Chapter 37 – ARCHER
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
ARCHER
T he computer screen burns my retinas at three in the morning, but I keep scrolling through financial records like they might suddenly make sense if I stare hard enough.
Shell companies nested inside shell companies, money trails that disappear into offshore accounts, and not a single fucking lead that goes anywhere useful.
Whoever hired our two omega assassins to kill us knows how to hide their tracks better than most governments.
I lean back in my chair, rubbing my eyes until I see stars.
The office Carlisle insisted on setting up in this ridiculous mansion is like something out of a mob movie.
Right now it's just me, a cold cup of coffee that tastes like shit, and enough conspiracy-theory-level documentation spread across three monitors to make me look like I've lost my mind.
The door creaks open, and I smell her before I see her, sweet flowers mixed with something restless. Juniper pads in barefoot, wearing one of Elias's button-downs that hangs to her thighs, her hair a mess like she's been tossing and turning instead of sleeping.
"Can't sleep?" I ask, though the answer's obvious from the shadows under her eyes.
"You're one to talk." She moves into the room with that predator grace she never quite turns off, even when she's trying to appear harmless. "What're you doing?"
"Chasing ghosts." I gesture at the screens. "Trying to figure out who wants us dead badly enough to hire professional killers and then send a hit squad after said killers when they failed."
She perches on the edge of my desk, bare legs swinging, and I try not to notice how the movement makes the shirt ride up. Try not to think about what happened during her heat, the way she tasted, the sounds she made.
Business, Archer. Focus on business.
"Find anything interesting?" she asks, leaning over to squint at the screen, and her scent gets stronger. Not heat-sweet, but anxious.
"Nothing useful. Whoever's behind this has more lawyers than a pharmaceutical company and better accountants than the mob." I minimize a window showing another dead-end transaction. "But I'll keep digging. Eventually everyone makes a mistake."
"Mmm." She picks up a pen from my desk, starts taking it apart with the kind of focused intensity that means her mind's somewhere else entirely. "That's what Felix always says. Everyone makes mistakes. You just have to wait long enough to see them."
The way she says his name like it hurts makes me look at her more carefully. Really look. The tension in her shoulders, the way she keeps glancing at the door like she's expecting someone who isn't coming.
"Juniper." I roll my chair back from the desk. "Come here."
She raises an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because you're about to vibrate out of your skin and it's making me nervous." I pat my lap. "Come on. Talk to me."
She hesitates for about three seconds before sliding off the desk and into my lap, curling against my chest like she belongs there. Which she does, even if she doesn't know it yet. Her slight weight settles something in me, that alpha need to hold and protect.
I knew better than to think getting her through a heat would mean getting past all her walls, but they're coming down, little by little. One brick at a time. That's a victory.
"What's wrong?" I ask, wrapping my arms around her carefully, ready to let go if she tenses. But she doesn't. She melts into me like she's been waiting for someone to hold her together.
"Felix is going to leave." The words come out small, broken. "I can feel it. He's pulling away, making plans, and he thinks I don't notice but I've known him for seven years. I know when he's building walls."
My chest tightens. "You think he's going after whoever hired you?"
She shakes her head against my shoulder. "No. Well, maybe. But that's not..." She takes a shaky breath. "His brother. He's going to go after his brother. Evan."
The name hangs in the air like a curse. I know pieces of their past, fragments Felix let slip, things Juniper's mentioned in passing, but not the whole story.
Just enough to know that whatever happened at that place, the Serpents' Den, it broke something in both of them that never quite healed right.
"I only know bits and pieces," I admit, my hand moving to stroke her hair without conscious thought. "About where you came from. What happened to you both."
She's quiet for so long I think she's not going to answer. Then she says, "Do you want to know? It's not... it's not a nice story."
"I want to know everything about you," I say, and mean it. "The good, the bad, the ugly. All of it."
She shifts in my lap, getting comfortable like she's settling in for a long story. Her fingers find mine, playing with them absently while she talks.
"The Serpents' Den was hell dressed up as heaven," she starts, her voice distant like she's looking at memories through frosted glass. "High-end brothel for alphas with too much money and specific tastes. Usually young. Felix's brother Evan owned it. Still owns it, probably."
My hands tighten involuntarily. Everything the Psychos have spent years fighting against. I already suspected as much.
That there were places out there even we couldn't reach, victims we couldn't save, who've been through worse than even four seasoned vigilantes could imagine. But knowing our mates were two of them…
She feels it, pats my arm like she's comforting me instead of the other way around.
"Felix was born there. Literally. His mom was one of the omegas, died when he was little.
Evan took over the Serpents' Den when their father died and raised him, if you can call it that.
Kept him as... I don't know what to call it.
Not quite a worker, not quite family. Something in between. Something worse."
"Fuck," I breathe, because what else can you say to that?
"He was supposed to be an enforcer. Keep the omegas in line, make sure no one caused trouble.
But Felix was always too soft for it, even when he tried to pretend otherwise.
He'd sneak extra food to the ones who were struggling, pretend not to notice when someone broke a rule.
" She laughs, but it's bitter. "His brother fucking hated that.
Used to beat the shit out of him for it.
And sold him to clients when he realized Felix wasn't going to be following in his bootsteps. "
I want to find this Evan and introduce him to some enhanced interrogation techniques I learned in the military. But I keep my mouth shut, let her talk.
"I got there when I was barely fifteen," she continues. "They found me on the streets, having an episode. I'd run away from home technically, but my mom basically kicked me out when she realized I was…. broken."
Her voice cracks on the word, like she's remembering the first time it was used against her.
I hold her tighter, wanting to tell her that broken or not, she's the strongest person I've ever met.
That most people who've been through what she has would shatter into a thousand pieces, and the fact that she managed to fit them back together with gold and steel makes her something precious to be treasured, not thrown away.
