Chapter 2
Chapter Two
CASSIAN
The shattered remains of our bond tightened in my chest, that old, relentless ache settling beneath my ribs as another perfect winter morning arrived without the soul I’d been born to love.
Fresh snow covered the mountain, softening everything until, for a moment, I could almost see the life we should have had.
Raff and me finding this house by accident.
Two wolves tearing through the drifts, chasing each other between the trees until we collapsed together in the snow.
Standing here afterward, cold and breathless and stupidly happy, already knowing this was home.
Years we thought were ours. Summers on the mountain.
Winters buried beneath snow. Arguments and laughter and ordinary mornings when neither of us appreciated how precious ordinary could be.
We were supposed to grow older here. Fill this house with memories.
Make it a safe space for omegas like him.
Wake up beside each other until neither of us remembered what it was to sleep alone.
None of it happened, and three years after losing Raff, the mountain was still here, the seasons still turned, and the house still waited for a future that would never come. Somehow, I was still here too, going through the motions of a life I no longer understood how to want.
Big flakes drifted through the pines surrounding the property as I trotted the eastern fence line, nose down, paws breaking through the crisp, untouched white beneath me.
Six more inches overnight, maybe ten in the drifts, and the worst of winter was here.
By afternoon, it’d be sloughing off the cedars in wet sheets.
The creek carried its sharp mineral scent where the current still ran beneath the frozen edges.
A rabbit had crossed the trail before dawn.
A fox had followed, and the fox had won.
I caught the coppery note of the kill at the base of a cedar and circled it, marking it with my own scent. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I worked the perimeter—methodical, clockwise, no shortcuts. Past the western gate, past the old stone wall where the ground dipped, and the cameras had a blind spot I’d patched twice and didn’t trust. Past the place I’d hauled a fallen birch out of the road in November.
Nothing on the wind. Nothing in the dirt. No prints I hadn’t put there.
Raff’s grave sat at the last stop on my patrol, tucked beneath the pines at the edge of the property where the snow drifted deepest if storms rolled in from the north.
I slowed when I reached it, paws sinking deeper through snow as I circled once before stopping beside the stone.
No dates. No scripture. No lies about him being somewhere better.
Just his name.
RAFFERTY MOREAU
Three years later, I still ended every patrol beside him.
Three years later, I still didn’t know how to leave.
Snow had settled overnight into the engraved letters, and my scent ringed the grave from the week’s patrols until the ground around him smelled so strongly of me it would’ve warned any stranger away long before they reached the house.
I lowered onto my haunches beside the stone, barely feeling the cold through my thick fur as snow clung to my legs and chest and the wind moved softly through the pines overhead, then leaned forward and nudged the top of the headstone with my nose, brushing the fresh powder from the granite.
I huffed, and my tail thumped once against the snow.
And then I spoke to him.
The generator’s serviced. Water filtration is done. I finally replaced those rotten fence posts you kept telling me would fall over one day. You were right. Three of them snapped as soon as I put any weight on them.
I rested my chin on the cold stone.
You would tell me the house is ready, Raff. Better than it was when you first drew the plans on the back of that takeout menu.
Back then, it had been Raff’s idea.
We’d come back from another rescue, both of us filthy, exhausted, and angry because we’d had nowhere safe to take the omega we’d rescued from an SED run facility. We’d bounced him between safe houses, praying each one would hold long enough for the Haven Network to move him again.
Raff had looked at me over a mug of terrible station coffee and said, “We should build our own.” Somewhere warm, anonymous, and forgotten by the rest of the world. He’d started drawing plans, and I’d fallen in love with Raff’s dream because I’d already fallen in love with him.
This mountain sat barely ten miles from the northern border, close enough that Raff had seen possibilities in the peace and quiet.
We’d spent evenings in the vast empty place with maps spread across the table while he sketched plans that grew more ambitious every time we talked.
He’d wanted this house to become more than our home.
He’d wanted it to become one of the quiet places whispered about as part of the Haven Network.
Somewhere frightened omegas could disappear for a while before heading on to the next safe house, another link in the chain carrying them north and out of reach of the families and organizations that hunted them.
