Page 84 of Immune

Every word that falls from his mouth feels like a rock thrown at glass. I shake my head and tell him, “You don’t know my limits.”

“No,” he agrees easily. “But I know everything out there is awake now. I know those men are hunting anything and everything connected to that helicopter. I know the dead are following their noses. And I know you haven’t slept properly, you’re limping pretty bad, your hand is bleeding, your arm is injured, and you’re still trying to pretend like none of it seems to matter.”

I stare at him.

Everyone, very tragically, remains alive.

Blandly, I ask, “Are you done?”

Kaito’s mouth softens into something that’s almost a smile but not quite. “For now.”

That phrase lands between us like a stupid echo from a roof I wish I could forget. For now. I hate him. I hate that he remembers the shapes of promises when they’re pretending to be something else. Damn it all to hell in a fucking handbasket.

Fletcher makes a low sound before finally agreeing with Kaito. “He’s right.”

“No one asked the wall for an opinion, thanks,” I snap, eyes cutting to him sharply.

I catch Ewan’s lips twitch from my peripheral before he says, “Apparently, this wall has some pretty strong feelings on the matter.”

Fletcher doesn’t look away from me despite the clown cracking jokes, focusing on me as he says, “Street’s nothing but a kill box tonight.”

And there it is. Fletcher really does feel like a wall. Not a warm one, and certainly not a comforting one. More like a barricade. A reinforced door. A slab of stone dropped between the world and whatever the fuck he’s decided belongs on the other side of it. I can practically feel his cedar and leather scent under the smoke and blood, hitting harder than Kaito’s. Heavier, too. It doesn't pull at me like a tether the way Kaito’s does. It warns me. It blocks. And it makes me want to check the exits twice.

And the traitorous little shit that my Omega is notices. Despite my efforts to tell her we don’t like walls because they can very quickly become cages, she tells me some walls keep teeth and claws out. So I tell her to shut the fuck up and lock her away in the recess of my mind.

Xeon chooses then to stand, moving away from the pilot slowly and carefully. He doesn’t step toward me, doesn’t even angle his body as if he might. He simply stands with his hands visible and his voice soft enough not to press against every bruise inside me.

“No one here wants to trap you,” he eventually says, voice soft and cautious.

I laugh, because I genuinely can’t help it. The sound just floods out of me. “That sounds exactly like something someone who wanted to trap me would say.”

His face doesn't change at all, not with offense or frustration. Just an impossible calm that I almost envy.

“You’re right,” he agrees, and I do nothing but blink at him. Rude. I was gearing up to be angry with him, not to be agreed with. I can practically feel myself deflate a little. That is,until he continues. “But that’s the problem with fear. Even the truth sounds like a lie when it’s coming from the wrong mouth.”

Something in my chest stills. I hate that sentence. I hate it so much that I’d stab it. If only sentences contained organs. That's a design flaw if I ever saw one.

Xeon looks at me like he can see the place where those words have torn through and has enough decency not to point at the wound. His scent slips through the stale air, quieter than the others, ice and steel under the sharp edge of Alpha.

Cold, clean, and controlled.

It should make me want to take a step back, but it doesn’t. There’s something in the way he stands there, hands visible and voice painfully soft, that feels almost warm. Not his scent, but him. The way he doesn’t demand anything from me, the way he leaves the space between us untouched.

No.

Nope.

Absolutely fucking not.

I don’t need that. Warmth makes people lazy. Lazy gets them bitten, caught, collared, traded, or mourned by someone stupid enough to give a shit. And yet, my body eases by half a breath. I immediately tighten everything back up, because apparently I’m now at war with my own stupid muscles.

Ewan watches the whole thing way too closely, which sucks because I actually briefly forgot he even had eyes. His brows are pinched, but when he catches me noticing, he lifts both hands slightly and promises, “Not gonna say anything all profound and deep and shit. That would be wildly off-brand for me, and I have an image to uphold.”

“Thank fuck,” I mutter.

“Right? I know my strengths. It’s a good quality to have,” he rambles, and I glare at him.

He leans back against the wall, offering me space without making a big deal of it, and that’s exactly what I don’t like about the guy. He makes a whole lot of noise with his mouth, but not with his body. He fills the air with sheer stupidity so the silence doesn’t bury its claws into you, and for some offensive and horrible reason, the space around him feels less like a trap and more like somewhere sound goes to soften the edges. Like a quiet room after being surrounded by noise all day.