NINETEEN
KAITO
I can still taste her.
Of course, I suspected.
Back when she was still just my Stranger, all sharp eyes and hidden scent and a voice roughened into something that didn’t fit. Back when she dragged me through pain, stitched me up, threatened me countless times, vanished before dawn, and made every single instinct I have turn its head.
I suspected she was a girl.
I definitely suspected she was an Omega.
But knowing is completely different.
Knowing means remembering her fist in my shirt, her knuckles pressed against my chest. It means remembering the bandana dragged under her chin, showing me her face for all of two seconds before her mouth was on mine with a rush of anger, fear, and a hunger that had become its very own language.
And knowing means there’s no safety net to catch her when she falls or a safe lie to hide behind.
But the taste of her lingers. Rain. Fear. Sweetness that cuts through failing blockers. The sharp scrape of panic. And the softer thing under it all that she would absolutely stab me for even noticing.
Dakota walks ahead of me through the indoor market with her knife held tightly in one hand and her shoulders set like she has the strength to hold the entire ruined world off through spite alone.
Hell, maybe she can. And that right there is part of the problem.
My Alpha doesn’t give a shit that she’s dangerous. He doesn’t care that she’s armed, furious, injured, bone-deep exhausted, and one misplaced word away from bolting into a city full of dead things and men worse than that.
It just knows she kissed me.
She kissed me.
Holy shit, she kissed me.
She grabbed my shirt with trembling fingers, dragged her bandana down, pulled me to her, and for a single, violent second, the world finally made sense in a way it hasn’t made sense since the first scream of a Biter tore through the city years ago.
But then she stopped, so I stopped. And now every single instinct I have is grating at my bones like a thing with claws and fangs.
Stay close. Shield her. Touch her.
Pull her back.
Keep her.
Claim.
I grind my jaw until pain bursts behind my teeth.
No.
The word rattles quietly inside me, because it has to. I mean, my instincts are loud enough to drown out anything weaker.
No.
She’s not something to keep. She isn’t a wound I can press my hand over until the bleeding finally stops. She’s not cargo, a rescued thing, or a frightened Omega waiting for an Alpha to make every decision for her.
She’s Dakota O’Reilly.
Or, at least, I have a feeling she might be.
The other three are still pretending not to know the name, even from the broken syllable the pilot managed before he passed out.
O’R.
It’s not much to most people, but it was enough to make Fletcher go still.
Enough to sharpen Xeon’s eyes.
Enough to make Ewan stop smiling.
Enough to drag my father’s voice out of a box I try not to peer into often.
Dr. Conrad O’Reilly.
I heard that name before I even understood what it meant. Back when my father was still Professor Kanai, back when his work was bond response, Alpha instinct, Omega stress, and all the neat and fancy academic language people used before the world proved there was nothing neat and fancy about it.
He moved us from Japan to the States for that work. For NOVAC research, he said. For opportunity, he said. For the future.
He was strict before that. But after? After, he became something harder. Quieter. A man who checked locks twice and stopped speaking when I walked into a room. A man who taught me restraint like it was survival, not manners.
O’R means something to compound Alphas. Because it’s the name of a man tied to NOVAC. Old research, maybe. Science buried deep under military silence and lab doors.
And Dakota reacted like the sound had reached across six years and put its hand around her throat.
So maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m only building a name out of a dying man’s fever and the look on his face, three soldiers’ silence, and my father’s ghosts. But something tells me I’m not.
Either way, she’s Dakota.
Kota.
She’s the girl with black painted nails and a knife hand quicker than most trained soldiers. She’s a girl who has survived six years alone and still apologizes to no one for being difficult to kill.
She kissed me, and then she told me it was just biology. I let her, because arguing would have made it about me, and that’s not what I’m about.
I follow a few steps behind her now, forcing space between us even though every single nerve in my body hates it.
The market around us is a maze of collapsed stalls, tarps sagging under rainwater, rusted shutters, and cracked tile smudged with mud.
Water pours through the broken skylights overhead in streams of silver, drumming against old metal counters and plastic crates, loud enough to hide smaller sounds.
Bad place to move through, though. Too many corners, too much cover, and too much scent washed loose by the rain.
Fletcher and Xeon carry the pilot between them both now.
The man hangs limp, boots dragging occasionally when his body loses what little strength it has left.
