The car smelled like leather and something sharper beneath it, antiseptic, faint but present, as if the air itself had been wiped down and told to behave.
Outside the tinted windows, the convoy kept its shape with quiet discipline in black vehicles pacing them like shadows with engines. Chris could feel it even without looking: the attention, the perimeter, the invisible net being held taut around them.
And under all of it, like a second layer of protection no camera could catch, Dax's pheromones threaded through the cabin to mark everything around him.
Dax sat close, knee brushing Chris's, as if closeness could turn lying into a harmless habit.
His hand was properly bandaged now. Gauze, tape, and the neat efficiency of someone else's hands on him, most likely Nadia's, because Dax would rather bleed in secret than admit he needed assistance unless it came from someone he trusted to be ruthless about it.
The injury itself looked ridiculous.
