Chapter 35 – JUNIPER
Chapter
Thirty-Five
JUNIPER
C arlisle's shirt hangs on me like a fucking dress, the expensive fabric smelling like wine and that dangerous edge that makes my thighs clench even though my heat's finally breaking.
I stumble out of my nest two days later looking like I've been mauled by a particularly enthusiastic pack of wolves—which isn't far off, minus the fur and fangs—and my legs are still doing that newborn deer thing where they can't quite remember how walking works.
The shower helped. Sort of. If by "helped" you mean "washed off three days' worth of come and sweat while I had pleasant flashbacks to every knot that's been inside me during this heat.
" My pussy's still tender, that pleasant ache that comes from being thoroughly fucked by four alphas who apparently have a competitive streak when it comes to making me scream.
The shadows are quieter now, satisfied in that post-feast way that makes them lazy and content.
They drift along the walls like smoke, occasionally whispering observations about how I smell like pack now, how the alphas' scents have seeped into my skin so deep that no amount of expensive body wash can scrub them out.
I find Felix in the living room, hunched over a laptop like he's trying to hack into the Pentagon or order takeout and with him, it's a fifty-fifty shot.
The afternoon light catches his silver eyes, making them look like mercury, and something in my chest does that stupid fluttery thing it always does when I see him after any kind of separation.
I creep up behind him, quiet as the grave I've put so many people in, and slap my hands over his eyes.
"Guess who?" I chirp, pressing myself against his back.
He doesn't even flinch. "You're the only one in this house who smells like flowers and has a manicure."
I pull my hands away to examine my nails—still perfect despite everything, because apparently my body prioritizes nail integrity over everything else. "You're no fun."
"I'm plenty fun," he says, but his tone is flat as roadkill that's been run over twelve times.
I slide around into his lap, straddling him with the kind of gracelessness that comes from muscles that have been fucked into submission. His hands automatically go to my hips to steady me, and I notice he's careful not to touch skin, keeping his grip on the shirt fabric.
That's... weird.
"Where've you been?" I ask, going for casual but landing somewhere around desperate.
"I haven't seen you since..." I trail off, not really wanting to finish that sentence.
Since you gave permission for them to wreck me in ways only you have in years.
Since you walked away and left me wondering if I'd finally crossed some invisible line.
"I wanted to give you time to bond with the pack." His voice is carefully neutral, that tone he uses when he's trying not to feel things. "They had it covered."
"Covered?" I repeat, and something cold slithers down my spine. "Felix, I—" The words stick in my throat like broken glass. "I need you. Always. You know that, right?"
His eyes finally meet mine, and there's something there I can't read. Something that makes my chest tight. "I know."
"They want you to be part of the pack too," I say, rushing the words out before I lose my nerve. "All of them. Carlisle said?—"
"Carlisle says a lot of things." Felix's fingers tighten fractionally on my hips. "Most of them designed to get what he wants."
"That's not—" I stop, frustrated. "This isn't about Carlisle. Or any of them. This is about us. About you pulling away when I need you close."
"Your heat scent is fading," he observes, changing the subject with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face.
"It's lingering," I counter, rolling my hips against him in a way that usually makes his breath catch. "Could probably go another round if you're interested."
But instead of responding to my incredibly subtle seduction technique, his laptop makes this soft ping that makes him go rigid beneath me. Not the good kind of rigid. The oh-fuck-someone's-about-to-die kind.
"What was that?" I ask, trying to peer at the screen, but he snaps it shut so fast I'm surprised it doesn't crack.
"Nothing. Work stuff."
Work stuff. We don't have work stuff. We have murder stuff and staying-alive stuff and occasionally grocery stuff, but we definitely don't have mysterious laptop ping stuff that makes Felix look like someone just told him his favorite knife got melted down for scrap.
"Felix—"
"Anyone hungry?" Archer's voice cuts through whatever interrogation I was about to launch.
He's standing in the doorway looking freshly showered and wearing an apron that says 'Kiss the Cook' which is so aggressively wholesome it makes my teeth hurt because he's just asking to be bitten and devoured.
And under any other circumstances, I'd do just that.
"I'm about to demonstrate why I'm secretly a world-class chef. "
"Starving," Felix says immediately, practically lifting me off his lap like I weigh nothing. Which is bullshit because I know for a fact he eats to live and he's never excited about it. Food is my borderline obscene passion, but right now, it's about as appetizing as dirt.
"I could eat," I say slowly, watching Felix stand and tuck the laptop under his arm like it contains nuclear codes. Or porn. Though honestly, nuclear codes would be less surprising.
Archer's face lights up like someone just told him Christmas came early. "Great! I'm making my signature pasta. It's won awards."
"From who?" I ask, following them toward the kitchen even though every instinct is screaming that something's wrong. "Your mom?"
"Actually, yes," Archer admits without shame. "But she's a tough critic."
The kitchen smells like garlic and basil and other things that make my stomach remember it exists. Archer's got ingredients spread across the massive island like he's prepping for surgery, everything measured and arranged neatly.
No wonder he's so much fun to scramble into chaos.
"Can I help?" I offer, mostly to have something to do with my hands that isn't throttling Felix until he tells me what's on that laptop.
"You can taste test," Archer says, already chopping onions with the kind of knife skills that remind me he's killed people. A lot of people. Efficiently. "Felix, you mind starting the salad?"
"What, you don't trust me with a knife?" I pout.
"No," they say in unison.
"Rude," I huff, stealing a grape tomato off the cutting board and popping it into my mouth.
