strength, putting himself between me and them, snarling fiercely. "Cover your nose and mouth," he warns.
Before I can respond or obey, we're surrounded.
They step into the clearing like they own it, five of them in tactical gear that makes them look like insects. No identifying marks, no patches, just black on black on black. The one in front pulls something from his belt—a canister that hisses when he pops the seal.
I do as Felix warned and cover my mouth and nose with the neck of my shirt, but it's little use.
The pheromones that pour out are thick enough to see, a yellow-green fog that makes my stomach clench and my thighs clamp together involuntarily.
This isn't natural arousal. This is violation in aerosol form, designed to force omegas into heat whether they want it or not.
But why? Why are they out here? This place is remote. If they're hunting omegas, which is a common enough "sport" for the sick and twisted, this isn't exactly fertile ground.
Unless… they came here for us. For me, at least.
I try not to breathe, but that only works for so long. The chemicals seep through my shirt, through my skin, into my blood, igniting fires I can't put out. My body temperature spikes, and suddenly Bane's shirt feels like it's suffocating me.
"Well, well." The lead soldier's voice is muffled by his mask, but I can hear the smile in it. "The infamous Juniper. You know, we were supposed to just put bullets in both your heads. Quick and clean, payment for failure."
Payment for failure. So these are the client's men, come to collect on our botched job. I guess it's about time. We've been gone for days, and the Psychos are already out on a mission. Proof we failed ours.
The shadows were right—different hunters, different game.
"But seeing you like this..." He takes a step closer, and I bare my teeth even as my body betrays me, my inner thighs already slick. "Maybe we can have a little fun first. The client doesn't need to know how you died."
Felix snarls again, the growl coming from deep in his chest. The pheromone weapons must be affecting him too, despite the suppressants. His scent is changing, shifting, that last layer of artificial alpha peeling away like old paint.
And underneath...
Oh fuck. Oh fuck .
Felix doesn't smell like an alpha at all anymore.
The soldiers haven't noticed yet—their masks probably filter scents—but I can smell it clear as day. Omega. Felix is an omega, has always been an omega, just hidden under layers of drugs and deception.
My brain tries to process our next moves, but the pheromones are making everything sluggish.
Singing a siren's song that entreats me to slow down, to bear my throat, to submit…
Meanwhile, my body burns from the inside out, the forced heat making everything hurt and throb and ache.
The world tilts sideways, or maybe that's just me falling, hands and knees hitting the forest floor as another wave of pheromones washes over us.
"Grab the girl," the leader orders. "Kill the other one."
Felix backs up far enough that we collide, and snarls, "Run!"
He fires a few shots, and I want to stay, but he pushes me with his free hand, forcing me forward.
My feet slip against the icy slope and it's all I can do to stay upright as I stagger my way down.
By the time I look up and see Felix has one of our attackers dead in the snow, another clutching a wound in his neck as he collapses against a tree, I realize I'm not alone.
One of the other alphas is closer than should be possible, and when he reaches for me, I barely lash out in time to clip his hand with my blade like it's a natural extension of my body.
"You bitch!" he seethes, lunging at me.
With no choice, I run. My legs aren't working right, muscles turned to water by the chemicals racing through my system, but I keep flinging myself forward, the sound of gunfire raging in the distance.
"Felix!" The scream tears from my throat, but it comes out wrong, twisted by the heat into something desperate and needy. I try to look back, but the other alpha is right behind me, the other two herding Felix deeper into the woods.
They're separating us.
The best thing I can do now is run.
So I do. I run, even as my legs feel like they're made of wood.
A little stick puppet on tangled strings, hobbling jankily through the woods.
It's not long before something hits my back and I go down hard in a blur of powdered snow and a heavy body on top of mine.
The snow gives out, and we tumble like broken rocks getting bashed against the cliffs down a ravine, and when we finally stop, my head hits something hard enough that I black out for a second.
When I come to, I'm crawling, dignity abandoned, the forced heat making every movement agony. But strong hands grab my ankle, hauling me in the opposite direction.
