2. Jinx
Chapter 2
Jinx
The cabin walls feel like they’re closing in, saturated with Theo’s pre-heat pheromones.
Every breath feels like inhaling liquid fire—dark vanilla transformed into something that claws at me, makes my alpha instincts snarl and rattle against my self-control. His scent floods my system like a designer drug I couldn’t fight if I wanted to—my cock hardening painfully against my zipper, my gums aching where my canines threaten to descend, ready to claim, to mark, to own. To fuck.
I can’t sit still. Can’t think straight. Can’t do anything but alternate between checking Finn’s oxygen levels and watching Ryker’s iron control fracture hour by fucking hour.
As I move, my shoulder deliberately brushes the doorframe leading to where Finn lies—an unconscious marking behavior that leaves my scent behind. I’ve been doing it for hours, creating an invisible barrier of alpha pheromones around our vulnerable beta. The cabin’s small space means Ryker and I have overlapping territories, our scent markers competing along windowsills and doorways. My hackles rise every time I cross into his claimed space.
“His temperature’s up again,” I report, pressing my palm to Finn’s forehead. Our beta’s skin burns beneath my touch, sweat-soaked and feverish. The virus is winning, destroying him from the inside out. “Over 102 and climbing.”
A rattling cough tears through Finn’s chest, his body convulsing with the effort before settling back into unnatural stillness. Each labored breath feels like a countdown timer we’re powerless to reset.
Ryker nods once, jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding—the sound of a dam about to break. He’s been stationed at the window for the past hour, rifle across his lap, watching the perimeter with predatory intensity. But even his legendary control is slipping—his scent carrying notes of cedar and steel overlaid with something sharp and desperate. The outline of his erection strains visibly against his pants, a testament to how Theo’s pheromones are dismantling us molecule by molecule.
I grab my discarded jacket, deliberately draping it over the back of Finn’s makeshift bed. The action isn’t conscious—pure alpha instinct driving me to saturate his space with my scent, to mark him as protected, as mine. Ryker’s eyes narrow at the gesture, his nostrils flaring as he detects my territorial claim.
“Anything on the monitors?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Nothing,” he responds, the single word clipped short, bitten off. “Quinn’s last update put them at thirty miles out. Two hours if they’re actively trying to avoid Sterling’s men.”
Two hours.
Finn might not have two hours.
The thought slithers through my mind, coiling like a venomous snake around my brainstem. I force it away, channeling the chaos building in my blood into productive movement—checking medical supplies, securing the perimeter, anything to keep my hands busy and away from my dick, which hasn’t softened in the last three hours.
I make another circuit of the cabin, my path a precise pattern that any alpha would recognize—establishing boundaries, claiming territory. My hands brush doorframes, windowsills, the back of chairs—leaving invisible scent markers from the glands at my wrists. I pause at each potential entry point, shoulders broadening instinctively as I spread my scent, creating a pheromone warning system that screams mine, protected, pack to any intruder.
When I return from another perimeter check, the atmosphere in the cabin has somehow grown even heavier—a pressure system about to birth a hurricane. Theo stands in the makeshift medical corner, fingers trembling as he digs through his emergency kit. His movements are jerky, uncoordinated—nothing like his usual fluid grace. His skin gleams with a thin sheen of sweat, the back of his shirt clinging to the dip of his spine like a second skin. Between his thighs, a telling dampness darkens his pants—his body producing slick in preparation for what’s coming, the scent of it making my mouth flood with saliva.
“Found it,” he announces, holding up a small white pill like it’s salvation incarnate.
Ryker’s head snaps up, nostrils flaring. “Don’t.”
“One left,” Theo continues as if Ryker hasn’t spoken, as if he doesn’t feel the alpha command filling the space between them. “Should buy us three more hours.”
“Your body can’t take any more suppressants,” Ryker growls, stepping away from the window to stride across the room. The movement reminds me of a predator—all coiled strength and lethal intention. “You’ve been overmedicating for weeks.”
As Ryker moves, he crosses into the space I’ve been marking—the area around Finn’s bed that my alpha instincts have designated as my territory. The invasion sends a wave of primal aggression coursing through my system, my spine straightening as I unconsciously broaden my stance, exposing the scent glands along my neck in a challenge display that’s older than civilization.
“My body, my choice.” Theo’s voice carries that dangerous edge—the one that reminds us all that our artistic omega is anything but fragile. In this moment, he’s all steel and spine, the kind of omega that medieval alphas probably wrote terrified warnings about. “We wait for them.”
