Page 66 of Omega Hunted

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why…” I stopped when he shook his head.

“I like it.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I… I think I’d rather you kissed me here.” He touched his lips, and for a heartbeat I froze. My wolf surged forward so hard it stole the air from my lungs, but it wasn’t his turn for control. This was Soren. His choice. His words.

“Soren?” I asked.

“I’ve never known… I haven’t ever… please?”

I crossed the room slowly, giving him every chance to change his mind. He didn’t. If anything, he leaned towards me before I reached him. I cupped his face with care, terrified of going too quickly, and brushed my lips over his. It was meant to be another gentle kiss, but it lasted less than a second before Soren’s fingers slid into the front of my sweatshirt and held on, and something inside me cracked.

I kissed him again, slower this time, and he answered with a soft sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. His lips parted beneath mine, not from urgency but from trust, and I felt the careful control I’d clung to begin to slip away. My thumb brushed his cheek while my other hand settled at the back of his neck, holding him as though he were something precious enough to break.

Peaches. The faint sweetness that was Soren. There was no heat in his scent; he was pregnant. This wasn’t biological imperative; this was simply Soren, and apparently that was enough to make my wolf lose his damn mind.

He kissed me back with a desperation that hurt, and every hesitant press of his tongue felt as if he was asking if this was real, and every time I answered him, he came a little closer. His forehead rested against mine when we broke apart, both of us breathing harder than we should have been.

“I’ve wanted to do that for days,” he admitted, his cheeks flushing.

I closed my eyes. He deserved to know the confusion of denying my wolf, of the desperate need clawing inside me. I should have all the words to explain why I needed to leave him, to back away. I carried a broken bond. I loved Raff. I couldn’t do this, but when he lifted his beautiful ice-green gaze to mine, I found I couldn’t lie.

“So have I.”

Asha chose that moment to kick hard enough that Soren laughed in surprise, the sound breaking whatever spell had settled over us. He covered his stomach, still smiling, and I let my hand fall away.

Reality came back all at once.

We weren’t two men stealing a kiss that meant nothing. We were an alpha with a grieving heart and a frightened pregnant omega carrying a child who depended on both of us.

“Goodnight, Soren,” I said.

“Goodnight, Cassian.”

I left the room with my wolf pacing circles inside me, already knowing a single kiss hadn’t made anything easier.

It had only shown me what I’d been desperate not to want.

Chapter Twenty-One

SOREN

The morning after Cassian had kissed me properly, I woke before he did and lay very still, listening to the house breathe around us.

The storm had deepened overnight. I could hear it pressing against the windows, not in sharp gusts now, but in a steady weight of snow and wind that made the old glass creak in its frames. The world beyond the house had vanished into white. No road, no bridge, no forest edge I could make out from where I lay in the nest. Just the mountain closing in around us, sealing us away from everything I’d run from.

I should have been frightened.

Even a week ago, I would have been. The idea of being trapped anywhere with an alpha would have hollowed me out with panic until I couldn’t breathe, but Cassian slept beside me in wolf form, one huge warm flank pressed along the outside of the nest, his head resting near my hip and one paw stretched across the blankets as if he’d put himself there to keep me and Asha from sliding out into the cold. He wasn’t blocking me in. Not really. There was room to move if I needed it. There was always room because he made sure of it, even asleep. Still, my cat had curled into the warmth of him sometime before dawn, and my hand had found the thick fur at his shoulder, fingers buried there as though I’d been holding on all night.

I didn’t let go.

The kiss should have made everything more complicated. Maybe it had. Maybe I was too tired to understand how much damage we’d done to the careful lines we’d drawn between us. Cassian had kissed my forehead every night as though it was something safe and permitted, a kindness that asked for nothing back. Then last night I’d asked him for more, and he’d gone so still I’d almost taken the words back. But he’d waited. Asked if I was sure. Given me every chance to change my mind before he came closer and touched his mouth to mine.

I pressed my fingers deeper into his fur and closed my eyes.

He’d tasted of mint and snow, and somehow the kiss had been gentle and devastating at the same time. Not claiming. Not taking. Not the hard press of an alpha deciding what an omega owed him. Cassian had kissed me as if I was something precious he had no right to hold, and when I’d kissed him back, something inside me had opened so painfully that I’d nearly cried into his mouth.

My cat stirred, lazy and chilled beneath my ribs.

Ours, he said, with the smug certainty of someone who had decided this days ago and was only waiting for me to catch up.