And just like that, we're doing domestic shit like a normal pack. Like Felix isn't hiding something. Like there isn't a weird energy between us that makes my skin itch. Like everything's fucking fine when it's clearly not.
Felix moves around the kitchen briskly, washing lettuce and slicing tomatoes like they've personally offended him. I perch on the counter, bare legs swinging, Carlisle's shirt riding up enough that Archer keeps losing focus and nearly taking his fingers off.
"So," I say, because silence makes me want to scream, "where'd you learn to cook?"
"Military taught me the basics," Archer says, stirring something that smells like heaven. "But I got really into it after discharge. Needed something to do with my hands that wasn't..." He trails off.
"Violence?" I supply helpfully.
"Yeah." He offers me a spoon. "Here, try this."
The sauce is fucking incredible, rich and complex and probably has thirty ingredients I can't pronounce. "Holy shit."
"Good?"
"I would commit murder for this pasta sauce."
"You commit murder for fun," Felix points out from his station at the cutting board.
"Yeah, but this would be motivated murder. Crime of passion. No jury would convict."
Archer laughs, and it's such a warm sound that for a second I almost forget about the weirdness. Almost forget that Felix is being cagey and distant and wrong.
The shadows start whispering again, their earlier contentment evaporating.
Secrets and lies, they hiss. The foundation cracks.
Carlisle appears in the doorway like he was summoned by the smell of food or the promise of drama. "Domestic bliss," he observes, taking in the scene with those sharp blue eyes that miss nothing. "How nauseating."
"You're welcome to fuck off," I tell him sweetly.
"And miss Archer's cooking? Never." He slides onto the stool next to where I'm perched, close enough that his thigh brushes mine. "Besides, someone needs to make sure you don't burn the place down."
"You told him?" I cry, looking at Felix in betrayal.
"You set three fires," Felix says without looking up from his aggressive vegetable mutilation.
"Small fires. Barely worth mentioning."
"The warehouse almost exploded."
" Almost is the key word there."
Carlisle laughs, that bright, sharp sound that makes my insides do stupid things. "Our little arsonist."
The casual possessiveness in that 'our' makes something warm unfurl in my chest, even as another part of me notices how Felix's shoulders tense at the word.
Bane and Elias wander in, drawn by food or pack bonds or whatever mystical force makes alphas congregate in kitchens. The space fills with their scents, their presence, their easy banter that Felix doesn't participate in.
He's here but not here. Present but absent. Going through the motions while his mind is clearly elsewhere, probably on whatever made his laptop ping.
"Felix made enough salad to feed an army," Archer observes, looking at the massive bowl of greens.
"I got distracted," Felix says, but I know that's bullshit. Felix doesn't get distracted. Felix is focus personified. Felix could perform surgery during an earthquake without breaking concentration.
We sit down to eat, and it should be perfect. The food's incredible, the conversation flows easily, and I'm surrounded by alphas who've spent the last three days proving exactly how much they want me.
But there's a Felix-shaped hole in the warmth, even though he's sitting right next to me.
He eats mechanically, responds when spoken to directly, even manages something that might be a smile when Carlisle makes a particularly dark joke about his latest knife acquisition.
But I know him. I know every micro-expression, every tell, every tiny sign that something's eating at him from the inside out.
The laptop sits on the side table across the room like a loaded gun.
"This is amazing," Elias tells Archer, and there's genuine appreciation in his voice. "Where did you learn to make this?"
"Youtube," Archer admits. "And a lot of trial and error."
"By error, he means he once gave Bane food poisoning," Carlisle adds helpfully.
"That was not my fault," Archer protests. "He ate chicken that had been sitting out for six hours."
"You said it was fine."
"I said it was probably fine. There's a difference."
They bicker like brothers, like family, like pack. And I want to enjoy it, want to sink into this warmth and belonging, but I can't stop watching Felix. Can't stop noticing how he's slowly retreating even while sitting still.
His phone buzzes. He glances at it, and something flickers across his face too fast for me to catch.
"I need to make a call," he says, standing abruptly. "Excuse me."
He's gone before anyone can respond, leaving his barely touched plate and that fucking laptop behind.
"So," Archer says carefully, "he has Internet access. I'm guessing that was Carlisle's doing?"
"Actually, no," Carlisle says, leaning back in his chair. "Though I do like to live dangerously."
"It was me," Bane says with a grunt. "He's helping me track down the people who put a hit out on us." When he sees the others looking at him like he's grown another head, he looks pointedly at Archer and adds, "What was all that about building trust?"
"I'm not complaining," Archer says, holding up his hands. "Just surprised."
"They're not prisoners anymore," Bane says, looking at me as he speaks. "If we're going to be a pack, it's about time we start acting like it."
His words make my heart do an annoying little flutter, but the butterflies in my stomach won't calm down either.
Pack. I want us to be that, more than I ever imagined, but with Felix drifting further away from me, I'm scared of what that means.
And I know better than to think grasping at him will do anything but push him further.
"He'll be fine," Elias says gently, probably reading the worry on my face like it's written in neon.
"Yeah," I agree, stabbing at my pasta with unnecessary force. "Fine."
But he's not fine. We're not fine. For the first time in seven years, there's a wedge between us that I don't know how to remove. Something's pulling him away from me, from us, from this life we could have if he'd just let himself want it.
The shadows cluster around me, their whispers growing urgent.
He's already gone, they say. Just hasn't left yet.
I tell them to shut up, but my hands are shaking as I bring the fork to my mouth. The pasta tastes like ash.
For the first time since we escaped the Serpents' Den, I'm afraid of losing him.
And I don't know how to fix it.