Page 37 of Omega Hunted

I told myself it was the pregnancy. It had to be. Maybe carrying Asha had scrambled something inside me. Maybe I was so exhausted, so desperate for somewhere to stop running, that I’d stopped recognizing danger when it was standing right in front of me. None of those explanations felt convincing.

Cassian’s wolf didn’t stalk closer or stare me down. He didn’t make me feel cornered. He watched while I filled my glass, his body stretched across the gap between the house and whatever waited outside in the darkness. There was no threat in him. No expectation. No demand for anything I couldn’t give.

Safe, my cat said quietly.

I looked away first, suddenly unable to meet those amber eyes. I wasn’t as ready to believe in safety as my cat was.

I filled the glass. My hands were steady, and I drank it all standing at the sink, refilled it, although I’d be peeing all night now, and then I turned around.

“I’m going to get something to eat if that is okay,” I told him because it felt rude not to say anything, and he was clearly paying attention. “And then I’ll go back upstairs.”

He tilted his head, listening to me, and then put his head back down on his huge paws.

I found bread, then butter, and stood at the counter and ate it, then drank my second water, while my cat kept his eyes on the wolf in the corner. When I was done, I rinsed the glass, put it upside down by the sink, and turned to go.

“Goodnight,” I said to the wolf, who lifted his head, blinked at me, then stretched with a wide yawn, revealing his cat-killing teeth. Why wasn’t I nervous? A predator that size, focused on me, should have made every instinct scream danger, but instead I saw that he was safety, and that no one could get to me without going through him first. I barely knew Cassian. He didn’t want me here. But whatever was waiting for me out there in the world couldn’t reach me tonight because there was a wolf the size of a small horse stretched across the threshold, and every instinct I had trusted him to hold the line.

Safe, my cat repeated.

I took a step closer, held out a hand, and shuffled nearer, and he reached up and sniffed my fingers, nudging my hand, and then curling back into himself.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Back in my room, I used the bathroom, then rebuilt the nest from the places it had shifted, not thinking about the fact that I’d put the pillow with the strongest scent of Cassian at the top. My cat put his head down as soon as I pulled the blankets around us, and said home one more time, but I was too tired to correct him.

I should have slept deeply, but the nightmares returned.

Chapter Fourteen

CASSIAN

My wolf watched Soren go upstairs, then after a few moments, I shifted, got coffee, walked the rooms, and checked the locks. Three years of doing exactly that meant I noticed the smallest changes without thinking. There was a glass by the sink that wasn’t mine. The kitchen smelled faintly of peaches beneath the coffee, his scent drifting downstairs before he did, and for one strange moment the house felt… lived in. I took my fur and padded to the base of the stairs and stayed there, listening. His footsteps were careful and slow. I heard the bedroom door opening, the creak of him moving around, using the bathroom, and I could imagine him getting into bed, trying to get comfortable, and only when it all went quiet did my mind stop churning. I was in a permanent debate with my wolf over whether we should be down here at the door or up in our bedroom curled up next to Soren—he said yes, I said no fucking way—but there was no decision to be made, and my wolf needed to realize that. Soren trusted me to stay away, and I was a good man and had integrity and moral strength.

Damn it.

Until his nightmares started.

My wolf hadn’t been happy; as soon as I’d shifted back into guard mode, he’d taken us upstairs and paced after the third cry, and I had to work to keep him outside the locked room. An omega had every right to privacy and protection and wouldn’t want an alpha on the other side of a door he’d locked. So, I curled up just inside the spare room, with my door open, and I listened and hated every second of it.

I knew what dreaming of fear smelled like. The moment I rounded the corner and saw Raff bleeding out under the sodium streetlights; I knew a fear so intense it took me to my knees. I heard the change in Soren’s breath, the low sound from deep in the throat, not quite a word and not quite a cry, his scent changing from warm peach to something burnt and harsh. His breathing hitched, and his heartbeat spiked, and I could feel all that through the door.

When the light eventually changed, his nightmares stopped, and I headed down to the kitchen and shifted, standing for a moment in the grey pre-dawn, then tugged on the sweats I’d left folded on the chair.

My wolf settled when I took my skin, but still listened, and I opened my laptop before I started the coffee. Old habit—check the networks first, then eat. The A/O bulletin board loaded slowly on the satellite connection, and I scrolled past the usual noise. Land notices. Pack disputes. Contraband alerts out of the eastern territories.

Then the bounty post that Ronan had spoken about, only a day old and already with forty-seven responses.

The photo was poor quality, taken from something official—an ID maybe, or a registration record. But it was Soren.

I read it twice.

Omega. Snow leopard. Traveling alone. Believed to be in distress. The reward figure sat at the bottom, and it was not a small number. Safe return to family. No questions asked.

The contact was listed as anonymous, routed through a third-party handler, nothing about Soren being pregnant.

“Fuck,” I muttered and tapped the table as I thought this through.

The bounty was the problem, not just the significant amount, which was enough to draw serious people, but also its structure. An anonymous post, no named alpha, and no questions asked wasn’t the kind of begging from someone who cared about their missing omega. Bonded mates who cared hired lawyers, filed registry claims, and worked the legal system. Whoever had posted this wanted Soren returned without a paper trail, which meant they didn’t want anyone asking questions about what returned meant.