I’m not ready yet.
I can’t let omegas into this house.
I can’t be this person anymore.
Everything I’d done to this place since he’d died had simply been keeping a promise we’d made together.
Your coffee maker’s dying again.
You remember? The one we had in our apartment?
Still making that choking noise every morning.
So, I’m using the backup one, but it’s not as good.
I would have ordered another one, but the storm’s bad, and I think we’re gonna be closed in for the rest of the winter.
My wolf whined quietly, and guilt consumed me.
I’m sorry I’m thinking of replacing your coffee machine. I know how much you loved that old thing.
He was beyond caring about things that seemed so damned tragic to me, and I whined again as the trees creaked softly in the wind.
My wolf still reached for Raff every morning in those few blurred seconds before I was fully awake, searching for the other half of himself and finding the same terrible emptiness. That was the cruelty of surviving a broken bond. Time didn’t heal. You simply learned how to carry the absence.
Wolves with shattered bonds weren’t supposed to survive. Some walked into the woods and never came back. Others held on for months, even years, until the emptiness finally became heavier than whatever kept them breathing.
Three years later, against every instinct that told me I should have followed Raff into death, I was still here. Only because he’d made me promise I would keep living, and in those final moments, when I would have promised him anything, I’d given him my word.
“Finish it,” he’d said.
So, I’d spent three years turning Raff’s sketches into reinforced walls, hidden rooms, and an escape tunnel. Every camera, every steel door, every foot of wiring was another promise kept to the man I’d loved.
The house was almost finished.
I wasn’t ready to hand it over to the Haven Network.
We’d had so many plans, and Raff had passed over original sanctuary plans to Haven.
But we’d never completed the project. Hell, the Haven Network didn’t even know it existed now.
I’d cut every tie after Raff died, telling myself I was protecting everyone when the truth was uglier.
I couldn’t bear to fill these rooms with frightened omegas when every corner still held the life he and I had planned.
So, I’d kept building while promising myself I’d make the call tomorrow.
Tomorrow became three years.
Even so, finishing what Raff started gave me a reason to stand up each morning.
Coffee. Patrol the property. Reinforce another window.
Check another camera. Stock another shelf.
Keep moving. Most days, the routine kept the grief somewhere I could survive it, but today, standing beside his grave with a restless unease crawling beneath my skin, it wasn’t enough.
For one ugly second, instinct surged hard enough that I almost threw my head back and howled for him, the animal part of me still refusing to understand that nothing had answered in three years and nothing ever would. I stayed there anyway, staring at the grave.
You should still be here.
My omega soul.
My Raff.
For a heartbeat I imagined I caught his scent before the cold swept through me again, leaving only snow, trees, and the silence my wolf still circled instinctively. I wanted to lie down beside him and let winter bury me.
Not today, my wolf growled. Finish this house for Raff.
I pushed myself upright and headed home.
The Victorian rose through the trees as I crested the hill, three stories of dark stone, built in 1894, isolated five miles up a mountain road that winter buried every year. By January, the hunters disappeared, deliveries stopped, and even the sheriff only came if someone was dying.
The deeper the snow became, the quieter the world grew.
It was the perfect place to hide.
Or to wait to die.
I loped out of the tree line and slowed at the back step.
The shift took me at the door—fast and familiar, no more drama than cracking my neck.
The cold hit differently on bare skin. I caught the rail to keep my balance through the last of it and reached blindly for the hook where gray sweatpants, soft from a hundred washes, were hanging, and I dragged them on without looking.
The kitchen was warm. I’d left the wood stove banked overnight, and it was still throwing out heat; my emergency coffee maker was already eight minutes into its cycle, the smell hitting me harder on two legs than it would’ve on four.
Eggs, then. Four, scrambled, and the rest of yesterday’s bread torn up on the side of the plate.
I ate standing at the counter with the dish towel slung over my shoulder.
The snow kept coming down outside the window, slower now, the flakes thinning. I watched it the whole time I ate.
The two-way on the corner of the counter crackled.