They face off like opposing storms, alpha command colliding with omega defiance until the air between them practically sizzles against my skin. My feet move without permission, dragging me into their magnetic field where common sense has no fucking business existing. Logic screams to stay clear, but my body has other ideas—cock hardening painfully, pulse hammering in my temples, in my throat, in the base of my spine where the beast lives. Every alpha instinct I own howls for me to either challenge Ryker or submit, to claim Theo or protect him. There’s no middle ground in this chemical warfare they’re waging, just the savage pull of biology that makes thinking a luxury I can’t afford.
My control slips—just for a second—but it’s enough. A growl tears from my throat, primal and challenging, my body vibrating with the need to assert dominance. Ryker’s head snaps toward me, his alpha presence expanding to fill the room like a physical force. For a split second, we’re not packmates but rivals, two alphas responding to evolutionary programming older than civilization itself. My hand automatically moves to the nearest surface—the wall beside me—dragging my wrist along it in a blatant scent-marking gesture that screams challenge.
Finn’s monitor beeps—a shrill warning cutting through the tension. The sound yanks me back from the edge, pulling me away from the chaos threatening to consume me. I shake my head, forcing the feral urge back into its cage.
“Theo—” Ryker starts, but our omega cuts him off.
“Cayenne is bringing Finn’s cure,” Theo says, each word precise and carefully controlled, though I can see the effort it takes—the fine tremor in his hands, the sweat beading along his hairline. “If I go into full heat now, we lose focus. Lose efficiency. Risk everything.”
I watch Ryker’s control slip further—the muscle in his jaw jumping like it’s trying to escape his face, his pupils dilating until only a thin ring of gray remains. A drop of sweat traces the column of his throat, disappearing beneath his collar, and I find myself tracking it with predatory focus. “And if your heart stops because you’ve pushed your system past breaking point? What then?”
Theo swallows the pill before either of us can stop him, chin lifting in defiance. “Then you restart it.”
Something dangerous flashes across Ryker’s face—something ancient and alpha that makes my own instincts rise in response. For a moment, I think he might actually grab Theo, force him to expel the suppressant somehow. Instead, he turns and slams his fist into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, shards of drywall dusting the floor like snow.
“Reckless,” he spits out. “All of you. Fucking reckless.”
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me—rough and slightly unhinged, the sound of someone balancing on the knife-edge of sanity. “Says the alpha who jumped out of a plane without checking his parachute.”
“That was calculated risk,” Ryker snaps.
“So is this,” Theo counters, but his voice wavers. He sways slightly, and I move without thinking, closing the distance in seconds, catching him before his knees buckle.
Fucking foolish omega.
His skin burns against mine, fever-hot and damp with sweat that tastes like sin when I can’t stop myself from licking a stripe up his neck. Up close, his scent is overwhelming—dark vanilla and midnight jasmine intensified to intoxication despite the suppressant. My body responds like it’s been electrocuted. My cock jerks hard enough to hurt, pre-come dampening my boxers as my knot begins to swell at the base—an omega in heat and I have zero hope of suppressing what happens next.
“It’s not working,” I murmur, helping him to the couch, trying not to groan when he collapses against me. “The suppressant. Your body’s fighting it now.”
“It has to work,” Theo insists, but his eyes are already glazing, pupils expanding until only a thin ring of dark brown remains, like an eclipse swallowing the sun. “Just need to... focus through it.”
Across the room, Finn’s breathing hitches, then resumes its labored rhythm. The sound yanks us all back to reality—the reminder of why we’re fighting biology so desperately, why Theo’s been poisoning himself with suppressants for days.
“Let me help,” I offer, my hand still on Theo’s neck, feeling his pulse race beneath my fingers like a trapped hummingbird. “Let us help.”
Theo’s eyes meet mine, then shift to Ryker who stands frozen by the damaged wall, tension vibrating from him in nearly visible waves. “If I let this happen,” he whispers, “if I go into full heat without her?—”
“We still wait for her,” Ryker finishes, understanding immediately. “This doesn’t change the plan. Just how we manage until they arrive.”
I watch something shift in Theo’s expression—his heat fighting against his loyalty to the pack in every line of his beautiful face. His hand finds mine, squeezing with surprising strength.
“Promise me,” he demands, “promise me we still bring her home. That this doesn’t become another way to exclude her.”