His breathing is wet and wrong, but he’s hanging in there.
Ewan takes the rear, headphones still hooked around his neck, head tilted as he listens to everything behind us.
I should be watching the market.
I’m not. I’m watching Dakota.
She limps when she thinks no one is watching.
Not badly, or enough to slow us in a way she’ll admit.
But her right knee keeps catching every few steps, and each time it does, her shoulders tighten.
Her injured arm is held too still against her side.
And she keeps flexing the fingers of that hand like the pain is scratching sharply at her nerves and she’s trying to make it stop.
She would literally rather bleed through her sleeve than ask for help. Hell, she’d probably rather bleed through someone else’s sleeve, too, if that someone had pissed her off enough.
A half-broken sign swings overhead, squeaking softly in the wind that cuts through the market.
It only steals my attention for the briefest moment before Dakota stops and lifts a fist. Everyone freezes, even Fletcher. She tilts her head, listening.
For a second, all I hear is rain. Then a scrape. It’s small, and it comes from the left.
Dakota points with two fingers toward a row of stalls covered in faded blue tarps. Fletcher lowers the pilot carefully against the side of a perfume stand and raises his rifle. Xeon moves silently to the other angle, and Ewan’s expression empties of humor.
Dakota doesn’t wait for anyone’s permission. She never does.
She steps forward, knife low, weight shifting around her bad knee like she’s been doing it for hours. Days. Weeks. Fuck me, maybe even years. The thought shoves something dark and helpless into my chest.
A Biter suddenly drops from behind the tarp, smaller than I expected. A woman once, maybe. Her hair is stuck to her skull, jaw split open, with rainwater and old blood glossed over her gray skin.
Dakota moves before I can. Knife under the chin. Up. Twist. Step aside before the body collapses. Clean, fast, and way too practiced.
The Biter hits the tile with a wet thud, and Dakota wipes her blade on the tarp before glancing at Fletcher. “Market’s not clear.”
Fletcher looks down at the body, then at her. “Noted.”
She pauses, as if she expected more argument, but he gives her none. It only makes her eyes narrow at him as if his cooperation offends her and her ancestors.
Ewan whispers from behind me, “She gets very upset when people are reasonable, huh?”
“Yup,” I answer.
Dakota turns only slightly. “I heard that.”
“I know,” Ewan assures, sounding a little too chipper. “That's why I said it with optimism.”
She only points the bloody knife at him and warns, “Keep being optimistic. See what happens.”
He presses his lips together, but the smile lingers in his eyes.
It should bother me, the way he smiles at her, but it doesn’t.
Not in the way I expected. My Alpha dislikes any attention on her, and that part is simple to explain.
It’s old biology, old violence. The part that sees another Alpha near an Omega and thinks he or she is a threat before it thinks it’s a person.
But I’ve seen Dakota’s face when too much attention forms a cage around her.
Ewan doesn’t cage her. He lets jokes fall at her feet like offerings she can kick away if she wants to. Xeon watches her pain without trying to own or use it. And Fletcher changes commands into information when he remembers she will bite through anything that even smells like control.
They’re learning. And I’m learning, too. Maybe a little slowly, maybe.
Her kiss still burns against my mouth, her taste lingering like it knows I’m begging for it to stay.
Dakota turns and keeps walking, and I let her.
That’s the first choice. Restraint over instinct.
Not following her would be impossible right now. Not with Vector in the district, not with the rain stripping her masking, and not with her injuries worsening under her stubborn silence. But following close enough to soothe the thing inside me would be for me, not for her.
So I keep the distance, and it costs me more than I thought it would.
We reach the staff stairwell at the back of the market, finding the door wedged partly open by a fallen shelf. Beyond it, the stairs climb into damp concrete darkness. Dakota crouches to assess the threshold, and her hair slips from under the back of her hat.
White-blonde. Long, even braided and tucked under layers. A pale flash against black tactical fabric and dark concrete. I’ve seen only a flash of it before, enough for me to consider it was a trick of the light, but something about seeing her hair clearly sucker-punches me in the chest.
My hand tightens around the hilt of my knife, and not because of her hair, but because of the way Xeon’s gaze moves to it. It’s only for a second, careful and controlled, then he looks away. He saw, but he doesn’t say anything.
Good.