The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Fifteen

JINX

The knife slips through my fingers during prep, clattering against the steel counter loud enough to make Amit glance over. Third time this morning. My hands won't stop trembling, and the tremor runs deeper than caffeine or exhaustion could explain.

"You alright there, love?" His cockney concern cuts through the kitchen's morning symphony. "Looking a bit peaky."

"Fine." I retrieve the knife, willing my fingers steady. The steel feels wrong in my grip—too heavy, too cold, too separate from my skin. "Just tired."

But tired doesn't explain the fever burning beneath my skin despite the new suppressants. Doesn't explain why every scent in the kitchen hits like a physical touch—garlic sharp enough to make me dizzy, butter rich enough to drown in, the char on meat triggering something primal that wants to hunt. Doesn't explain the constant sensation of something pacing beneath my ribs, restless and hungry and growing stronger with each breath.

"Service starts in thirty." Patricia's voice cracks across the kitchen. "If you're not ready, get out of my kitchen."

The threat straightens my spine. I've worked too hard for this job, this life, this careful construction of normal. Whatever's wrong with me can wait. Has to wait. I fall back into the rhythm of prep—brunoise, julienne, small dice, repeat. Let muscle memory take over while my mind fractures into white noise.

But my body betrays me. During the breakfast rush, I nearly drop a pan of roasted vegetables when their scent hits—earth and char and something that makes my mouth water in ways that have nothing to do with hunger. The new line cook brushes past, and his beta scent makes me step back so fast I slam into the wall.

"Jin." Patricia materializes at my elbow between orders, wolf eyes assessing with predatory precision. "Take your break. Now."

"I can finish—"

"That wasn't a request. Go cool down before you contaminate my kitchen with whatever's riding you."

I stumble through the service corridors, but the walls press too close, the fluorescent lights pierce straight through my retinas. Every scent layers and multiplies—cleaning chemicals, old grease, someone's cologne three floors up. My skin feels too tight, like something inside is pushing to get out.

The loading dock offers October wind and diesel fumes. I lean against the brick wall, letting cold seep through my chef's jacket, but it barely touches the heat radiating from my core. Deep breaths. Just breathe. The new suppressants are supposed to be better, cleaner, gene-specific. Maybe this is adjustment. Maybe—

"Mr. Smith."

Alexander Hartford stands ten feet away, having appeared from nowhere like expensive smoke. Today's suit is charcoal grey, tailored to emphasize every line of his body—the breadth of his shoulders, the narrow taper to his waist, the long legs that move with predatory grace. His honey-gold hair catches afternoon light like it's been paid to cooperate.

"Mr. Hartford." My voice comes out rougher than intended, scraped raw by whatever's happening inside me. "I was just—"

"You look unwell." He moves closer, and his scent hits like a physical blow. Not the subtle cologne from our interview, but something deeper, wilder. Pine forests after lightning strikes. Storm clouds pregnant with violence. Power that makes my knees buckle.

He catches my elbow before I fall, steadying me with hands that burn through fabric. This close, his green eyes hold depths that shouldn't exist—flecks of gold that swim through the irises like living things, pupils that dilate as he studies my face.

"I'm fine." The lie tastes copper on my tongue. "Just needed air."

"You're burning up." His palm finds my forehead, and the touch sends electricity racing down my spine, pooling low in my belly. "When did this start?"

"This morning. Maybe last night." Time feels slippery, hard to track. Last night blurs into fever dreams where green eyes watched from shadows. "The suppressants—"

"Are working exactly as designed." His thumb traces my temple, and I have to bite back a sound that would humiliate us both. "But your body is fighting them. Fighting what they're trying to suppress."

"That doesn't make sense." But I'm leaning into his touch, can't help myself. He smells like safety and danger wound together, like everything I've been running from and toward.

"Doesn't it?" His other hand comes up to frame my face, and I realize I'm swaying toward him. "Six years of chemical restraint. Your body hasn't just been suppressed, Jinx. It's been sleeping. And now it's waking up."