The accusation hits Ryker like a physical blow—I can actually see him flinch, the impact of words sharper than any bullet. We all know what Theo’s referring to—Ryker’s initial reluctance to include Cayenne in Theo’s heats, his struggle to make room in our established dynamic.
“I promise,” Ryker says, the words emerging rough but sincere. “We bring her home. To all of us.”
Theo nods once, decision made. Then his body convulses as another wave of heat symptoms crashes through him. The sound he makes—half keen, half growl—shatters what remains of my control like a wrecking ball through glass. The scent of his slick fills the air, honey-sweet and maddening, making my mouth water with the need to taste him, to bury my face between his thighs and drink down every drop of his desire.
“Jinx,” Ryker’s voice carries command even now. “Monitor Finn. Ten-minute rotations. We work in shifts.”
I nod automatically, but the plan dissolves before it even begins. Theo’s body arches off the couch, a whimper escaping him that ignites something primal in both Ryker and me—a sound of need so pure it bypasses the brain entirely and speaks directly to instinct. The scent of his heat blooms fully—no longer just dark vanilla and jasmine but something richer, more intoxicating, laced with notes of desire and need that make my mouth water and my knot throb.
“Fuck the shifts,” I growl, already dropping to my knees beside the couch. My hands find Theo’s burning skin beneath his shirt, his flesh scorching against my palms like I’m touching living flame. “He needs us. Both of us. Now.”
Ryker hesitates for only a heartbeat—one last stand of control against the tidal wave of pheromones—before his discipline finally fractures. He’s across the room in seconds, kneeling opposite me, his hands joining mine on Theo’s trembling body.
“Keep him in sight,” Ryker orders, nodding toward Finn. His voice is wrecked, barely recognizable through the alpha rumble vibrating his chest. “We watch him. Together.”
I position myself so Finn remains in my line of vision as I claim Theo’s mouth. He tastes like desperation and sweetness, like addiction distilled into human form. His lips part on a moan that I swallow hungrily, greedy for every sound. Beneath me, his body burns with heat-fever, skin flushed and slick with sweat that tastes like sin when I trace my tongue along his collarbone, salt and spice and something that belongs only to him—that essence of artistic chaos wrapped in precision.
“More,” Theo gasps, his fingers clawing at my shirt like he’s trying to tear his way through to skin. “Need... everything off.”
I strip my shirt off, tossing it aside as Ryker works Theo’s pants down his legs. The scent that fills the room nearly brings me to my knees—pure omega slick, so thick and rich I can almost taste it on the air. Theo’s entrance glistens, pink and swollen, already preparing for what’s to come.
“Look at you,” Ryker murmurs, his voice reverent as he spreads Theo’s thighs wider. “So beautiful for us.”
My hand joins Ryker’s between Theo’s legs, fingers sliding through the slickness coating his inner thighs. I trace the path of a droplet as it runs down the curve of his ass, collecting it on my fingertip before bringing it to my lips. The taste hits me like a drug—honey and spice and that essence that’s purely Theo, making my knot throb painfully at the base of my cock.
“Need more,” Theo whimpers, hips lifting in silent plea. “Please, Jinx.”
“So wet,” I groan, working my fingers deeper, feeling the slick coating my knuckles, dripping down my wrist. “So fucking perfect.”
I press one finger against his entrance, feeling the muscle give way easily. His body welcomes the intrusion, pulling me deeper with greedy pulses. I add a second finger, scissoring them gently to stretch him, though his heat-ready body barely needs the preparation.
“So responsive,” Ryker praises, leaning down to capture one of Theo’s nipples between his teeth. The omega arches with a cry, his cock leaking pre-come onto his stomach as Ryker’s tongue laves the sensitized bud.
I work my fingers deeper, curling them to find that spot inside that makes Theo see stars. When I find it, his whole body jerks, a strangled cry escaping his throat.
“There,” I growl, massaging the spot with firm pressure. “Right there, piccolo.”
“Please,” Theo gasps, fucking himself back on my fingers, taking them deeper with each desperate movement. “Need your knot, Jinx. Need to feel you split me open.”
I oblige, adding a third finger, feeling his body stretch to accommodate the intrusion. Slick gushes around my hand, coating my fingers and palm, running down my wrist in rivulets of omega desire. I withdraw my fingers, bringing them to my mouth to taste his sweetness. The flavor explodes across my tongue—honey and spice threaded with Theo’s singular essence that makes my knot throb painfully, demanding to be buried inside him.
