Jax didn't remember moving to the door.
One moment he'd been at the back of his cell, spine against the wall, doing everything in his power to keep his breathing even. The next he was pressed against the cold metal, fingers splayed, cheek almost touching the steel, and the scent of her was everywhere - warm and sweet and so achingly real that his eyes stung.
"Omega." The word fell out of him like a prayer, barely a breath, meant for no one.
Then her fingers found the edge of the food slot and his whole nervous system lit up like a switchboard.
Easy. He could feel his own pheromones pouring off him, soothing and steady, the most honest thing about him right now - because underneath them was everything else, the longing he couldn't hide, the desperate wanting that had lived in his chest for eight years and was suddenly, painfully awake. An omega. His omega, some deep wordless instinct in him insisted. Ours.
Don't spook her. Boss said don't spook her.
Through the narrow window, he could just make her out in the dim light - copper hair, wide eyes, the confused furrow of her brow. She looked so small. She looked so lost. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to soothe her, to fold her into his arms and tell her it was alright - that she'd found them... that they'd take care of everything.
"Boss—?" His voice came out rough, louder than a whisper, cracking slightly on the single syllable. He wasn't even sure what he was asking. Help. I can't do this. I'm going to ruin it. Tell me what to do.
From the middle cell, pressed to the vent on Jax's side, Boss had already heard everything. The whispered omega. The spike in Jax's scent - soothing on the surface, longing underneath, as transparent as glass. He'd heard Jade's soft hello too, muffled through the door but unmistakable.
His jaw tightened. Every muscle in his body was coiled, every instinct screaming at him to act. But his voice, when it came, was steady. Measured. Pitched to carry clearly through his door without being a command, without being a threat.
"He won't hurt you." A pause, letting the words land. "None of us will."
On the other side of Boss, Riki had gone very still.
He couldn't hear her - not clearly, not through two sets of walls - but he didn't need to. He could read it in the scent bleeding through the vent from Boss's cell, in the way the air had shifted the moment she'd stepped into the corridor. Jax's pheromones had gone from restless to overwhelmed in about thirty seconds flat.
He pressed his back to the wall beside his vent and crossed his arms, a slow grin spreading across his face despite everything.
"Mendokusai," he muttered, quiet enough for only Boss to catch. All this trouble.
But his scent, bleeding soft through the vent, told a different story.