But something tells me these words don't come easily to her, so I let her speak.
"The shadows were really bad then," she continues softly, "before Felix taught me how to manage them. Evan's scouts thought I was high, an easy target. Drugged me, threw me in a van, and next thing I knew I was in this gorgeous room that smelled like death under all the perfume."
Her voice goes flat, emotionless, and somehow that's worse than if she was crying.
"They tried everything to break me. Beatings, starvation, isolation.
They had this hole—literally just a pit in the basement where they'd throw the troublemakers.
No light, no sound except your own screaming.
I spent a week down there once because I bit Evan when he tried to.
.." She trails off, shrugs. "Doesn't matter. "
"It matters," I say fiercely. "Everything that happened to you matters."
Because one day, I'm going to make the bastard who did it pay for every scar he inflicted on her and Felix, mental and physical.
She looks up at me, those hazel eyes seeing too much. "You're going to make me cry if you keep being nice."
"Then cry. You're safe here."
She blinks hard, looks away. "Felix saved me.
He was supposed to be watching me, making sure I didn't cause more trouble.
But instead he'd sneak in at night, bring me food, hold me when the shadows got too loud.
He taught me how to fight, how to hide weapons, how to read people. Everything I needed to survive."
"And you fell in love," I say, not a question.
"How could I not?" She laughs, wet and broken.
"We were the same age. Neither of us had family, at least, not a real one.
We understood each other the way no one else did or could.
He was the only light in that darkness. The only person who saw me as more than a broken omega to be used and discarded.
We started planning our escape almost immediately, but it took three years.
Three years of saving money, gathering supplies, learning skills.
Three years of pretending, of playing roles, of watching other omegas disappear and knowing we couldn't save them all. "
She's crying now, silent tears that soak into my shirt. I hold her tighter, press my lips to her hair, try to absorb some of her pain even though I know it doesn't work that way.
"The night we escaped, Felix killed twelve people," she says, matter-of-fact. "I killed three. We burned half the building down on our way out. And you know what the fucked up part is? I don't regret it. Not a single death. They all deserved worse."
"Good," I say, and mean it. "They did deserve worse."
She pulls back to look at me, surprised. "You don't think we're monsters?"
"I think you're survivors. I think you did what you had to do. And I think anyone who judges you for it can fuck right off."
She kisses me then, sudden and desperate and tasting like tears. I kiss her back, trying to pour everything I feel into it—the admiration, the desire, the bone-deep need to protect her even though she's proven she doesn't need protection. But that doesn't make me want to offer it any less.
When she pulls back, we're both breathing hard.
"I need him," she says, and it doesn't hurt that she's talking about Felix because I get it.
I understand that kind of bond, forged in trauma and survival.
At least, to a point. "But part of him never left that place.
Part of him is still in that building, watching his brother hurt people, unable to stop it.
And now that I'm safe, now that he doesn't have to protect me anymore, that part is taking over. "
"You think he's going back to kill his brother."
She nods. "And he won't survive it. Not because Evan will kill him—Felix is too smart, too skilled for that. But because once it's done, once he's got his revenge, there won't be anything left. He's been running on rage for so long, I don't think he knows how to exist without it."
"Then we don't let him go," I say simply.
She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "You can't cage Felix. Trust me, I've tried. He's like smoke. The tighter you try to hold on, the faster he slips away."
"Then we give him something else to hold onto. Something besides revenge."
"Like what?"
"Like us. Like pack. Like a future that's more than just surviving day to day." I cup her face in my hands, make her look at me. "Juniper, we're not going to let either of you go. Not now that we've found you. Felix might not want us yet, might not trust us, but that doesn't mean we're giving up."
"You don't even know him."
"I know he protected you for seven years.
I know he's willing to die for you. I know he's been carrying weight that would crush most people and still managed to keep you both alive.
" I brush my thumbs over her cheekbones, wiping away tears.
"That tells me everything I need to know about his character. "
"He's not easy to win over," she warns.
"Neither are you," I point out, and she actually smiles. "Doesn't mean you're not worth it."
She curls back into my chest, and we sit there in comfortable silence while the computer screens cast blue light over everything. Her breathing evens out, and I think she might have fallen asleep when she speaks again.
"I'm scared," she admits, so quiet I almost miss it. "I'm scared of losing him. Of being alone. Of finally having something good and watching it fall apart."
"You're not going to be alone," I promise. "Even if Felix leaves, which we're not going to let happen, you have us. You have pack. You have a home."
"For how long? Until you get tired of the crazy omega who sees things that aren't there? Until you realize we're more trouble than we're worth?"
"Forever," I say, and mean it with every cell in my body. "Or until you get tired of us and murder us all in our sleep."
She laughs, real this time. "That's actually pretty likely."
"I know. Carlisle's already got a betting pool going on who dies first."
"Who's winning?"
"Elias, actually. Carlisle thinks you'll poison him because he'll try to medicate your shadows away."
"That's... actually pretty plausible." She yawns, huge and unguarded. "Archer?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For listening. For not running away screaming."
"Thank you for trusting me with it." I kiss the top of her head.
"It's going to work out, Juniper. I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but it will.
We'll figure out the thing with Felix, deal with whoever's trying to kill us, and find a way forward that doesn't end with anyone dying or disappearing. "
"You promise?"
I shouldn't. I know better than to make promises about things I can't control. But she needs hope right now more than anything, and I'll find a way to make it true. "I promise."
She falls asleep in my lap, trusting me to hold her while she's vulnerable. I keep searching through financial records one-handed, the other arm wrapped around her, and try not to think about how right this feels. How complete.
Felix might be planning to leave, but we're not going to let him go without a fight. Not when Juniper needs him. Not when we need them both.