Page 70 of Omega Hunted

It didn’t look unfinished to me. It looked ready, waiting for the first omega desperate enough to need it. Anyone who made it this far would find locked gates, cameras, warmth, food, and Cassian standing between them and whatever they were running from.

“So, this place is meant for omegas who need somewhere safe?”

“Yes.”

I checked the screens, working through what it meant. Nobody could walk onto this property without him knowing. Nobody could drive up the mountain unseen. Every approach was covered, every angle accounted for, and somewhere in my chest the tightness started to loosen on its own.

“You’re a good alpha, Cassian.”

He stiffened. “It was all Raff’s idea. I’m doing it for him.”

I huffed, “And for the many omegas who might need your help.” I viewed quiet images of empty woodland, at how still and ordinary they were, nothing moving anywhere on any of them, and when I spoke, my voice had lost most of its edge. “You really did build a fortress.”

“I built a sanctuary.” He crossed to the desk and picked up a photograph, a small smile touching his face as he held it out to me. “But this is what I wanted to show you. My ORT team.”

I took it carefully. “There’s you,” I said.

“Yep. That’s Brec, our medic.”

“The one smiling.”

“Yep, and that’s Ronan, and my… my Raff.” He pointed, and my attention settled on the men beside him, seeing a similarity in Raff to the shifter who’d rescued me from Center 14.

“Raff looks like Ronan.”

A smile got away from him before he could stop it. “They’re brothers. Raff was the youngest.”

“I can see it now. The eyes.”

“And the nose.”

“The smile’s different.”

He laughed, easier than I’d heard him laugh in a while. “Completely different. Unless he was messing with the team, Ronan spent most of his life as though smiling might kill him, and Raff smiled enough for both.”

I studied the picture again, lingering on Raff’s finger guns, and something about the photo made me all warm inside. “He looks happy.”

“He usually was.” The words came out warm, not pained. “We’d come back from rescues exhausted, wondering how we’d survive another week, and somehow Raff would have everyone laughing before we’d even finished cleaning our weapons.” He smiled.

I traced a fingertip just above Raff’s face without touching the glass of the frame itself. “I wish I’d known him, omega to omega.”

“He would’ve liked you.”

I frowned. “You can’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Because he would recognize bravery and determination, and he would have wrapped you in three blankets, filled the kitchen with food, and spent the rest of the evening trying to convince you this mountain was the safest place on earth. He saw every child as a gift, same as me.” He stared down at Raff’s grin, frozen forever in the photograph, young and certain of things that time hadn’t touched. “He’d have spoiled you and Asha”

I handed the picture back with the same care he’d used giving it to me. “Thank you for showing me.”

He set it beside the keyboard, and I got the strongest feeling that I’d been introduced to family.

We headed back to the kitchen, where the fire crackled softly, and another sheet of snow slid from the roof outside. He made fresh tea, and I stared down at the battered green wolf mug warming my hands and understood why Cassian had kept it all these years. It wasn’t because it reminded him that Raff had died.

It was because every chipped mug, every blanket, every book, every ridiculous little thing Raff had left behind reminded him how beautifully he’d lived.