The way he says my name—my real name, not the lie on my employment forms—makes heat pool between my thighs. Wrong. This is wrong. I don't know this man, don't trust him, don't understand why my body recognizes his like a key finding its lock.

"I need to get back to work."

"You need to go home." His hands drop but he doesn't step back, keeping me caged between his body and the wall. "I'll speak with Patricia."

"No." The word comes out sharp, desperate. "I don't need—I can handle this."

His smile holds too much knowledge, too much heat. "Of course you can. You've been handling things alone for six years. But maybe it's time to stop."

"Stop what?"

"Running." The word hangs between us, loaded with meaning. His fingers brush my wrist where my pulse hammers against thin skin. "Fighting what you are. What we both know is happening."

Before I can respond, between one blink and the next, he's gone. Not walking away—just gone, leaving only his scent and the phantom heat of his touch. I stare at the empty space, wondering if the fever's causing hallucinations, if I imagined the way his eyes went gold at the edges when he touched me.

Patricia sends me home without argument, which should worry me more than it does. But walking requires all my concentration, one foot in front of the other through streets that suddenly assault every sense. Exhaust fumes carry individual signatures—this truck burning oil, that car running rich. Coffee shops breathe out their secrets—medium roast, oat milk, someone's anxiety sweat.

But underneath it all, threading through the city's cacophony, individual scents that make no sense. Designation hits my consciousness like neon signs when before they were just background noise. That man in the suit—alpha, smells like dominance and legal briefs and a marriage growing cold. The barista through the window—beta, cinnamon and contentment and unrequited attraction to her coworker. The woman pushing a stroller—omega, milk and exhaustion and fierce protection barely holding post-partum rage in check.

My suppressants have never failed like this. Even the veterinary-grade poison I've been choking down for six years kept these instincts buried. But now...

Now I smell the hunter before I see him.

Gun oil and adrenaline, the particular musk of someone who's killed supernaturals for money. Leather that's been soaked in blood too many times to ever come clean. He's been following me for three blocks, maintaining distance but matching my pace. When I turn the corner onto Queen Street, two more peel off from doorways—one ahead, one behind.

Professional formation. Herding pattern. Cascade's retrieval teams always work in threes.

I palm the knife from my ankle sheath, Jules's lessons flooding back. Three exits—the subway entrance half a block ahead, the alley to my left, the construction site across the street. But my legs shake with fever and my vision keeps fracturing at the edges, the world sliding in and out of focus.

They close in fast once they realize I've made them. The leader—scarred face, dead eyes, old enough to have been hunting since before I was born—pulls a tranquilizer gun from his coat.

"Willamette Marks." The name hits like ice water. "By order of the Cascade pack, you're coming with us."

Haven't heard it spoken aloud in six years. It lands like a slap, making me stumble. That girl died in the woods. Died choking on her own vomit while rogues circled. Died and was reborn as something harder.

"Don't know who that is. Never heard of her."

"Marcus Reeves sends his regards." The hunter's smile promises nothing good—teeth filed to subtle points, alpha modification meant to intimidate. "Says to tell you he's waited long enough. Time to come home, little omega."

The tranquilizer dart hisses past my ear as I dive left. Roll. Come up running. But the fever makes me clumsy, slow. The second hunter moves to cut off the alley. The third circles wide, herding me toward a van I hadn't noticed—black panel, no windows, engine already running.

Not again. Not after six years of freedom, of choosing my own cage.

I spin, slashing at the scarred hunter when he reaches for me. My blade opens his jacket, draws blood that smells like old violence, but he's wearing armor underneath. His backhand catches me across the face, sending me into the brick wall hard enough to see stars.

"Alive, not unharmed," he says, advancing with the confidence of someone who's done this before. "Reeves was specific about that. Wants you conscious for the reunion."

