FORTY-THREE
DAKOTA
The conference room door closes behind me, and I immediately hate the hallway for still existing.
Because it fucking shouldn’t. I mean, after sitting in a room like that, the world should have the decency to at least pause or something.
Hold time still. Maybe collapse a little if it’s feeling generous.
Maybe let the stupid, annoying fluorescent lights flicker dramatically so everyone knows something shitty just crawled right under my skin and burrowed into my bones all comfy and at home.
Instead, Haven Ridge has the nerve to keep moving. Boots continue to scrape against concrete. Radios crackle with static. Someone down the hall curses at a jammed supply cart.
Life just straight up goes about its business with a typical lack of manners as if my brain isn’t aching and my world isn’t currently tilting on its axis.
What. The. Fuck.
I, however, just stand here with Mercer’s words still stuck to me like very stubborn sticky tape. The kind that’s made of superglue.
Immune.
Stabilizing.
Blood.
Cure.
Potential.
And you know what the worst part is? It’s that none of those words are even gross on their own.
I can’t even call them ugly. Because hope isn’t ugly.
A cure certainly isn’t ugly. Seeing a future that isn’t so bleak as the one we were facing before isn’t ugly.
But if you put them in the wrong mouth, I know they’ll suddenly sound like locks sliding into place in a door I won’t be able to reopen.
Ewan still stands on my right, close enough that his smoke and clove bond keeps tickling against my ribs.
Kaito stands to my left, silent and hurting, the fresh pull of his bite sitting low in my chest. Maine’s walking ahead of us like he is looking for a reason to swing at someone.
Or kick a desk over all dramatically and shit.
Xeon is currently drifting at the rear, quiet as ever, his attention very much like a blade that has been laid flat against the air.
And Fletcher? That guy still stands behind me. He’s not crowding or touching. Just there in all of his cedar and leather glory. A warm wall I haven’t even asked to lean against. Yet.
“Medical,” Ellis says from somewhere beside Kaito.
“Now. All of you. I swear to God, if one more person bleeds on my floor and then tries to do this stupid emotionally processing shit instead of sitting down, I will start tranquilizing people based on height. You can emotionally process your shit then.”
“That feels strangely targeted,” Ewan mutters, eyeing the little redhead like she just told him he’s turning blue and round.
“It is targeted. There’s nothing strange about it.”
“I’m wounded.”
“You’re dramatic.”
He gasps with, what do you know, a dramatic slap of his hand against his chest. “I’m Welsh, actually.”
“That’s the same thing,” Ellis grouches.
Under different circumstances, I probably would have laughed at that.
Or done something close enough to a laugh that it would count.
Maybe a puff of air out of my nose or something.
But right now, all I can manage is a stare at the opposite wall while I do my very best to ignore the way my skin feels borrowed.
Like I’m just looking after it for the time being, until whatever lives inside me is ready to wear it like some fancy fur coat.
Fletcher moves closer. It’s not by much, just enough that his scent breaks through the haunted room still living in my head. Then he says, “You need air.”
It’s not a question, but it certainly isn’t an order either. That’s a little fact I hold carefully in both hands, scared it might shatter if I move it wrong.
I turn my head toward him and ask, “I do?”
His stormy blue eyes settle on mine, the scar on his cheek pulling slightly when his jaw tightens. “Yeah, darlin’. You do.”
That word again. Darlin’. Scar and his stupid Southern mouth. It should probably annoy me more than it really does. I just don’t have it in me to keep pretending right now.
I glance toward Maine. He’s currently arguing with Hale by the conference room door, finger pointed at the stone of a man and jaw tight.
Kaito is currently being herded by Ellis toward medical like he’s a sheep who escaped the pen.
Ewan keeps watching me like every step I take away from him costs him something.
And Xeon meets my eyes only once, then looks toward the side hall very deliberately.
The message is clear. There’s an opening right there. A way out. And it doesn’t even surprise me that he sees it. Of course he sees it. Fletcher does too, but he doesn’t take it for me. He simply waits.
That is how I know this is going to fucking hurt.
“What if I say yes?” I ask.
“Then I walk with you.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then I’ll stay right here.”
That simple. No pressure or some clever answer. And I really hate how much I need it.
“Fine,” I say, because apparently I’d much rather chew on glass than say please. “Air.”
