NINETEEN #3
The kiss pulses between us like a fresh wound.
I can feel it pulling at us both. My Alpha wants to step closer and cover that pull with skin and scent.
My hands want to learn the shape of her jaw, the weight of her hair through my fingers, the places pain hides in her shoulders.
The part of me that is less instinct and more man wants to ask what happened to her, who Doctor O’Reilly really was, and why the word immune made her look like the roof had finally vanished from under her feet.
I don’t do a single thing.
That’s the third choice.
And maybe that’s the only one that even really matters.
“Your body recognized something,” I say carefully.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t.”
“I’m not saying it owns you,” I clarify, keeping my voice steady. When she goes completely still instead of stabbing me with her knife, I continue. “What I am saying is bodies know things before minds are sometimes ready to acknowledge. Fear. Hunger. Pain. Safety.”
Her voice is cold when she asks, “You think you’re safe?”
“No.”
That answer surprises her. Good.
“I think you decide what’s safe,” I tell her. “Not me. Not my Alpha. And not biology. You.”
Her mouth is hidden, but I see the shape of whatever she almost says before swallowing it back. I take a slow, deep breath, even as my instincts snarl. I ignore them like it’s my only duty in life.
“Biology isn’t ownership,” I say. “Wanting is not permission, and recognition isn’t surrender.”
Dakota’s knife lowers only half an inch. Barely anything, really, but it’s enough. Then she says, “You kissed me.”
“I know,” I admit, nodding once.
“You kissed me back,” she adds.
“I know.”
“I stopped,” she says quietly.
“You stopped,” I repeat. “So I stopped.”
Her throat moves.
I lower my voice when I say, “That shouldn’t surprise you.”
“Well, it did,” she confesses, and her honesty comes out sharp enough to cut us both.
I want to kill every single person who ever taught her that stopping was something she had to earn with threats and a knife.
I don’t say that, of course, because that anger would be mine.
She doesn’t deserve mine on top of the anger she’s already carrying with her.
So, I only nod. “Then I’ll keep proving it.”
Her eyes search my face like she’s looking for a well-hidden trap. There isn’t one. Just me standing in the rain, soaked through, hurt, tired, wanting her so badly my bones ache, and choosing not to take a single step closer.
She looks away first, but I don’t consider it a victory.
“There’s something in my pack,” she admits.
My attention sharpens so fast I grow dizzy with it, but I keep my body as still as stone. “Okay.”
I know she hates that word. I can tell, but this time she doesn’t correct me. Instead, she says, “If I give it to you, you have to give it back.”
“I promise,” I swear, meaning it with my entire chest. She could give me the cure to the virus and I’d hand it straight back to her if it meant earning her trust enough that she wouldn’t look at me like I’m one word away from fucking her over.
“You don’t show them,” she pushes.
“I won’t,” I assure her.
“And you don’t ask about it,” she adds.
My jaw tightens with that one, because that’s a harder request to follow. Not because I want to push, but because I want to know how to protect her better. But wanting doesn’t matter. Permission does.
“I won’t ask a thing,” I swear, even though everything in me begs differently.
Dakota studies me for a long moment. Then she reaches under her jacket, shifts the strap of her backpack, and pulls something from the inner pocket.
It’s a small photograph, creased and soft at the edges, with a protective clear sleeve that has grown cloudy with age. She holds it out like it’s a weapon, and maybe it is. So, with caution, I take it from her.
The photo is from before. I know it straight away. Not because the world behind them is whole, even though it is. A kitchen wall, yellow light, a vase of flowers on the table. Something bright and ordinary in the background.
I know it’s from before because Dakota is smiling.
She’s younger there. Sixteen, maybe. There’s no hat or bandana, and her long white-blond hair hangs loose around her shoulders in pretty waves, pale against her olive skin.
Light hazel eyes shine at the camera, and vitiligo is visible across her face and arms, unhidden and proud.
But the best part is seeing her hold up black painted nails near her cheek as if she’s showing them off.
A boy stands beside her, arm hooked around her shoulders in that careless, irritating way only a brother can get away with. He has the same shade of hair as Dakota and the same grin, even though his seems bolder and brighter.
