FIFTY
XEON
Dakota sleeps for sixteen hours after the courtyard.
Not peacefully, and not fully, but deeply enough that Mercer finally stops hovering by the fourth hour and Ellis stops threatening to stick anyone who breathes too loudly with a needle by the sixth.
According to Ewan, this is considered progress.
According to Ellis, progress is Dakota remaining unconscious long enough for fluids, wound cleaning, stitches, anti-inflammatory, temperature checks, and one full bowl of broth someone manages to spoon into her when she wakes long enough to complain that “soup isn’t real food unless there’s bread involved. ”
Then she passes out again.
Maine doesn’t leave her side, not even once.
He sleeps in the chair right next to her bed with one hand curled tightly around the edge of her blanket, like the fabric itself might run away with her if he loosens his grip even just a little.
Fletcher stands by the door for hours before Ellis tells him he’s “too big to brood in a medical room with proper efficiency” and sends him to shower.
He only obeys because Dakota, half-asleep and half-dead to the world, lifts one finger and points vaguely toward the hallway.
“You reek,” she whispers.
Fletcher goes with a twitching lip and a shake of his head.
Kaito stays quiet near the window, still and watchful. He only moves when Dakota’s breathing changes, when pain creases her face, when her fingers twitch toward the knife Ellis confiscated and placed very deliberately on the tray within her sight but out of immediate stabbing range.
Ewan sits on the floor with his cracked headphones in his lap, doing his best to fix them with wire, tape, stubbornness, and several insults muttered in Welsh.
I stay right beside the bed. Not touching unless Dakota reaches first but not moving far enough that she has to look for me.
At some point, just after dawn, she opens her eyes. Pale hazel dulled with pain, but still hers.
She looks at me.
“Still here?” she asks with a hushed voice still riddled with pain and exhaustion.
“Still here,” I tell her.
Her gaze drifts over my face, slow and heavy. “Good.”
Then she falls asleep again.
One word and it sits under my ribs all day.
By evening, she’s awake enough to eat toast, argue with Ellis about bland food while spouting off all the reasons why it should be illegal before Ellis walks away from her mid-list, and threaten Mercer with a pillow when he mentions another blood draw.
“You already got one vial from me, man. What more do you want, you goddamn vampire?” she says, voice rough.
Mercer lifts both hands. “I wasn’t even asking.”
“You thought it so loudly that I heard it. Damn leech,” she counters, though there’s no bite in her words.
Mercer’s lips twitch. “I assure you, my thoughts were medically appropriate.”
Ellis snorts from the counter. “His thoughts are literally just paperwork with eyebrows.”
Dakota points weakly at her. “Wall Ghoul gets it. She just does.”
Ellis looks almost pleased.
Almost.
The next morning, Dakota stands long enough to wash Vector from her skin. No one helps until she asks and it takes almost an hour.
Kaito waits outside the washroom door. Fletcher waits at the end of the hallway.
Ewan sits against the opposite wall, headphones around his neck and one hand drumming a silent rhythm against his knee.
Maine paces until Dakota opens the door and tells him he’s making the floor nervous and to sit the fuck down.
When she comes out, her hair is wet and loose down her back, white-blonde strands darkened by water.
The bruises around her wrists still don’t look too pretty, and neither do the marks around her throat.
The cut near her brow has been cleaned, her knee and arm have been wrapped, and there’s finally some color in her face again. Not much, but it’s more than yesterday.
She still looks tired. And furious. And beautifully alive.
She looks at all of us, and then says, “If anyone even considers telling me I look better, I’ll bite you. Oh, will I bite you.”
Ewan raises a finger from where he sits on the floor. “I feel like it’s worth noting that some of us might not find that as discouraging as you’d think.”
Dakota stares at him.
He lowers the finger. “Right. Read the room. Got it. That’s on me.”
I almost smile.
Then her eyes find mine and something changes. Not loudly, though. Dakota rarely lets the important things announce themselves. They just show up under the cloak of jokes and sarcasm. Behind gritted teeth. Inside pauses sharp enough to cut and draw blood.
She looks away first, but her eyes don’t go far.
That night, she fully refuses the medical room. Ellis only allows it after a frighteningly specific list of conditions involving hydration, stitches, pulse checks, and no “heroic bullshit.” Dakota agrees to everything except the last one, because apparently she loves angering the red-haired medic.
