Page 27 of Stream & Scream

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jaxen

Sunday night

S he’s curled on the splintered floorboards, back to the rotting baseboards, shivering like the cabin itself is breathing cold into her bones.

Eyes glassy. Lips swollen. A arms wrapped around herself like a shield keeping the world out.

She looks wrecked, filthy, scraped, exhausted, and still the best thing I’ve ever seen.

Fucking mine.

I kneel beside her and run my hand down the ridge of her arm, slow enough that she feels the choice in it. Not a strike. Not a grab. Contact. She flinches anyway, instincts firing on ghosts, then steadies when nothing bad happens.

“Easy,” I say, voice low. “Breathe.”

Her throat works. She’s trying. Hands won’t stop trembling, fingertips gone white with the chokehold she’s got on that blanket.

I peel a wipe from my kit, crack a water tab into a dented canteen, and dampen the cloth until it drips.

I clean the grit from her cheek, the mud along her jaw, the rust-brown smear at her hairline where a branch caught her earlier.

With my helmet off, there’s nothing between us but air, and I see it, every twitch of her lashes, every ragged swallow, every war she’s fighting in her own skin.

Her lip curls. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice is raw but sharp. “Go to hell.”

I bare my teeth in something close to a grin, though it’s more knife than smile. “Already there. Dragged you with me.”

She lifts her chin, green eyes flaring even through exhaustion. “You think you can break me and then act like you care? Fuck you.”

“Watch your mouth,” I growl, the command cutting through the space between us. “I don’t care how bad you want to bite, Olivia. You need me, and you fucking know it.”

Her grip on the blanket tightens. “I don’t need shit from you.”

“Bullshit.” My voice drops, firm, final. “You’d be dead in the dirt without me. Don’t confuse survival with choice.”

She glares, teeth clenched, but her body betrays her, weak, trembling, too dehydrated to keep up the fight for long.

I drop a ration packet onto the floor beside her. “Eat.” Another follows. “Drink.” I tear the seal and press the canteen to her palm.

She mutters, “I said fuck off.”

I shove it harder into her hand. “And I said eat. One of us is giving the orders here, and it isn’t you.”

She stares at me like she wants to throw it back in my face. I let the silence stretch, let her feel how little patience I’ve got for her games. Finally, she bites into the bar and chews. Drinks when I tip the canteen.

I don’t ease up, don’t soften my tone. She can spit curses all night if she wants, but she’ll still do what I tell her. Because whether she admits it or not, she fucking needs it.

I strip my vest from the chair, re-seat plates, check straps, count magazines by weight. Knife edges with my thumb. Sidearm cycles clean. Rifle gets a quick press-check and goes back over my shoulder. Routine. Religion. Control.

The tablet, the suits bolted into the wall, flickers when I wake it. Static, then a grid, then a pulse.

One heartbeat left.

Tara Nguyen. North ravine sector. Slow drift east like her legs forgot how to be legs. Not hiding; running out of run.

I’m halfway to the door when the comm I ditched earlier squeals back to life.

“You step outside that door without finishing her and you’re fucking done, Jaxen,” Milo snaps.

All clipped vowels and cheap authority. “Terminated,” Milo sneers, voice slick with static.

“We’ll drop a secondary to wrap this up.

End the show the way it’s supposed to end.

You, and that trembling wannabe ‘final girl’ curled on your floor.

She’s not a survivor, Jaxen—she’s just filler.

Meat dressed up to die pretty. And if you won’t put her down, someone else will. ”

Cold rage floats up my spine and sets. “Say that again.”

“You heard him,” Rory adds, the little echo with a tie. “I already have a secondary hunter ready at an undisclosed entry point. Wrap the variable or we send him in and he wraps you both.”

I stare at the door long enough to see my reflection warp in the helmet. “You try that, and I’ll crawl out of these trees and end you where you sit, Milo. Your name will be the next message I write on a lens.”

“Kill her,” Milo says. “Or we send him in. Last warn?—”

I rip the comm out of my ear, slam it under my boot, and grind until plastic screams. The crack sounds like bone. Feels like a promise.

When I look back, she’s watching me over the blanket. Wide-eyed, chewing her lip, trying to read the violence rolling off me like smoke.

I cross the room, hook two fingers under the blanket edge, and tug it higher so the draft stops hitting her collarbone. “Listen.”

Her lashes flutter. “Jaxen…” she says it soft at first, then sharper, lips curling into a smirk that doesn’t quite hide the tremble. “So that’s the big scary hunter’s real name? Jaxen. Fucking anticlimactic.”

I crouch, my shadow swallowing hers, voice low enough to crawl under her skin. “Careful, clickbait. You don’t want to find out how many ways I can make you choke on my name.”

Her chin tips up, cocky despite the shake in her hands. “Maybe I already have.”

My fingers wrap around her wrist, firm, claiming.

I tilt her face toward me so she sees the truth in my eyes.

“There’s another hunter out there. A replacement.

He won’t hesitate. He won’t spare you. If I’m not back before sunrise, you vanish.

But if I am, and I fucking will be, you don’t open this door for anyone but me.

You breathe for me. You fucking bleed for me. No one else.”

She laughs, bitter and shaky. “You ruin me, use my body against my will, then give me pep talks like some fucked-up boyfriend. Which one is it, huh? Executioner or bodyguard?”

“Both,” I growl, closing in until the boards creak behind her back.

“And we’re not gonna sit here and fucking act like you didn’t love it, Olivia.

Don’t bother lying. I felt the way your body begged for me, the way you shook when I made you cum.

Your mouth can play defiant all it wants, but your cunt already told me the truth. ”

Her throat bobs. “And if I don’t stay put? If I decide I don’t wanna play your guard dog’s good little pet?”

My grip tightens. Just enough to make her gasp. “Then you die. Not by my hands. By his. And that’s the only outcome I won’t allow. You’re mine. I’ll fucking burn this game down before I let someone else put their hands on what’s mine.”

The blanket slips from her shoulder. Her eyes go glassy, defiance fighting with something hotter. She wants to bite back. She also wants to believe me.

Her lashes flutter like that word hit somewhere deep she doesn’t have language for. She swallows and nods. It’s not surrender. It’s survival. I’ll take it.

“Stay put,” I say, voice sharp. “No hero shit. You hear footsteps that aren’t mine, you bury yourself in the dark and stay quiet. Don’t even fucking breathe.”

Her throat works. She nods, but her eyes glass over, one tear sliding hot down her cheek.

I catch it with my thumb before it falls. My glove’s off now, bare skin against hers, rough but careful. I tilt her face up, make her look at me.

“Don’t worry,” I murmur, low and dangerous, the promise burning in my chest. “I’ll kill every fucking thing in this forest before I let anyone touch you. Before I let anyone take you. Believe that, if you don’t believe anything else.”

For a second, the air goes still. Her fingers tighten over my wrist like she’s holding me there, like she wants to believe. Like she’s already starting to.

Silent agreement. Good clickbait.