Page 27 of Omega Hunted

“I know,” I said quietly. “But you’re exhausted, you’re injured, and pregnant.” Regret hit before I’d even finished speaking. I’d reduced him to everything that made him vulnerable, not the sheer strength it had taken to escape Center 14, steal a car, drive through a blizzard, and drag himself out of a snowbank with his daughter still alive inside him. My wolf growled low in my chest.

Be kind.

Soren’s expression shuttered. Hurt flickered across his face before he buried it so quickly most people would have missed it. He swallowed hard, pushed himself away from the table, and took a step toward the hallway.

“Soren.”

He kept moving.

“Wait.” I tried to block him, not fast, not threatening, just putting myself between him and the door the way I’d put myself between exits and targets for a decade of my life, and he stopped, but his shoulders had already gone up around his ears, and his chin had dropped, and his whole body had hunched inward, protective. He was breathing fast.

“You can’t keep me here.” His voice shook, stretched thin with panic. “You’re not my alpha. You were ORT. Ronan said you worked with Haven, that you helped omegas. You’re supposed to be on my side. You don’t have the right to keep me here.”

“I am on your side, and I’m not keeping you anywhere,” I said with exaggerated patience, which I was sure sounded patronizing as fuck. Breathe. “I’m telling you the road is impassable, your car is totaled at the bottom of my hill, and you’re not strong enough to walk in the conditions outside. You’re not a prisoner.”

He went bone-white and took another step sideways, working the angle and looking for space around me.

I stepped with him.

“Move,” he demanded.

“Soren…”

I reached out—not for him, just to block the frame, hand to the doorway—and Soren flinched. Not a small flinch. A full-body recoil, both arms coming up and crossing over his belly. Then he was going down, controlled but fast, folding toward the floor until he was on his knees, both hands wrapped over his head, his whole body curled inward around the curve of the baby, making himself as small as he could. The sound he made—a short, sharp catch of breath—sliced right through me.

I went still.

My hand was still on the doorframe. I hadn’t touched him. I hadn’t been anywhere near him. And he was on the floor in front of me, breathing in ragged pulls, shaking badly now, protecting her with every inch of himself while he waited for what came next.

My wolf dropped to silence.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” I stepped back, both hands up, away from the frame, away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” My voice came out rough and quiet. “I’m not going to touch you. Check my hands.”

He didn’t look up.

“Soren.” I crouched, keeping distance, keeping myself lower than him, because everything in me that had spent ten years reading threat levels in people’s bodies knew that my size and my designation was the problem right now, not the door. “I’m not—” The words felt inadequate. Useless. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re an alpha.” His voice came up muffled, still curled in. “That’s what alphas do.” he’d gone from confident and certain to a mess of pain in a few minutes, and it was all my fault. My chest hurt.

I didn’t have an argument. The anger drained out of me so fast I was hollow. That’s what alphas do. Nobody should have to defend their right to exist the way Soren did, but somewhere along the way the world had convinced him they did.

My wolf fell silent, the silence that came before violence, while a cold fury spread through me so completely all I wanted was to shift and tear apart every person who’d ever made him afraid. And Soren was on the floor of my hallway with his arms over his head, waiting for a blow that wasn’t coming, and I was the reason he was there.

I lowered myself the rest of the way until I was sitting on the floor, back against the opposite wall, both legs stretched out, hands open on my knees. Getting as unthreatening as an alpha wolf my size was capable of.

“I’m sitting down,” I said. “I’m against the wall. I’m not between you and the door anymore.”

A pause. Stillness. Then he lifted his head. He was pale and shaking, his eyes were wet, and he was exhausted.

“The door’s right there,” I said. “I’m not touching you. I’m not blocking you. If you want to go, go.”

He didn’t move.

“I just—” I stopped. Tried again. “I need you to understand that I don’t—I’m not—” Fuck. When had words become this hard? I hadn’t stumbled over a sentence in years, and now I was sitting on my own hallway floor trying to tell a frightened omega that despite everything, I wasn’t going to hurt him, and nothing I reached for felt like enough. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

His breathing was slowing, in increments, but he was still watching me the way he’d watched me eat breakfast, expecting me to do something awful.

“You’ve been angry since I got here,” he said.