Chapter 4
Chapter Four
CASSIAN
The omega’s weight was nothing as he slumped unconscious, and gripping him under his thighs and shoulders, I ran barefoot in the snow.
Coming down the road as a wolf, there hadn’t been time after to grab anything from the back step, and there sure as hell wasn’t time now.
The road was a mess of white, the wind bitter, but my body was burning hot enough to take it for as long as needed.
Three miles back to the house. Uphill all the way. I’d done worse runs.
The omega mumbled into my throat.
Half-words I couldn’t quite catch, breath shallow, and his face was wet on my neck.
Snow melt? Tears, maybe? Whatever it was, the cold of it was startling.
He shouldn’t have been this cold. He was already past shivering and into the still, dangerous quiet that came after.
I looked away almost immediately. He was too pale, almost thin, with a cut under his hair that was running with blood, bruises on his face, but beneath all that, there was something beautiful that sat wrong beside the damage.
My wolf noticed before I did, settling with a low, satisfied rumble that had nothing to do with rescuing an injured omega.
Help him.
I clamped down on him hard. Down, I told him.
Down. Now. He’d never been a wolf who took orders well from me, and he didn’t want to take this one either.
He strained against the cage of my will, every step, every quarter mile, his attention locked on the slight omega in my arms with a focus that horrified me.
My wolf was the most awake he’d been since the night Raff died, straining toward the small cold weight in my arms with a focus that made the scar in my chest pull tight, and the only thing I could do was run.
He was fully present for the first time in years.
For a stranger.
Help him.
Ours to watch.
“He’s not ours.”
I shoved him back so hard my jaw locked, and my scar burned.
The road kept rising. Snow was coming down again, heavier, settling on his hair where his face was tucked into my throat, settling on the back of my hand under his thigh, melting where his body pressed to mine, and freezing on every patch where it didn’t.
My shoulders and calves burned. None of it mattered. I ran.
I slipped on a patch of ice and nearly went down, caught it at the last instant with my hip against the bank, forced myself upright, and ran on, the snow burning on my naked skin, my feet aching with the cold.
The omega made a thin sound. He burrowed closer without waking, seeking warmth or safety or both, and my wolf reacted.
Mine.
The possessive surge hit so hard I almost stumbled. “Hold on,” I ordered, without knowing whether the words were for the stranger or for me. “Almost there.”
The gate.
I came up the long drive at a hard run, the man in my arms making a wounded noise I tried not to hear and shouldered through the back step into the kitchen. The warmth hit me at the door after miles of ice.
Up the staircase, two at a time, slipping on the tiled floor
My bedroom on the second floor was the only one in the house with a working fireplace.
The door opened under my shoulder, and I laid him on the covers, and then for a beat I couldn’t move, because his eyes were half-open and finding mine as he gripped my hair and reached for me with blind instinct, choosing me as the safest thing in reach.
“Let go,” I said gently, but his grip didn’t loosen. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving. Let me make a fire.”
His fingers finally released me, and my wolf whined at the loss.
The fire went up faster than any I’d ever built—kindling, paper, two logs, the long match, the draft pulling clean—crackling inside ninety seconds.
By the time I turned back, the omega was on his side with his eyes closed, and that small instinctive curl, that worse-than-shivering stillness, did something to me too, and three strides took me back to the bed.
“All right,” I said. “I apologize in advance, okay? I’m going to get you out of these wet things. I’m going to be quick, and I’m going to get you warm. Please don’t fight me. I won’t hurt you.”
He didn’t fight at all, but he didn’t help, either.
The pajamas peeled off him with the tear of wet cloth, and underneath, his body was small and pale and so cold the skin was the wrong color.
There were abrasions high on one shoulder and across his hip from the crash, and his swollen belly was right there.
I scraped back his long hair, not blond, but the palest silver-white, and covered him with the bed covers, then the wool throw from the foot of the bed, and I dragged the blanket off the chair beside the fireplace.
His knees came up toward his belly—bundle posture, drilled into me a long time ago, for shock—and I tucked him in.
His pulse was too slow, and the baby moved under the blanket—a small, distinct shove against my forearm where it crossed his belly.
