Page 25 of Fight or Fly

NINE

Leona

JAX SPENT the firstday after Flynn and Alex departed stringing booby traps across all of the trails and tracks leading to the house. Fishing line—attached to every can, jug, and piece of metal trash we could find—now crisscrossed any trail large enough to accommodate people, strung inconspicuously at ankle height. Any intruder would trip the line and set off a cacophony of noise from the items secreted in the underbrush.

Despite the brisk nights, windows stood open on all sides of the house, letting in the sounds from outside so sensitive alpha and omega hearing could more easily pick up the noise of a trap being sprung. Jax set up a rotation schedule for guarding the house—eight hours on and sixteen hours off for each of us, during which we kept constant watch on the driveway and listened for disturbances coming from any other direction.

Jax was, of course, armed. But neither Kam nor I had any familiarity with firearms, and the noise involved in trying to learn on the fly would have drawn too much attention to our secret hideout. So as far as I could tell, our grand strategic plan in case of emergency was to run and get the alpha so he could shoot at whoever was trying to capture us. As battle strategy went, it didn’t sound all that promising.

In fact, the current situation was eerily reminiscent of the way Kam and I had lived for years. We’d thrown together an iffy escape plan for when the worst inevitably happened, then sat back and waited for things to implode—because there was really no other option.

This felt very much like that, only dialed up to eleven.

As unregistered omegas, Kam and I had largely managed to ignore the potential for disaster as we lived our day-to-day lives. We’d have gone crazy otherwise. Maybe it was the difference in alpha versus omega psychology, because by contrast, Jax seemed hyper-focused on the danger twenty-four hours a day. I appreciated his dedication, but it was also exhausting.

With our assigned eight-hour shifts, it meant whichever two of us weren’t watching for danger were pretty much left to our own devices the rest of the time. It didn’t take long for me to start pondering Flynn’s parting words to me.

You know, fucking is really good for stress relief. Just throwing that out there.

Jax had taken the three a.m. to eleven a.m. shift, since that was the roughest one. Kam had claimed seven p.m. to three a.m. since he was prone to insomnia anyway, leaving me with the cushy eleven-to-seven daytime shift.

When Kam showed up on the second evening to relieve me, he wrapped me up in his arms and pressed a kiss to my temple before pulling back to meet my eyes.

“How do you feel about using omega wiles to manipulate a stubborn alpha?” he asked.

I blinked at him. “I think I’m fresh out of wiles,” I said uncertainly.

“Uh, no. Trust me, you’rereallynot,” he shot back. “Would you please do me a favor and turn Jax’s brain off for a few hours before his skull bursts into flame or something? He’s lovely, and I’m glad he’s here, but he’s also slowly driving me mad.”

“I think he’s just stressing out over the fact that he couldn’t go after Beckett with the others,” I said. “That’s got to be rough on him. He’s overcompensating, trying to keep us safe.”

Kam patted my arm. “Yes. Which is why I’m siccing you on him. You have compassion for his situation. Whereas I mostly want to throw something at his head, and tell him that cleaning the same guns over and over won’t magically make them more effective if someone sends a SWAT team after us.”

I let out a startled laugh, even though nothing about it was remotely funny.

“Right,” I told him. “Fair enough—I’m on it. But just so you know, you’re starting to think like Flynn. I want you to really stop and ponder that while you’re busy staring fixedly at an empty driveway for the next eight hours.”

He patted my arm again and took up my post. “I love you, but I also reject your hypothesis in the strongest possible terms,odama. Go be wily, and I’ll come find you in the nest when I get off-shift later. There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then added, “I think.”

I left him to it. After a meal of cold leftovers, I headed upstairs and tracked down our wayward alpha in one of the spare bedrooms. Kam had been one hundred percent serious—Jax was seated at an old desk with one gun in his shoulder holster and the other in pieces in front of him, polishing one of the disassembled bits with a black-smudged rag.

“Hi,” I said. “Rammed any good holes lately?”

He did a comical double take in my direction. I smiled sweetly and indicated the pistol on the desk. Understanding dawned, and he did at least have the good grace to look sheepish.

“It helps me relax,” he explained.

I raised an eyebrow. “Good god—in that case, I’d hate to see you when youhaven’tbeen obsessively cleaning and oiling your guns.”

He set the oddly shaped piece of metal aside. “Kam sent you, I take it?”

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