Chapter 5
Chapter Five
SOREN
I came back slowly, surfacing through heat and weight and the distant crackle of wood burning somewhere nearby while I fought to stay unconscious for just a few more seconds.
The blankets over me were heavy enough to pin me in place, layered across my legs and chest, trapping warmth to aching muscles that felt bruised all the way down to the bone.
Pine smoke drifted through the room layered with the sharper scent of hot iron from the stove, but underneath both of those things was something wilder that made my pulse stumble before I was even fully awake.
Forest and pine sap and wet earth and snow surrounded me and threaded through all of it was the unmistakable scent of alpha. Pregnancy had killed my heats months ago, but my body still knew an alpha when it smelled one. Some instincts didn’t need a cycle to wake them.
The recognition slid through me, and my body reacted before my mind caught up. I stopped breathing for a second while every muscle locked tight beneath the blankets.
It was a wolf and male and strong enough that my body recognized the danger before I was fully awake, but I forced myself to breathe again, slower this time, and the second I understood my vulnerabilities, fear hit hard.
I touched my stomach under the blankets while panic rose thick and suffocating in my throat. My belly felt tight and aching and horribly still beneath my palms, and for one awful second, there was nothing at all. No flutter, nothing.
I squeezed my eyes shut hard enough to hurt.
Wait.
One. Two. Three.
Then Asha moved, a shift low on the right side of my stomach hitting me with enough relief to make me dizzy.
My throat closed around a whimper before it could escape, and tears pushed hard into my eyes while I turned my face deeper into the pillow, which was warm from sleep, so the Alpha at my back wouldn’t hear me.
Okay. She’s okay.
I was awake enough to understand that the blankets kept me warm while the alpha pressed along my back, solid and sleeping and unmistakably male, and a slow, steady breath touched the nape of my neck.
We were skin to skin. My pulse jumped so violently it hurt.
Every instinct I had turned inward, years of survival dropping back into place with such force it made me feel sick. Make yourself smaller. Quieter. Easier to handle. Don’t provoke him unless you have to.
The hand on my hip didn’t tighten, and the body behind me stayed loose with sleep, but none of that mattered because he was still an alpha and close enough to overpower me in seconds.
I listened instead, because listening kept me alive, and I focused on the sound of breathing, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, the warmth trapped beneath the blankets, and the faint scrape of stubble near the back of my neck.
Then my cat stirred.
Alpha, he murmured, unafraid, and that was the part that hurt so badly my chest ached.
There was no panic from him, no warning growl or desperate instinct to run. He leaned toward the scent at my back, slow and curious, affection flooding our bond, and purred softly at the scent of this wolf.
I almost broke apart right there. Six months of silence. He hadn’t come back for me. He hadn’t come back for Asha. But he woke for me, escaping Center 14, and now for this alpha. I had to bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to stop myself crying.
Fear crept back in, not the sharp, blind panic from before, but something colder as my memories caught up with me.
Memory returned in fragments: snow and the crash and trees looming out of the dark, a wolf watching me from the road while I repeated the names Cassian and Ronan to stop myself panicking because they were the only things left in my head that still felt real.
Was this Cassian? It had to be.
He moved slightly, and I tried to ease away, but his hand on my hip followed me before stopping, his body reacting on pure instinct.
My breath caught.
“Are you okay?” His voice was rough with sleep, deep enough that I felt it in my chest, and concern threaded through the words quietly enough that it hurt.
My family. The Daltons. Center 14? I couldn’t remember the last time concern from an alpha hadn’t come with ownership.
My response was humiliating, as warmth, safety, and need hit me so fast they made me feel sick.
I stilled as the baby rolled again, slow and heavy beneath my hand, and a desperate please flashed through my head.
He waited without crowding me. He didn’t tighten his grip or raise his voice when I stayed silent, and his touch stayed gentle while his breathing remained slow and even behind me.
“Please let me go,” I begged, the words barely working around the tightness in my throat.
Silence stretched for half a second before he answered. “Of course.” The mattress moved while cold air slid across my bare skin where his body had been.
For a second, I didn’t understand. I’d expected a question.
A refusal. Irritation. Some clipped alpha correction about how I was hurt, that he knew better, and that I needed to stay still.