For one second, I forgot where I was.
Forgot the snow. Forgot Ronan and the ORT. Forgot the stranger in my bed.
Help him.
I crossed to the unit in the corner and opened the second drawer. What I needed was hidden beneath a false bottom, not because anyone was likely to find it, but because old habits ran deep. I yanked out the charged burner phone and switched it on.
The phone held one number, the only one I’d ever needed it for. On the third ring, a voice I hadn’t heard in far too long answered with caution. The one man left in the world I trusted with my life, and now with the terrified omega in my bed.
“Hello?”
“Brec? It’s me,” was all I said.
A long silence followed—did I need to explain who I was? Had it been that long?
“Alpha?” His voice cracked a little on it.
I’m not your fucking alpha, my wolf snarled hard enough to scrape the inside of my skull.
“I need medical advice.”
“You…Cass…” Another silence, then, “Are you okay? Are you hurt—”
“Pregnant omega crashed his car on my property. He was in the snow for a while.”
“A what…? A pregnant… Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, okay. What’ve you got?”
I gave him what I had from my stranger. Pulse.
Color. Core temperature, best guess. The cut on his forehead.
Pajamas. The curl. All of this I could deal with after an accident.
Hell, I knew how to deal with hypothermia, with a head wound, and I’d checked for broken bones and breathing, but a baby?
I had no idea how to handle that other than pass an omega in need to a medical team.
“How pregnant?” Brec was all business.
“He’s big?” Yep, that was about as useful as I could get.
“Baby’s heartbeat?”
I allowed my wolf front and center, and he preened as I placed my ear to his stomach and heard a strong, fast heartbeat underneath the stranger’s steady one. “Fast but strong.”
“What type of shifter?” he asked.
That was easy enough; my wolf knew instinctively. “Cat.”
“What kind of cat?”
“I don’t fucking know, white hair, pale green eyes, small, Brec, just help me fix him!”
“Okay, okay, focus.”
“I am focused!”
“Listen up,” Brec began with steady patience. “Don’t warm him fast. Body warmth, not heat. Skin to skin if you have to.”
My wolf whined, and I went completely still.
The last person I’d shared a bed with was Raff.
Three years of sleeping alone, waiting to die. Could I be that close to an omega again? I glanced at him, curled under three blankets and shivering himself toward organ failure.
Fuck.
Brec was still talking. “No bath or hot shower, and no hot water bottles, no alcohol if he comes around. Watch his pulse—if it gets erratic, no moving him, no propping him up, no letting him stand if he wakes. Depending on how far along he is, his blood volume varies; the placenta acts as a temperature buffer that works in both directions. Is he in pain?”
“Unconscious. Sleeping. I don’t know.”
“He needs a hospital.”
“The bridge is out; we’re stuck here.”
“For how long?”
“I could get out, but you know he can’t fucking shift, and we’re in the middle of a storm and closed down for winter! Fuck, I don’t know.” God, I sounded as if I was losing my shit.
“Okay, okay. The head wound. Is he still bleeding?”
“No, it’s stopped.”
“Okay, usual procedure for watching him for—”
“On it.”
“Cass–”
My wolf was impatient; he wanted the omega safe. “I’ll warm him and call you back.”
“Cass, wait—”
I hung up, and the fire burned, and the room warmed, and I carried out every instruction Brec had given me, and then there was nothing for it.
The thought of climbing into bed beside another omega felt wrong in ways I couldn’t begin to untangle, but the omega was unconscious, dangerously cold, and this wasn’t about me.
I slid beneath the blankets.
He found me immediately.
Still asleep, he curled against my chest, seeking warmth before his mind had any say in the matter. One hand rested against my ribs while his daughter shifted between us, and my wolf settled with a low rumble I hadn’t heard in years as long silver hair twisted around his face.
Ours to protect.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
The omega sighed in his sleep and burrowed a little closer.
My wolf went quiet.
I lay in the dark, didn’t move, and couldn’t understand why he was so still.
We could keep him and his kit.
I ignored my delusional, moon-drunk, asshole wolf. I’d had my chance with fate.
The stranger breathed against my collarbone.
Keep him.
Touch him.
Save him.