Ryker moves between Theo’s legs, bending to taste the slick directly from the source. His tongue replaces my fingers, lapping at Theo’s entrance with precise strokes that have our omega thrashing beneath him.
“Alpha!” Theo cries, hands fisting in Ryker’s hair. “Oh god, your tongue?—”
I take advantage of the moment to strip off my remaining clothes, my cock springing free, angry red and leaking. My knot aches painfully, desperate to slide into his tight heat and lock inside of him.
Ryker lifts his head, lips and chin glistening with slick. “He’s ready,” he confirms, voice wrecked with desire. “Taste him, Jinx. Then give him what he needs.”
I bend to where Ryker indicates, running my tongue along Theo’s entrance, drinking directly from the source. The flavor explodes across my tongue, more intense than the sample I took earlier. I lap at him greedily, tongue dipping inside to taste his inner walls, to feel them flutter against the intrusion.
It’s hot. It’s dirty and I want more.
I want all of him.
Unable to wait any longer, I hover over him, my own body pulsating with need and desire.
I position myself between his spread thighs, the head of my cock nudging against his slick entrance. With one hard thrust, I bury myself to the hilt, the tight heat of his body stealing the breath from my lungs and replacing it with pure sensation.
“Fuck,” I groan, the sensation nearly undoing me—tight heat and slick perfection closing around me, squeezing my length with rhythmic pulses that threaten to end this before it truly begins. “So tight, piccolo. So perfect around my cock.”
Ryker watches with hunger in his eyes, his hand wrapped around Theo’s throat in that way that makes our omega’s eyes roll back and his body clench tighter around me. His other hand works his own length, pre-come glistening at the tip as he strokes himself in time with my thrusts.
“Look at me,” Ryker commands, and both Theo and I obey instantly, pulled by the gravitational force of alpha authority. “Stay with us.”
I can’t look away from them—Ryker’s controlled power, Theo’s artistic surrender. Together they’re a masterpiece I could watch forever, beauty in destruction, art in abandonment. Ryker’s free hand finds my shoulder, grip bruising as he steadies me, grounds me, reminds me of the pack bond thrumming between us like a living current.
My pace increases, each thrust driving deeper, harder. I can feel my knot beginning to catch on Theo’s rim, the swelling base of my cock threatening to lock us together in biology’s most intimate bond. My omega’s legs wrap around my waist, heels digging into my lower back to pull me deeper, demanding everything I have to give.
“Faster,” Theo demands, his voice breaking around the edges, fracturing into something primitive and needy. “Harder. Need more. Need your knot, Jinx. Need to feel you fill me.”
“We know what you need,” Ryker soothes, his hand moving from Theo’s throat to wrap around the omega’s leaking cock, working him in time with my increasingly erratic thrusts. “We’ve got you.”
The room is thick with us—alpha and omega, rut and heat, sweat and scent. The bond crackles between us, stretched tight with pleasure. Every thrust draws out a cry from Theo, wet and wanting, his body taking everything I give and begging for more. Our sounds mix—moans, gasps, the slap of skin—a rhythm as old as instinct.
But underneath it all, there’s something else. Faint. Sharp. Citrus and ozone. Her scent. A ghost in the room, haunting the space between each heartbeat. Our missing beta.
The pack bond connecting me to Cayenne pulses suddenly—sharp and electric, like touching a live wire. Through it comes a flash of her emotions—determination, adrenaline, fear. Not a general feeling but something specific, something immediate. Someone’s found her.
Even lost in pleasure, I find my gaze drifting to Finn’s unconscious form. His chest rises and falls in shallow rhythm, each breath a reminder of why we’re here, why we need to hold together until our pack is complete again.
Theo follows my gaze, understanding darkening his heat-glazed eyes. “They’ll make it,” he gasps, his body tightening around me as another wave of pleasure crashes through him. “They’ll both come home to us.”
“Yes,” Ryker affirms, the single word carrying the weight of an oath. His hand slides from my shoulder to the back of my neck, grip firm and grounding. “All of us. Together.”
My knot swells fully, catching on Theo’s rim with each thrust, the drag of it against his sensitive flesh making him cry out in mingled pleasure-pain. With a final, brutal drive forward, I push past the resistance, locking us together as my orgasm tears through me like a lightning strike. My cock pulses inside him, pumping him full of come as my knot ensures not a drop escapes. The need to breed, to claim, to fill him completely overwhelms me even though we both know conception is impossible.