Instead, he let me go. No argument. No hand tightening to remind me he could keep me there if he wanted.
No soft voice telling me not to be difficult.
“There,” he murmured. “I’m away.”
Confusion warred with panic, and my hands stayed on my stomach as I stared at the blankets wrapped around me, aware of how vulnerable I was and hating that I noticed the loss of warmth. Asha was steady and alive beneath my palm. I dragged another careful breath into my lungs.
“Stay away,” I warned, knowing that my warning meant nothing. “Just stay away.”
“I will.” Then, after a pause, “What’s your name?” Giving him my name could mean my brother finding me, so I stayed quiet, and he didn’t push. “I’m Cassian,” he said.
I’d made it to the place Ronan wanted me to be, and to the alpha wolf, and he said it was part of Haven. Was I safe? What did I know about The Haven Network, apart from the whispered hopes of imprisoned omegas? I needed to leave.
Where will you go? My cat whispered.
I don’t know! I don’t know anything.
There was nowhere else to go, and people without choices got trapped and hurt, eventually, no matter how safe things appeared in the beginning. I’d never known a safe place.
“Where’s Ronan?” I asked.
“I thought you could tell me that.”
“I don’t know; he wouldn’t come with me. He made me leave, and I tried to get him to go in the car… he was protecting me. Bullets hit him, but he shifted…”
Cassian went pale, but said nothing. I wondered who Ronan was to this alpha, and how close they were. Instead of asking more, he focused on me. “How do you feel?” he asked when I’d stayed quiet long enough. “Do you need anything?”
I almost laughed at the question because everything hurt, from my body to my head to the crushing ache sitting in the middle of my chest. The grief inside me felt as thick and heavy as wet cement, and somehow I was lying naked in a stranger’s bed reacting to the sound of his voice while my body ignored every lesson survival had taught me.
“I don’t know what I need,” I admitted, ashamed I was letting any vulnerability slip into my tone.
“Okay.”
I attempted to distance myself from him and got tangled in the blankets wrapped around my legs. There were too many of them, almost a nest, heavy quilts trapping my hips enough that I couldn’t untangle myself one-handed, and a frustrated sound escaped me.
“Easy, omega,” Cassian said.
The mattress shifted beneath us, and I glanced up, only to realize he’d moved farther away instead of closer.
He sat against the headboard with both hands visible above the blankets, palms open and empty where I could see them.
He’d made himself smaller on purpose, and even though I knew that, it didn’t help.
Showing me his hands. Giving me space. It should’ve made me feel better, but I’d known alphas who performed gentleness beautifully while they waited for the exact moment that a rare breedable omega stopped bracing. This could be a trap.
Then why isn’t he taking what he wants?
I dismissed the thought. Who would want a pregnant omega ready to deliver? He’d wait until after. He’d lock me in…
I glanced at the door. A key sat in the lock, but I didn’t know if it was locked, and what would I do even if it was? I focused back on Cassian, who looked so tired that I almost believed it wasn’t a performance.
Almost.
There was no threat in the posture and no deliberate dominance, but he was huge.
His dark hair was flattened from sleep, and his bare chest and heavy shoulders should’ve made him intimidating, but he mostly seemed done with everything.
Miserable. That was the first clear thought I had about him.
Not safe. Not gentle. Just exhausted and angry and big enough to make my pulse keep kicking harder every time he glanced at me.
“Nobody’s rushing you,” he said.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I don’t want to,” he said in a dead tone, but his amber eyes flashed as his wolf rose to the surface, and I shrank back, dragging the blankets tighter around me.
My pulse raced. His wolf was right there, and maybe he was close to losing control.
Angry alphas, I understood. Angry alphas shouted, slammed doors, and grabbed too hard when they lost control. Angry alphas made sense.
“All alphas touch omegas,” I said before I could stop myself. “Hurt us.”
He went very still. “I’ve never hurt an omega.” His voice was low and controlled; the anger underneath pressed down hard. “Never in my life. Not once.”
I half believed him, but his anger was igniting, partly in defense at what I’d said, partly offense, and what resulted was a messy flood of emotion.