So we take her to the room that has become ours without anyone really naming it.
A storage room once, maybe. Then temporary quarters. Now a nest built from stolen blankets, spare mattresses, patched curtains, weapons within reach, and the strange softness of people who have survived too much and still decide to sleep next to each other.
Dakota just stands in the doorway.
The room is warm from the small heater Kaito managed to fix. Fletcher’s arranged the mattresses against the wall to keep weight off her knee. Ewan’s headphones rest near the radio now, one cracked side newly taped. Maine’s hat is folded on the pillow waiting for her.
She sees that and her throat moves with a harsh swallow.
No one speaks.
Then Maine kisses the side of her head and leaves first, because this isn’t his room tonight.
Not because he doesn’t want to stay. I’m actually convinced he’d live as her shadow if he knew it wouldn’t result in her stabbing him.
Instead, he understands that wanting and belonging are not the same thing as owning.
He looks at me as he passes and there’s a warning in his eyes that doesn’t go missed. And neither does the trust. For some reason, the warning is slightly easier to accept. The trust almost breaks something in me.
When the door shuts behind him, the room goes quiet.
Dakota stares at the bed, and then at the four of us.
Ewan sits on the edge of the mattress, careful and bright-eyed, fear hidden under a grin. Fletcher leans near the wall, arms folded and taking up space in the way a shield would. Kaito stands next to the table, composed except for the way his hand keeps flexing and then stilling.
I stay by the door. I don’t mean to, not really. It’s just where my body stops. But of course, Dakota sees it.
“You always do that,” she says.
I look at her and ask, “What?”
“Stand near the exit but pretend it’s for my benefit,” she says bluntly.
Ewan goes still.
Kaito’s eyes lift.
Fletcher’s jaw tightens.
I don’t answer, because she’s right.
Dakota crosses the room slowly. Not gracefully, because she’s still wounded and her knee isn’t healed enough to grant her gracefulness.
Her balance is poor at best, but her body is healing and still angry with her for using it like a weapon.
Still, she crosses the floor until she stands in front of me, close but not touching.
Her scent is returning under the antiseptic and clean soap, wild honey and rain I remember all too well, the greenhouse coming back in flashes through my mind. It’s faint, but it’s enough.
My hands curl at my sides and I say, “I’ve never asked you to let me in.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I know that too.” Her eyes search mine, and this time she doesn’t look away. “And that’s the problem.”
My breath stills in my chest and I watch her swallow.
“I thought the missing bond was freedom,” she says quietly. “One less thread. One less claim. One part of me still untouched by biology.”
The others stay quiet. Not absent, just there listening silently. They make space around her words.
Dakota’s hand lifts, then stops before it reaches me. Then she whispers, “It doesn’t feel like freedom anymore. I don’t think it ever really did. It feels like I left you outside because I was scared.”
Something splits open in my chest, slow and painful.
“You didn’t leave me anywhere,” I tell her softly.
“No?” she pushes.
“No.”
“I did,” she insists, right before her fingers touch my shirt lightly.
Just the fabric, but I feel it everywhere.
“I was scared that belonging would turn into another cage. I was scared if I let all of you in, I’d disappear under it all.
But you were there when there wasn’t even a bond. You found me anyway.”
My throat tightens and every word I’ve kept bottled pushes against my teeth. I don’t say any of them. Only her name comes out. “Dakota.”
She moves closer before she quietly confesses, “I don’t want you outside.”
The room suddenly loses air, and then it loses more when her hand slides up my chest and stops over my heart. It’s thundering under her palm, beating too loud and fast, not calm at all.
“Bite me, Xeon,” she says, and I’m sure she feels my heart stop before it beats even faster. “Not because I need the bond. But because I want yours.”
Behind her, Ewan’s breath catches.
Fletcher closes his eyes for a second.
Kaito looks at me and gives the smallest nod.
Space. Permission. Pack.
My hand rises to Dakota’s face but I stop before touching.
She leans into my palm and makes the choice herself.
Her skin is warm and soft, olive tone decorated with pale patches that look like a map to every hidden part of her, and I brush my thumb across her cheek.
Her eyes don’t leave mine, not even for a second.
“You’re sure?” I ask.
She gives me a crooked look that sends a bolt of something through my body. “You’ve really picked now to become difficult? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth twitches. “Good.”