Page 59 of Omega Hunted

Ask him, he said.

No.

Ask him.

“You called out the name Raff in your sleep,” I blurted. My cat was joyful; I was pissed. You’re an asshole! “You’ve mentioned him before.” I glanced down at the clothes I wore, loose sweats I’d had to poke holes in, so they sat over my belly, and a pale lemon T-shirt with a band logo on the front. I’d never heard of The Cheetahs, but it was a well-worn shirt.

Cassian went still for a moment with his mug halfway to his mouth. He set it down, then focused on the counter instead of me.

“He was my omega. We were bonded,” he said. “He died three years ago.”

I knew about bonds the way most people did. They were something that happened to other people, rare enough to be almost mythological, like a male omega being able to carry a baby to term, or dragons. One in several thousand shifters. A mate-bond was permanent, involuntary, and total, and a connection that rewrote your biology around another person. It didn’t break when they died. It tore. And when it tore, almost always, the surviving mate followed within months, if not days. I’d read that the grief alone was enough. The body stopped cooperating.

“Three years ago?” I asked in case I’d misheard. After three years, how was Cassian still alive?

“Yeah.” He picked his mug back up and took a slow drink, and I had so many questions, the biggest of which was why he was still here. He sighed. “And, before you ask, what’s keeping me alive is finishing things in the house, making it ready to pass on to the Haven Network.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” I lied. “How did he… I mean… was he ill?”

“No, he was killed.”

Compassion flooded me, and the horror of what he’d just revealed was too much to bear. “Someone killed your omega? That’s… Goddess, I’m so sorry.”

Cassian shook his head. “He was on my ORT team.”

“You had an omega working in the Omega Rescue Teams?” That didn’t make sense—omegas weren’t the big guys who could handle other alphas abusing omegas; we were the ones who needed rescuing.

“Raff could handle himself. Could read a situation faster than any of us. We used that in the team.”

“He sounds amazing,” I said, stunned at that description when I’d understood that omegas were fragile and used for menial work or imprisoned like me to bear children in advantageous contracts if it was possible.

He half smiled. “At first, he drove me insane because he was nothing like any other omega I’d ever met. He had opinions about everything, and he never once kept them to himself, and he’d argue with me in front of the whole unit and be right every single time, which was—” He stopped. Shook his head. “He grew on me. And then we bonded. And then—” He picked up his mug. Looked into it. “Yeah,” he said, and didn’t finish.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and touched my belly. “If Asha is an omega, I hope she’s brave and opinionated and can be a part of something bigger for omegas. I want her to be braver than I am, for sure. Stronger.”

Cassian offered an expression that told me he had very little patience for what I’d just said.

“Heavily pregnant, no plan, no support, and somehow you got away from where a crime family put you, drove through a whiteout in the mountains, and when you wrecked the car, you crawled out of it and kept going.” He set his mug down. “You got here. And you let a strange alpha wolf into your nest in the dark because you were hurting and you needed help, and I’ve known trained operatives who couldn’t have made that call.” He picked his mug back up as though the conversation was finished. “Asha is going to be exactly as brave as her father. That’s more than enough.”

My throat closed, and I felt a swell of huge emotion.

He nodded once, as if we’d agreed on something, and went to refill the kettle. We ate in companionable silence for a while, until it occurred to me I hadn’t told him about what happened in the shower.

“You said I should tell you if anything changed.” He stopped mid-action and turned to me. “I had a contraction, and it could be pre-labor.”

“Fuck.” He said it under his breath, already crossing to the table, already picking up his phone. His hands were steady, but his expression wasn’t. He found the contact, hit dial, and pressed the phone flat on the table between us.

It rang twice.

“Cassian.” Brec’s voice, alert, unhurried.

“You’re on speaker. Soren says he’s had a contraction.”

A beat. Then: “Soren.”

“Hi Brec.”

“I’m going to ask you some questions, and some of them are going to be personal. Cassian’s there, and depending on what you tell me, he may need to be involved in what happens next. Do you feel comfortable with him still? Do I have your permission to talk with him in the room?”