We just have to wait and see if Felix will ever be too.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
JUNIPER
Carlisle's shirt hangs on me like a fucking dress, the expensive fabric smelling like wine and that dangerous edge that makes my thighs clench even though my heat's finally breaking. I stumble out of my nest two days later looking like I've been mauled by a particularly enthusiastic pack of wolves—which isn't far off, minus the fur and fangs—and my legs are still doing that newborn deer thing where they can't quite remember how walking works.
The shower helped. Sort of. If by "helped" you mean "washed off three days' worth of come and sweat while I had pleasant flashbacks to every knot that's been inside me during this heat." My pussy's still tender, that pleasant ache that comes from being thoroughly fucked by four alphas who apparently have a competitive streak when it comes to making me scream.
The shadows are quieter now, satisfied in that post-feast way that makes them lazy and content. They drift along the walls like smoke, occasionally whispering observations about how I smell like pack now, how the alphas' scents have seeped into my skin so deep that no amount of expensive body wash can scrub them out.
I find Felix in the living room, hunched over a laptop like he's trying to hack into the Pentagon or order takeout and with him, it's a fifty-fifty shot. The afternoon light catches his silver eyes, making them look like mercury, and something in my chest does that stupid fluttery thing it always does when I see him after any kind of separation.
I creep up behind him, quiet as the grave I've put so many people in, and slap my hands over his eyes.
"Guess who?" I chirp, pressing myself against his back.
He doesn't even flinch. "You're the only one in this house who smells like flowers and has a manicure."
I pull my hands away to examine my nails—still perfect despite everything, because apparently my body prioritizes nail integrity over everything else. "You're no fun."
"I'm plenty fun," he says, but his tone is flat as roadkill that's been run over twelve times.
I slide around into his lap, straddling him with the kind of gracelessness that comes from muscles that have been fucked into submission. His hands automatically go to my hips to steady me, and I notice he's careful not to touch skin, keeping his grip on the shirt fabric.
That's... weird.
"Where've you been?" I ask, going for casual but landing somewhere around desperate. "I haven't seen you since..." I trail off, not really wanting to finish that sentence. Since you gave permission for them to wreck me in ways only you have in years. Since you walked away and left me wondering if I'd finally crossed some invisible line.
"I wanted to give you time to bond with the pack." His voice is carefully neutral, that tone he uses when he's trying not to feel things. "They had it covered."
"Covered?" I repeat, and something cold slithers down my spine. "Felix, I—" The words stick in my throat like broken glass. "I need you. Always. You know that, right?"
His eyes finally meet mine, and there's something there I can't read. Something that makes my chest tight. "I know."
"They want you to be part of the pack too," I say, rushing the words out before I lose my nerve. "All of them. Carlisle said?—"
"Carlisle says a lot of things." Felix's fingers tighten fractionally on my hips. "Most of them designed to get what he wants."
"That's not—" I stop, frustrated. "This isn't about Carlisle. Or any of them. This is about us. About you pulling away when I need you close."
"Your heat scent is fading," he observes, changing the subject with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face.
"It's lingering," I counter, rolling my hips against him in a way that usually makes his breath catch. "Could probably go another round if you're interested."
But instead of responding to my incredibly subtle seduction technique, his laptop makes this soft ping that makes him go rigid beneath me. Not the good kind of rigid. The oh-fuck-someone's-about-to-die kind.
"What was that?" I ask, trying to peer at the screen, but he snaps it shut so fast I'm surprised it doesn't crack.
"Nothing. Work stuff."
Work stuff. We don't have work stuff. We have murder stuff and staying-alive stuff and occasionally grocery stuff, but we definitely don't have mysterious laptop ping stuff that makes Felix look like someone just told him his favorite knife got melted down for scrap.
"Felix—"
"Anyone hungry?" Archer's voice cuts through whatever interrogation I was about to launch. He's standing in thedoorway looking freshly showered and wearing an apron that says 'Kiss the Cook' which is so aggressively wholesome it makes my teeth hurt because he's just asking to be bitten and devoured. And under any other circumstances, I'd do just that. "I'm about to demonstrate why I'm secretly a world-class chef."