"You're not going anywhere," he says, a vicious sneer in his deep voice. "Young, unmated omega? You'll fetch a nice price after we're done breaking you in."
The shadows are screaming warnings and rage now, but I can barely hear them over the blood rushing in my ears. My body is on fire, every nerve ending screaming for contact I don't want from people I want to kill.
He hauls me to my feet like a broken doll and drags me deeper into the trees, away from Felix, away from everything.
My vision keeps fracturing, reality splitting into pieces—here's the forest, here's his hand on my throat, here's a memory of Felix teaching me how to hide a blade, here's the taste of copper and defeat.
"Stop struggling," he says, pressing me against a tree. The bark scrapes against my back through the thin shirt. "This can be easy or hard. Though personally, I prefer hard."
As he speaks, I hear others. More soldiers. More snakes slithering through the woods, ready to swallow us whole. Then I see their shapes in the distance through the trees, even if it's hard to separate them from the shadows.
His hand slides down my side, and my skin crawls even as my traitorous body arches into the touch. This is what I was always afraid of—not death, but this. Being reduced to biology, to need without want, to?—
The soldier's head explodes.
One moment he's pressed against me, the next his skull is just... gone. Replaced by red mist and chunks that splatter across my face like warm rain. His body crumples, and I see them through the haze of heat and blood.
Bane stands twenty feet away, rifle still smoking, looking like death incarnate in his black tactical gear and balaclava, but it's him.
I've never seen another alpha as huge, close to seven feet of mostly muscle.
His hazel eyes burn with something beyond rage, beyond human emotion.
He looks like the mountain decided to grow legs and choose violence.
Archer flanks him, already engaging the other soldiers, his movements precise and lethal. Bodies drop like dominoes, professional killers reduced to corpses in seconds.
"Juniper." Bane's voice cuts through the chaos, grounding me even as my body tries to fly apart.
His huge hands settle on my shoulders, and even though any touch but Felix's has always made my skin crawl, my body melts in response despite everything.
I tell myself it's just the chemicals. Just the false heat. "Are you alright?"
A strangled laugh claws its way up my throat. Am I alright? I won't be, as soon as these two realize what's happening. They're alphas, after all. All alphas respond the same way to an omega in heat.
But the sound of movement to my right draws my attention and I realize Archer has already removed his mask. I can tell from the way his eyes widen, the way his nostrils flare, he's picked up my scent already.
But he doesn't attack. Doesn't move. And that look of concern on his face doesn't dissolve into unbridled lust like I expected.
Bane looks between us, and I hear the deep intake of breath through his mask. He knows. They both know I'm in heat. If my skin looks half as flushed as it feels, despite the frigid environment, he doesn't even need to pick up my scent.
And yet… he's not attacking me, either.
"Where is Felix?" Bane asks, his voice gentle.
It seems to take him great effort, considering he usually sounds like he chews gravel like bubblegum.
He shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over my shoulder, and it's all I can do not to collapse from the weight of it, and the impossibly comforting scent of woods that wraps around me along with it.
I try to answer but all that comes out is a whimper. The heat is getting worse, the pheromone weapons having done their job too well. I can barely think past the need clawing at my insides, but I point in the direction they took him.
"Get her out of here," Bane barks at Archer. "I'll find Felix."
Archer scoops me up like I weigh nothing, and his scent, pure sunshine and citrus, makes my omega instincts purr even as my rational mind screams. This is wrong, all wrong, but my body doesn't care about wrong anymore.
"It's okay," Archer murmurs, though nothing about this is okay. "We've got you. You're safe now."
Safe .
What a funny word. Like safety exists in a world where people can force your body to betray you with chemicals.
"Felix," I manage to gasp out. "He's... he's not..."
But the words won't come, lost in the fire consuming me from the inside out. All I can do is hold on as Archer carries me through the forest, away from the bodies, away from Felix, away from everything I thought I knew.
The shadows follow, whispering truths I'm not ready to hear.
Two little omegas playing at being predators. But even predators can become prey.
The last thing I see before the heat drags me under completely is Bane disappearing into the trees, hunting for Felix.
And here I am, hoping he finds him.