20. Cross
Chapter twenty
Phantom comes back from showing Delilah her room, his face pinched into lines of worry.
“She’s just going to sleep,” he mutters, moving toward the cabinets to find something to eat.
I nod, frowning. I’m still haunted by the vision of the little omega we rescued standing in the middle of the room, the first time I’d seen her in proper lighting since we left the facility.
I get why Joker calls her a wisp now; she’s barely more than skin and bones, her cheeks hollow, long dark hair limp and straight around her pale face.
Her dark grey eyes with their deep bruise-like circles below them looked so scared.
Seeing her like that tugged on something in my chest; a protective instinct I haven’t felt in years.
Phantom sighs as he sits in one of the chairs at the table, cracking a can of soda and tearing into a bag of chips. He looks up at me with a serious frown.
“She’s worse off than I thought,” he says, speaking my thoughts into the air.
I nod. “I’ll have to get her to sit down for a full medical exam and take another look at her file to figure out how bad it is, but yeah. She’s…”
I trail off with a low whistle, but Phantom nods his agreement.
Neither of us speak for a long moment, each lost in our own thoughts.
I can’t imagine what that poor girl had to endure in that facility, but from what I remember, the list of meds she was on wasn’t short.
It’s going to be tough to get what she needs, if it’s even going to be possible.
But I don’t want her going into withdrawal from any of the shit they had her on.
I’ve got a few things here, but I’ll have to double check what exactly and reach out to my contact for the rest.
A few moments of silence later, Siren comes back into the house, letting the door slam behind them.
“Hey, keep it down. Delilah’s trying to sleep,” Phantom chides, firm but not unkind.
Siren snorts, pulling open the fridge. “So?” they throw over their shoulder.
“What’s your problem, Si?” Phantom snaps, hackles rising.
Siren stands straight, pulling a tub of cheesecake filling from the depths and hopping up onto the counter, leveling an unamused look at both of us.
“My problem is I don’t like liabilities. And that panic attack on stick legs? That’s a fucking liability,” Siren says, tone suggesting we’re being the weird ones in this scenario.
“She is a person with a lot of baggage. Just like the rest of us,” I reply, trying to keep this from escalating.
Siren rolls their eyes and I bristle. I’ll let a lot of shit slide, but this is starting to border on open hostility.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Joker and Bones choose this moment to reappear, both looking freshly fucked. Bones isn’t wearing his mask, showing off the knife-sharp jawline he hides from the world.
“Where’s my little wisp?” Joker asks, cutting right to the chase.
“Sleeping, Jokes. Let her be,” Phantom says with a heavy sigh.
Joker looks around confused, as if he expects to see Delilah curled up somewhere in the room. “Where? You didn’t—Phantom, that’s not a room. That’s storage.”
“Where else was I going to put her? We aren’t exactly flush with free space,” Phantom fires back.
“She’s going to sleep in my nest,” Joker says, tone making it clear that’s not a suggestion, but a statement of facts.
Bones snarls and whips his head to glare at our omega. Not that it has any effect on Joker.
“That’s our nest,” he says simply, words vibrating slightly with his growl.
Joker rolls his eyes and turns to go back down the hallway anyway. But then Bones’s hand strikes out, grabbing Joker by the back of the neck and dragging him to the dining room table and shoving him down into a chair. He sits in his usual seat, looking around for the rest of us to join him.
Something in my chest tightens as I sit on his left, across from Joker and beside Siren. Phantom doesn’t move, reclining back slightly to look at our prime alpha with a serious frown.
“As your prime alpha, I decide how things are handled in this pack. Joker’s instincts might want her around, but that doesn’t make her part of this pack,” Bones starts, looking at everyone before leveling a warning look at Joker.
“My instincts—”
“Are you really listening to your instincts? Or is your dick just itching for omega pussy?” Siren speaks over Joker, their words painted with false sincerity.
Joker flinches back but doesn’t speak. Siren has a point, even if I don’t like it.
Joker is impulsive on a good day, but this is out of character, even for him.
And I certainly don’t like the way they’re speaking to Joker, and neither does Phantom, judging by the growl that rumbles out of his chest.
“Watch yourself, Rin,” he says, low and dangerous.
“Both of you, knock it off,” Bones snaps, a little louder than before.
