Phantom sighs as he sits in one of the chairs at the table, cracking a can of soda and tearing into a bag of chips. He looks up at me with a serious frown.
“She’s worse off than I thought,” he says, speaking my thoughts into the air.
I nod. “I’ll have to get her to sit down for a full medical exam and take another look at her file to figure out how bad it is, but yeah. She’s…”
I trail off with a low whistle, but Phantom nods his agreement. Neither of us speak for a long moment, each lost in our own thoughts. I can’t imagine what that poor girl had to endure in that facility, but from what I remember, the list of meds she was on wasn’t short. It’s going to be tough to get what she needs, if it’s even going to be possible. But I don’t want her going into withdrawal from any of the shit they had her on. I’ve got a few things here, but I’ll have to double check what exactly and reach out to my contact for the rest.
A few moments of silence later, Siren comes back into the house, letting the door slam behind them.
“Hey, keep it down. Delilah’s trying to sleep,” Phantom chides, firm but not unkind.
Siren snorts, pulling open the fridge. “So?” they throw over their shoulder.
“What’s your problem, Si?” Phantom snaps, hackles rising.
Siren stands straight, pulling a tub of cheesecake filling from the depths and hopping up onto the counter, leveling an unamused look at both of us.
“My problem is I don’t like liabilities. And that panic attack on stick legs? That’s a fucking liability,” Siren says, tone suggesting we’re being the weird ones in this scenario.
“She is a person with a lot of baggage. Just like the rest of us,” I reply, trying to keep this from escalating.
Siren rolls their eyes and I bristle. I’ll let a lot of shit slide, but this is starting to border on open hostility.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Joker and Bones choose this moment to reappear, both looking freshly fucked. Bones isn’t wearing his mask, showing off the knife-sharp jawline he hides from the world.
“Where’s my little wisp?” Joker asks, cutting right to the chase.
“Sleeping, Jokes. Let her be,” Phantom says with a heavy sigh.
Joker looks around confused, as if he expects to see Delilah curled up somewhere in the room. “Where? You didn’t—Phantom, that’s not a room. That’s storage.”
“Where else was I going to put her? We aren’t exactly flush with free space,” Phantom fires back.
“She’s going to sleep in my nest,” Joker says, tone making it clear that’s not a suggestion, but a statement of facts.
Bones snarls and whips his head to glare at our omega. Not that it has any effect on Joker.
“That’sournest,” he says simply, words vibrating slightly with his growl.
Joker rolls his eyes and turns to go back down the hallway anyway. But then Bones’s hand strikes out, grabbing Joker by the back of the neck and dragging him to the dining room table and shoving him down into a chair. He sits in his usual seat, looking around for the rest of us to join him.
Something in my chest tightens as I sit on his left, across from Joker and beside Siren. Phantom doesn’t move, reclining back slightly to look at our prime alpha with a serious frown.
“As your prime alpha, I decide how things are handled in this pack. Joker’s instincts might want her around, but that doesn’t make her part of this pack,” Bones starts, looking at everyone before leveling a warning look at Joker.
“My instincts—”
“Are you really listening to your instincts? Or is your dick just itching for omega pussy?” Siren speaks over Joker, their words painted with false sincerity.
Joker flinches back but doesn’t speak. Siren has a point, even if I don’t like it. Joker is impulsive on a good day, but this is out of character, even for him. And I certainly don’t like the way they’re speaking to Joker, and neither does Phantom, judging by the growl that rumbles out of his chest.
“Watch yourself, Rin,” he says, low and dangerous.
“Both of you, knock it off,” Bones snaps, a little louder than before.
Phantom and Siren continue to glare at each other, but they at least keep their mouths shut. I can smell my calming pheromones filling the air, cherrywood andsoft velvet, though it seems the only person even remotely affected is Joker, who slumps in his chair.
“We’re not going to send her away, but we don’t have any reason to include her in our work. She can live here, but it’s not our job to make her life easier,” Bones says, tone full of finality.