“You crashed a car in the middle of a fucking snowstorm and nearly died in my woods, and fuck that, but you’re my responsibility now,” he snapped, and I winced. He immediately calmed. “Sorry… look, I won’t hurt you,” he added, his voice softer.
“I d-don’t know how… I don’t know, okay.
” I wanted to stay calm for Asha, but the terror was bigger than I was.
It swept through me in waves I couldn’t stop, stealing my breath, making my hands shake so hard I could barely feel them, while every instinct screamed that I had to run even though there was nowhere left to go.
“I had to leave omegas behind,” I whispered. “He said I had to leave…”
“You said Ronan sent you here.” His jaw tightened so hard I saw the muscle jump. “I was ORT with him, okay?”
The Omega Rescue Team.
They were the stories nobody dared tell too loudly. The alphas and betas who stole omegas back from places no one admitted existed. The ones who fought the monsters wearing government badges.
On the other side, the SED terrified us.
Black uniforms. Black vehicles. Black helicopters.
If an SED transport stopped outside your home, people disappeared.
If they knocked on your door, families handed over their children because refusing the Directorate meant prison, or worse.
They called it welfare. Every omega knew it for what it really was.
And Ronan had been one of the men willing to stand between the SED and people like me.
Had Ronan been ORT?
And this man had been too?
I stared at him, not trusting a word he said, and he rolled off the bed and padded, naked, to a unit, pulling open a drawer and bringing out a wallet, tossing it toward me so it landed close to my hand.
I opened it, a photo of a much younger-looking man, designation wolf, alpha, ORT.
I peered at the photo, then up at him. He was older, yes, but it wasn’t his age that struck me.
It was the deadness in his eyes, and the exhaustion etched into every line of his face.
“Captain Cassian Raines. Team Three leader,” he said while I read.
“Former ORT.” He scrubbed a hand over his face before pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes closing for a moment.
“I don’t hurt omegas,” he said, his voice rougher this time.
“And whether I was ready for it or not… you’re my responsibility now. ”
Responsibility meant ownership. It always had.
The moment someone claimed responsibility for an omega, they claimed the right to decide where they lived, where they went, who they belonged to, and what they were worth.
The words changed depending on who was speaking—family, duty, protection—but they all meant the same thing.
I stared at him. Former ORT meant he’d belonged somewhere once, and the word former only raised more questions. Alphas like Cassian didn’t simply walk away from organizations like that. Someone had to be giving the orders now. Someone had to own his loyalty.
Because that was how the world worked.
Everybody belonged to somebody, and the people with the most power always decided what happened to the people with the least.
“I won’t let you take my baby.”
He nodded. “I don’t want to take your baby.”
“Then why are you in here with me alone? Where is everyone else?” The question burst out of me before I could stop it.
“Ronan said you were part of the Haven Network. Where are the medics? Where are the other omegas? Why am I here?” I checked out the bedroom, stared at the fire, and looked out the windows at nothing but snow.
“It’s my home.”
“Not a Haven facility?” Terror gripped me.
“No.”
I curled tighter beneath the blankets, shame and fear tangling together until I could barely breathe.
Cassian stared at me for another second, his jaw clenched tight, and I shrank farther away as questions crowded my head faster than I could make sense of them.
He watched me through all of it without trying to invade my space.
There was no alpha pressure rolling off him, no orders and no impatience, only exhausted eyes and tension pulled tight through his shoulders, holding himself together by sheer stubbornness.
“Are you hungry?” he asked in the softest tone.
I nodded.
“Okay,” he said, his voice gentling further. “Is there anything you need for the baby?”
“I don’t…” My breathing was shaky. “I don’t understand any of this.
” My tears burned hot and were impossible to stop once they started.
“I was at Center 14, and Yannick is dead, and someone called Ronan was there, and there was blood and shooting, and I had to leave them all.” My voice cracked. “I d-don’t know what’s happening.”
I was unraveling in front of him, powerless to stop, and for one panicked second I thought I’d pushed him too far.
But he didn’t come closer, and he didn’t shout.
He glanced at me once, jaw tight and eyes hard with something I couldn’t read, then turned and walked out of the room.
The door stayed open behind him.
I folded forward around the baby while the crying hit, clutching the blankets to my chest hard enough that my hands hurt.
“I don’t know what to do.”