“Yes,” Theo keens, his back arching off the couch. “Fill me, alpha. So full.”
Ryker works him faster, his hand a blur on Theo’s cock while his other hand continues stroking his own length, the power in his shoulders and arms rippling beneath tanned skin. “Come for us,” he commands, his voice carrying that perfect alpha timbre that brooks no argument. “Now.”
We break together, three bodies finding release in cascading rhythm. Theo’s orgasm triggers the final pulse of my knot, locking us more firmly together as his inner walls milk every last drop from me, his body designed to take everything an alpha can give. The pleasure rips through me with enough force to make my vision blur, my consciousness narrowing to the points where we connect—my cock locked inside Theo’s body, my shoulder under Ryker’s grip, the pack bonds stretching between us and reaching toward our missing pieces.
Ryker comes last, ropes of white painting Theo’s chest and neck in stark contrast to his olive skin. He marks our omega with his scent, his essence, in the most primal way possible—a visual claim that speaks to something ancient in all of us.
But he doesn’t stop there. As my ruts slow, Ryker massages his cum into Theo’s chest. His nails sliding down, creating little rivulets that’s insanely arousing.
Theo’s cock squirts more cum. During a full heat he will stay hard for days. But as he comes again, his cock softens slightly, telling us he will be good for a little while.
My knot keeps us locked together, my cock still occasionally twitching inside him, releasing smaller pulses of come as his body continues to squeeze around me, demanding every drop. Ryker cleans us with gentle efficiency, wiping away the evidence of our passion with tender care that belies his usual military precision.
Then as I lay locked inside of Theo, Ryker checks Finn’s vitals. “Unchanged,” he mutters.
I’m relieved to find them unchanged—not better, but not worse either. Stable for now.
“His fever’s holding,” Ryker reports, brushing damp hair from Finn’s forehead. “Respiration steady.”
Theo’s eyes are clearer now, the heat-haze temporarily lifted by satisfaction, though I know it won’t last long. My knot will go down, and the cycle will begin again—the relentless drive of biology demanding more until his heat is fully satisfied. “How much time?”
Ryker checks his watch. “Quinn’s last estimate put them at ninety minutes out.”
“Too long,” I mutter, the chaos in my blood already stirring again, the beast not satisfied despite release. “If Alexander’s found them?—”
“She’ll make it,” Theo interrupts with omega certainty. “She’s survived worse than Alexander.”
I want to believe him, but the pack bond connecting me to Cayenne pulses with sudden urgency—like a warning light flashing red in the darkness. Something’s happening. Something that makes my alpha instincts roar to life despite post-satisfaction lethargy.
“Jinx?” Ryker’s voice sharpens, reading my sudden tension like a book he’s memorized.
“Something’s wrong,” I manage, focusing on that thin thread of connection. “Cayenne—she’s in trouble.”
The bond stretches between us, thinner than it should be but still intact. Through it, I feel her—adrenaline and determination and something that tastes like iron and fear.
“How far?” Ryker asks, already reaching for his gear, his body shifting seamlessly from lover to soldier.
I close my eyes, focusing on the fragile connection. It buzzes against my consciousness with an electric signature that only Cayenne has—like code translating directly into my bloodstream. “Close. Closer than Quinn’s last report indicated. Fifteen miles, maybe less.”
“Then we meet them halfway,” Ryker decides, the alpha command in his voice brooking no argument. “You stay with Theo and Finn. I’ll bring her home.”
I want to protest—the chaos in my blood demands action, movement, violence on behalf of our missing beta. But the strategist in me recognizes the logic. Someone needs to protect our vulnerable packmates here. Someone needs to create a safe place for her to return to.
“Bring her back,” I say instead, the words carrying all the feral protectiveness I can’t physically express. “Whatever it takes.”
As Ryker disappears into the night, I settle deeper into guard position, one hand on Theo’s cooling skin, eyes fixed on Finn’s labored breathing. My knot still ties me to our omega, a physical manifestation of the bonds that hold our pack together even when we’re apart. The chaos in my blood transforms into perfect clarity of purpose—I will keep them safe until our pack is complete again.
Because that’s the truth Roman Sterling never understood about the psycho squad. We’re not just dangerous together. We’re lethal when separated, then reunited with purpose.
And our purpose now is crystal clear: bring our beta home, heal our beta’s body, and make Roman Sterling regret the day he ever touched what belongs to Pack Locke.