A man stands behind them with tired eyes and a hand on Dakota’s shoulder, and I recognize him instantly.
Dr. O’Reilly.
That name sits heavy in my brain now, but I make sure not to react.
A woman leans into him, fierce and beautiful, her smile aimed more at the children than the camera.
Her mother.
A life.
Not an easy one, maybe, but what life has ever been easy in memory? But it’s a life all the same, with walls that weren’t barricades. With laundry and coffee and flowers and nail polish and someone behind the camera telling them all to stand still and grin widely.
It’s Dakota before the world turned her into a weapon. Before it hollowed her out and replaced all the good stuff with fear, distrust, and a morbid outlook on the universe.
My fucking chest hurts.
I give the photo back instantly, and her fingers close around it quickly. Too quickly. Like she expected me to keep it. Like she expected she would have to fight for it back.
I look away, because I know that’s what she needs from me, not because I want to. And while I’m staring at the air next to her head, I mutter, “Thank you.”
“What for?” she says, her head jerking up to look at me.
“Trusting me with it,” I answer honestly.
“I didn’t,” she refutes with a confused little shake of her head.
“You didn’t?” I ask.
“I showed you a picture,” she mutters. “Don’t make it weird.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes flash with that word, and it takes everything for me not to smile again. I almost let it loose, but I only barely stop myself. She knows, too, based on the way she narrows her eyes before tucking the photo back with careful, shaking fingers.
“I don’t know why I did that,” she says, so quietly that the rain almost swallows it.
I look at the city instead of at her. “Maybe you just wanted someone to know there was a before.”
Silence follows for all of five seconds before she says, “That sounds very dangerously close to understanding.”
“I’ll tone it down,” I tell her.
“Do that.”
Another silence, but this one sits differently. Not comfortable, exactly, but nothing about Dakota is comfortable. She’s all sharp edges and landmines and tripwires and signs that tell you to step closer if you hate having blood in your body. It’s not an empty silence, though.
The shed door opens behind us just then, and Ewan’s voice carries over to us, softer than usual.
“Sorry to interrupt this very intense and wet staring competition, but our guest is doing a mental impression of someone about to die. It’s inconvenient, but it’s actually really impressive.
I’m thinking of giving him a five-star review on Yelp. ”
Dakota closes her eyes like she’s praying for patience. “I liked him better when he was silent.”
“No, you didn’t,” I contradict, calling her out a little.
She glares at me, and it’s honestly one of the best things I’ve seen today.
There she is.
Fletcher appears in the door next. “We move. Now. Streets below are shifting.”
“Zeds?” Dakota asks.
“Rots,” Fletcher says.
Dakota scoffs. “Wrong, but whatever licks your tip.”
I hear Ewan choke from the shed, but Fletcher’s mouth tightens. “There’s a lot of them.”
Dakota steps past me toward the shed. Her shoulder almost brushes my arm, but not quite. She stops before it does, and the small space between us feels far louder than the kiss did.
She looks up at me from under the brim of her hat. “This doesn’t change anything.”
“I know,” I tell her.
“I still leave when I want,” she reminds me.
“I know.”
“You don’t follow if I tell you not to,” she says.
My Alpha goes deathly still.
That’s the hardest one. The meanest one.
The one that reaches a place inside me where instinct has been clawing since the moment I scented her in the school.
Since the moment she saved my life and disappeared like a ghost. Since the moment I finally understood she had been surviving alone in a world built to crush her under its weight.
If she tells me not to follow, every single part of me will want to follow anyway. To protect her. To watch. To make sure the city doesn't finally claim her for its own.
But wanting Dakota means protecting her right to leave. Even from me. Especially from me.
I force the words out even though everything in me wants to bottle them. “If you tell me not to follow, I don’t follow.”
Her face changes, and something small breaks through the anger. Fear, maybe? Or confusion? Or it very well could be the start of belief, something too fragile to touch just yet. But then she walks back into the shed, knife in hand, shoulders high, photo hidden, and secrets still hers.
I stay in the rain for one more breath while my Alpha rages, my hands ache, and my mouth remembers her. I let it all burn, then I follow at a distance.
Far enough that she can leave.
Close enough that if the world tries to reach for her, it’ll have to go through me first.