"Shut up," I tell them, but my voice shakes like autumn leaves about to fall. "You never make sense anyway."
It doesn't stop them. If anything, the whispers get louder.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars that look like teeth. The shadows are getting louder lately, more insistent, like they're trying to warn me about something I'm too stupid or too crazy to understand. Felix says the hallucinations are getting worse. He's probably right. He usually is.
I move closer, cuddling up to him even though I'm too hot. Being close to him is usually enough to keep the shadows quiet. His scent is different, though. There's more diamond bleeding through the sharp chemicals. The alpha pheromones are fading.
Three days. Maybe four before they're gone entirely.
And he's not getting any better. The drugs they give him keep the fever at bay, but even if he's not getting worse, he's still not himself. Is it because they think he's an alpha? Maybe the drugs don't work the same.
Or maybe it's the suppressants they don't know he's on. Without them, his omega scent will start bleeding through like ink through wet paper. They'll know. They'll all know, and Felix would rather die than be exposed.
He should let them treat him properly. The silver-haired doctor with his kind eyes and steady hands could help if Felix would just let him. But my Felix is made of sharp edges and secrets, and he'd bleed out before letting anyone close enough to discover the truth beneath his mask.
I study Felix's sleeping face in the fluorescent light. Even unconscious, there's tension in his jaw, like he's fighting battles in his dreams. The bandages on his arm need changing—I can see spots of red seeping through—but I don't trust my shaking hands right now.
The ventilation grate above the bed catches my eye. It's been calling to me for hours, a whisper of possibility, of escape routesand hidden spaces where no one can find us. The screws are loose. I noticed yesterday when the shadows pointed them out with their smoke fingers.
I stand on the bed carefully, bare feet finding purchase on the thin mattress without disturbing Felix. My fingers work the screws. They're barely holding, probably haven't been checked in years. The grate comes free with a soft metallic sigh, revealing darkness that smells like dust and?—
Footsteps in the hallway.
Fuck.
I practically throw myself back onto the bed, shoving the grate back into place with fingers that fumble and shake. One screw falls, hitting the floor with a sound like a gunshot in my head, but I can't retrieve it now. The footsteps are getting closer.
I curl against Felix's side, forcing my breathing to slow, pretending to sleep as the door opens with that soft hydraulic hiss that sounds like snakes coiling up to bite.
"Just bringing some food," a voice says. Warm. Careful. The one they call Archer or sometimes Viper, the one who smells like sunshine even in the dark.
I keep my eyes closed but I can feel him watching us. The tray clinks as he sets it on the side table, more food we won't eat because trust is a luxury we can't afford. But he doesn't leave. I hear the soft scrape of a chair being pulled closer, the creak of weight settling.
"I know you're awake," he says quietly.
My eyes snap open because there's no point pretending now. He's sitting three feet away, hands resting on his knees in that careful way that saysI'm not a threateven though we both know he could snap my neck without breaking a sweat.
"What do you want?" My voice comes out raw, like I've been gargling gravel.
"Nothing. Just..." He runs a hand through his brown hair, and for a moment he looks less alpha, more human. "Couldn't sleep. Happens sometimes."
I sit up slowly, keeping Felix between us like a barrier. "So you decided to watch us sleep? That's not creepy at all."
A laugh escapes him, short and bitter. "Fair point." He leans back in the chair, eyes finding something fascinating in the ceiling tiles. "You ever have nights where your brain won't shut off? Where it keeps replaying things you'd rather forget?"
The shadows lean in, interested now. They recognize trauma like dogs recognize fear.
"No," I lie, even though my brain is a constant replay of worst-case scenarios and memories.
"I was in the war," he says suddenly, like the words escaped without permission. "Eight years ago. Lost my whole unit to an IED. Everyone except me." His hands clench and unclench in his lap. "Sometimes I still hear them. In the quiet moments. Asking why I lived when they didn't."
He hears the dead too,the shadows whisper.But his dead don't dance.
I don't know what to say to that. How do you respond to someone else's ghosts when your own are having a party in your peripheral vision?
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask instead.
He finally looks at me, really looks at me, and there's something in his brown eyes that makes my chest tight. Understanding, maybe. Recognition. "Because I see it in you too. The way you flinch at shadows. The way you guard him like the world's about to end. Whatever happened to you, whatever you're running from... I get it."