Phantom and Siren continue to glare at each other, but they at least keep their mouths shut. I can smell my calming pheromones filling the air, cherrywood and soft velvet, though it seems the only person even remotely affected is Joker, who slumps in his chair.
“We’re not going to send her away, but we don’t have any reason to include her in our work. She can live here, but it’s not our job to make her life easier,” Bones says, tone full of finality.
Joker looks up at our prime alpha with his jaw hanging open in angry disbelief.
“Are you taking the fucking piss?” he asks, his accent coming out stronger than before. “She needs our help.”
“I don’t care. No one touches her, no one gives her anything. She has to earn her keep here, the same as all of us,” Bones says, louder still.
“So what? She’s got to go ‘round with those fugly ass sweats from the facility? Not bathe? Not eat? Because I don’t think you get it. She has nothing to her name,” Joker counters heatedly.
Bones growls, his gold eyes flashing at the challenge in Joker’s voice. I clear my throat slightly, shifting in my seat. He turns his amber gaze on me, but I see the warning.
“I think we can be a little less…cruel about this. I agree that we shouldn’t treat her like pack, because she’s not. But we should also try to treat her like a human being, at the minimum,” I say, treading the line of neutrality very carefully.
Because despite what might be coming out of my mouth, I tend to agree with Joker on this.
After everything Delilah has been through, ostracizing her will ultimately do more harm than good.
If our goal is to get her to a place where she can go her own way, then we should focus on helping her heal and relearn how to be an omega, not further punishing her for simply existing in a place she never chose to be.
“She can’t be trusted. We know nothing about her,” Siren interjects.
“You literally have her entire file from the facility. I’ve seen it. I don’t know what your fucking problem with her is, but it needs to stop,” Phantom says, his voice rising.
“My problem? I don’t have a problem,” Siren says sarcastically.
“You’ve been a raging bitch to Delilah since the moment you laid eyes on her. She’s done nothing to you!”
“Not that you know of!”
“What is that—”
“Enough!” Bones roars, cutting off the argument before it escalates any further.
Siren and Phantom glare at each other, a silent stand off that fills the room with the scents of rust and smoke. I try to push out more of my own calming scent, but it seems to have very little effect.
“She stays. But no one touches her. Get her the bare minimum, but no one is allowed to treat her like anything except the unwelcome guest that she is. And if you have a problem following those orders, we will have a much less pleasant conversation about it.”
Bones’s voice resonates with his bark, the compulsion to obey falling over me despite only being a beta.
Poor Joker visibly sinks in his chair, all the fight leaving him.
Siren’s shoulders drop, their face relaxing slightly, but the fire in their eyes doesn’t dim in the slightest. Phantom appears to be the least affected, though that doesn’t surprise me. He’s second in command for a reason.
“Rest up, team. We debrief in a few hours.”
Bones stands up and stomps down the hallway, leaving the rest of us to sit in silence for several long heartbeats, waiting for the door to his room to close.
When it does, Siren stands so suddenly that their chair falls backwards, but Siren is halfway across the room before it even hits the floor.
Joker isn’t far behind, heading back to his nest, shoulders slumped and head bowed.
When Phantom and I are alone again, we share an almost identical sigh of frustration.
“What’re we gonna do, Con?” I ask, rubbing my face.
“I don’t know, Silas. I don’t know. But I do know that I won’t be able to sit around and watch Mav and Rin act like they did today for very long.”
With that, he pushes up from the table and walks off, back down the hallway toward his room. I linger long enough to hear his door close before getting up and cleaning up the remnants of the snacks. Exhaustion tugs at my eyes, but I know I won’t be able to sleep. Not until I check in on her.
My footsteps are silent as I make my way to the end of the hall, any creaks covered by the white noise machine blaring from Siren’s room.
I crack the door quietly to the storage room, grateful that the hinges glide open silently this time.
The strip of light coming from the hallway lands perfectly across Delilah’s sleeping form, and my shoulders relax slightly.
At least someone was decent enough to give her a blanket.
I step into the room, walking carefully until I’m close enough to adjust the edges of the blanket until all of Delilah’s curled form is covered and cozy.
I let out a silent sigh, shaking my head. When she’s asleep and all the trouble she carries isn’t pulling her features down, it’s easy to see what Joker sees. But I pull myself away before I get lost staring at her.
Once I’ve closed the door to my room, I rub my face with one hand. Yeah, it’s going to be tough following orders this time.