The world tilts. Darkness creeps in at the edges. But just as the hunter's hand closes on my arm, the afternoon explodes into shadow and fury.

Alexander Hartford drops from the sky like divine judgment. The civilized mask is gone, replaced by something that moves like violence given form. Shadows cling to him, wrap around him like living things. He doesn't fight the hunters so much as flow through them, each motion precise and devastating.

The scarred one goes down with his throat crushed, arterial spray painting the alley wall. The second manages half a scream before Hartford's hand punches through his chest cavity, emerging with something red and necessary.

The third hunter—the smart one—pulls a silver blade that gleams with poison, lunges for Hartford's exposed back.

Time slows to honey. I see the trajectory, the angle that will bury silver between his ribs. My body moves without conscious thought, intercepting. The blade meant for him slides between my ribs like ice, like fire, like coming home.

"No." The word tears from Hartford's throat in a voice that makes windows rattle, makes reality hiccup.

The last hunter dies badly. I don't see how—my vision's going grey—but I hear the wet sounds, the truncated scream, smell ozone and copper and the particular scent of flesh meeting its limit. Then Hartford's hands are on me, impossibly gentle for someone who just painted the alley in arterial red.

"Why?" Those green eyes burn gold now, inhuman and beautiful. "Why did you—"

"Couldn't let him." Blood bubbles up my throat, tastes like copper and bad decisions. "You gave me a job. Good benefits."

He laughs, dark and broken. "Hold on."

The world fractures as he lifts me. One moment we're in the alley surrounded by death. The next, wind tears at my hair and Toronto spreads below us like a map of lights. We're flying—actually flying through space that bends around us. Or falling with style. Or I'm hallucinating from blood loss.

His penthouse materializes around us—glass and shadow and impossible space that seems to exist in more than three dimensions. He sets me on leather soft as sin, probably worth more than I've made in my lifetime. My blood's already ruining it, spreading like accusations.

"This is going to hurt." He tears my shirt without hesitation, exposing the wound. The knife went in clean, angled up toward vital things. His fingers ghost over my ribs, not quite touching. "I need to—"

"Do it."

He pulls the blade free in one motion. Pain whites out everything, but his hands are already there, pressing something that burns cold against the wound. The bleeding slows. Stops. The pain fades to memory while I watch impossible things happen.

The wound closes. Not healing—closing, flesh knitting together like time running backward. His hands glow faintly, that gold from his eyes spreading down his arms. Power that tastes like ozone and ancient forests pours into me.

"What are you?"

He's leaning over me, those impossible eyes holding mine. A drop of my blood marks his collar like a promise. This close, I can see the otherness beneath his skin—something vast and old wearing a beautiful mask.

"Tonight? I'm the man who's going to keep you alive." His thumb traces my cheekbone, comes away bloody from where the hunter struck me. The touch leaves trails of heat that have nothing to do with healing. "Tomorrow, we'll discuss the rest."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one that matters right now." His hand slides into my hair, cradling my skull with devastating gentleness. "Sleep. You're safe here."

"I can't—" But his scent wraps around me like a blanket. Pine and storms and something my hindbrain recognizes as home. "The others. My pack—"

"I'll send word. They'll know you're safe." His thumb strokes my temple, and pleasure sparks down my spine despite everything. "Rest, Jinx. Let me take care of you."

The fever drags me under, but not before I catalog every point where our bodies touch. His thigh pressed against mine. His hand in my hair. The way he's positioned his body between me and the door, even here in his own space.

Whatever Alexander Hartford is, he's not human. Not even close.

But as darkness takes me, all I can think is that his hands were gentle when they held me. That he killed three men without hesitation to keep me safe. That I took a blade for him without thinking twice.

That when he said my name, something inside me answered.

The suppressants aren't just failing. They're revealing something that's been sleeping for six years. Something that recognizes him the way lungs recognize air.

And I'm terrified that when I wake up, I won't want to run anymore.