Fletcher’s gaze dips to my throat. To Ewan and Kaito’s bites on either side of my throat. For about half a second, something crosses his face. I wouldn’t call it jealousy or even hurt. More like a quiet kind of wanting that he doesn’t reach for.
Then he nods and steps aside, leaving room for me to pass first.
I do.
We leave through the side hall without announcing it to anyone.
Xeon shifts just enough to block the view from the conference room but not obviously or suspiciously.
Just that quiet helpful way of his. The absence in my chest aches once more, right next to the one that has formed with Fletcher’s cedar and leather scent I’ve had at my back.
I keep walking.
Fletcher doesn’t utter a word until we reach the old equipment yard behind a garage.
It’s half-covered by a thin metal roof and packed with things Haven Ridge hasn’t decided whether to fix, scrap, or keep as rare pre-world-collapse junk.
I mean, a broken tractor has been left discarded close to the fence and stacks of lumber are leaning against a far wall while tarps flap softly in the night wind.
The air smells like rain bleeding with rust. With oil, dirt, and Fletcher.
I stop under the roof and wrap my arms around myself, tilting my face toward the breeze. Beyond the fence, the dark spills into the sky while patrol lights flash over the tree line in slow, pale sweeps.
“Far enough?” he asks.
I look over at him slowly. He’s standing several feet away, hands loose at his sides, shoulders squared as if he’s ready for anything except touching me without permission.
It makes me think of the first time I saw him.
All big, broad body and even bigger suspicion.
The kind of Alpha who looked like he could break a door clean off its hinges and then have a very stern talking-to with the door for being in the way.
He used to make me want to throw things. Preferably at him. And honestly, he still kind of does, just… different things.
“I don’t know,” I admit with a weak shrug. I hate it.
He nods only once, his jaw clenching tightly. “All right.”
“You’re not gonna ask me what I need?”
With a deliberate shake of his head, he says, “I reckon you’ll tell me when you know.”
Something in my chest loosens. Damn him. Damn him to hell and right back.
I turn away and walk to the stack of lumber, reaching my hand out to touch it. My fingers drag over rough wood, splinters catching at my skin in a way that causes pricks of pain. Not a bad pain, just little reminders that I’m still me. I’m still in the driver’s seat.
“I thought I’d feel better,” I confess quietly.
“About what?”
“Having an answer, I guess.”
Fletcher says nothing, which I’m actually grateful for, because words always come out easier when it’s quiet and I can pretend there’s no one but the clouds and stars listening.
“For the longest time I’ve been hiding. Moving. Keeping my scent dead and my head down. Surviving because there literally wasn’t a single time to breathe right, let alone trying to understand anything else. And now there’s an answer. Well, there’s half of one, and it just feels…”
I stop.
“Like they’ve just handed you a collar with a tag that has HOPE etched into it,” Fletcher finishes for me.
My throat tightens and I look back at him. His face is hard, but not because of me. At least, I don’t think it’s at me.
“Yeah,” I whisper, nodding in confirmation.
The wind drags a cold touch over my arms the next moment and Fletcher’s eyes drop to them. To the goosebumps that break out over my flesh. To the two bites now scarred into my throat. To my hands, still not clean enough no matter how much water will touch them.
His hands close once, then open. It’s clear he wants to come closer, but he doesn’t.
And that level of restraint from him feels different from Kaito’s.
Kaito’s restraint is a freshly sharpened blade held back from the throat.
Fletcher’s is more of a shield left on the ground between us until I decide whether to pick it up.
“You’re doing it,” I say.
His eyes lift. “Doing what?”
“Standing there like you want to wrap me in bubble wrap and howl at the moon,” I explain quietly. Almost softly, something I thought I’d lost six years ago when there was nothing soft left holding on to.
His mouth almost moves. “Maybe not the moon.”
“Fletcher.”
“I want to protect you,” he says suddenly, and the honesty drops heavily between us.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“I also know that wanting to protect you doesn’t just give me the right to decide what that protection looks like.”
Something under my ribs pulls tight.
He takes one slow breath. “I got that wrong before.”
I look away and the yard blurs for half a second. Not tears. Oh, God, no. Absolutely not. More like, I don’t know… Illegal moisture. Hm. Yeah. Let’s go with that.
“When?” I ask, because I’m apparently a big fan of making men emotionally bleed when they’re already picking apart their wounds.