Page 83 of Immune

“No,” Fletcher says, and before the word has even fully left his mouth, my knife is raised and pointed at him. The threat is very clear, as is the warning to watch where he’s fucking stepping now, the blade steady and sure in my grasp.

Silence drops all around us. Because there it is. That vile little word men love when they think it belongs to them.

No.

Kaito turns completely still. Xeon’s gaze lifts slowly from the pilot. Ewan’s expression loses the last scraps of humor he was clinging to. And Fletcher, to his credit, doesn’t even twitch a finger toward his rifle. He simply looks at the knife pointed at him, and then back to my eyes.

“Careful,” Kaito warns quietly. I can’t even tell if he’s talking to Fletcher or me. It could very well be both.

“Don’t tell me no,” I warn coldly, my voice pitched low enough that it barely sounds like mine.

Fletcher’s jaw shifts only once. “Wasn’t an order.”

“Could have fooled me,” I argue flatly. “Because it sure as hell sounded like one.”

“It was an assessment,” the scarred Alpha corrects.

“Doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the two,” I snark, voice carrying a chill to it. “Love that. Definitely doesn’t make me want to commit a crime or anything.”

Ewan coughs into his fist, but Fletcher ignores him. His eyes stay firmly planted on me, his voice lowering as he says, “You step outside tonight, you’ll die.”

“You don’t know that,” I argue.

“I know the street.”

“I know them better,” I counter, sharp eyes glaring into the Alpha hard enough that it would split him apart if I possessed such an ability.

Fletcher shakes his head once. “You know the buildings. You know the ways through them, I’ll give you that. But the streets tonight? They belong to whoever fired that launcher, and they’re flushing every dead thing they can find out to cover their asses.”

“They’re gone.”

“They’re regrouping.”

“I don’t care.”

It’s a lie. A pretty fat one, too. Because I do care. I care about the looters with red-covered lights. I care about the yellow-scarf bastard who took the helicopter pack. I care about the word Vector. I care, because the looters were organized, and organized people with weapons don’t just exist in little pockets of the apocalypse. They belong to something. To someone. And someone with enough power to shoot birds out of the sky is someone I should be running very far away from.

So, obviously, my brain has decided to stand here and argue with four Alphas instead.

Character growth is as much of a disease as the infection that turned most of the world into rotting corpses with appetites for flesh, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.

I take a step back and Kaito moves. Not toward me, but sideways, putting himself between me and the darker stretch of the tunnel ahead. He’s not close enough to touch or grab, only close enough that if something comes around the corner, it’ll grab him first.

My entire body hates that. My Omega is sitting on the other side of that very distinct line. That unreliable bitch lifts her head like someone just lit a candle in a dark window.

Kaito’s scent reaches me the next second, the burning wood and worn flannel now familiar in a way that scrapes away at my insides. Not safe. I refuse to call it that. Safe is a lie people use when they want to fall asleep when there’s danger nearby. But his scent is becoming something my body recognizes despite my repeated formal objections.

It’s like a tether. That’s what it feels like. A rope tied somewhere under my ribs, annoying and warm and impossible to cut without feeling it tug.

Absolutely not.

“Move,” I tell him.

Kaito shakes his head slowly. Apologetically. Infuriatingly. Then quietly tells me, “You can run after sunrise. I won’t stop you.”

The hand around my knife tightens.

“But you really won’t survive the streets tonight,” he continues. “Not hurt. Not with your blockers failing. And not with those men out there.”