Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
CASSIAN
I was about done with Brec’s evasive answers.
I’d called him every hour so far, and each second of him telling me he didn’t know where Ronan was, or denying he knew what was going on, made my anger worse.
Brec and Ronan had stood beside me after Raff died while I screamed myself hoarse and tried to follow my mate into death because surviving the bondbreak felt wrong down to the marrow of my bones.
They’d sat with me through the worst nights when my wolf had gone feral with grief and promised none of us were walking away from each other.
They’d seen me break but somehow survive and understood when I walked away.
And now I got the feeling they were keeping me out of the loop.
“Brec,” I said again, low and dangerous now.
Another silence, then, quieter, “I’m sure there was no other choice.” Brec sounded exhausted, all the patience stripped from his voice.
I pulled the refrigerator open with my free hand. Eggs. Half a block of cheddar. The remains of a roast chicken from two days ago, steak, as I tried to process. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” A pause. “I haven’t talked to Ronan in forever, but you know him, and he must have had his reasons to send the omega to you,” Brec added.
“I’m in the middle of fucking nowhere, Brec.
” I put the chicken on the counter and looked at it, then the steak.
The omega had eaten almost nothing last night—a few crackers, half a glass of water—my wolf didn’t like that.
Hell, I didn’t like that. “I’m not a safe house or a refuge for the fucking needy.
I’ve got enough going on without some omega who—” I stopped to calm down.
“Shit, I can barely keep myself alive half the fucking time. I don’t need another person dying on my watch.
” I shoved a pan across the stovetop hard enough that oil splashed over my hand. “I’m not playing caretaker.”
The words turned sour in my mouth.
The omega hadn’t asked for any of this.
None of this was his fault.
But grief and rage had hollowed me out years ago, and some days it felt like all that was left inside me was anger sharp enough to cut everyone standing too close. What did anyone expect me to do with a liability like a pregnant omega? I was grieving; I was empty.
I set the pan down harder than I meant to. “I’ve got one job to do before I end it all, and it isn’t this.” The anger was running too hot now, burning through what little control I had left.
“Don’t say shit like that!”
“Bonded pairs don’t survive one of them dying,” I snapped again, all my patience gone.
“I know, but—”
“We’re snowed in now, but fuck, when can I expect some alpha to show up here and challenge me over a baby?
Because I’m not fucking doing this, Brec.
I’m not a Haven safe house yet, and I’m not getting dragged into this because Ronan lost his damn mind.
” I shoved the pan sideways across the stovetop hard enough that metal screeched.
“He must have—”
“You think I don’t know how this goes? Precious as fuck, pregnant omega, whose name I don’t even know, turns up alone, some possessive alpha comes looking for what’s his, and suddenly I’ve got a fucking war at my front door.
” My wolf snarled hard at that, furious at the implication that another alpha could touch the omega.
And what the fuck was that all about? “I buried my mate,” I snapped.
“I’m not burying somebody else’s omega and kid because Ronan decided I should play protector again and left me with this mess in my house and a pregnant liability wearing my dead mate’s clothes! ”
The floorboard outside the kitchen creaked.
Every instinct in me snapped tight.
I turned too fast and found the omega standing half-hidden in the doorway, wrapped in one of my blankets, pale enough that he looked sick. His silver hair tangled from sleep, his pale green eyes wide, one hand braced under the curve of his stomach as he protected the baby even now.
And he’d heard enough.
Liability.
Pregnant omega.
Ronan’s mess.
The brutal scent of fear filled the room.
Fuck.
“Omega,” I whispered.
“S-Soren,” the omega hiccupped between sobs. “My name is S-Soren.”
“Fuck!” I cursed into the phone, and he stepped backward before I could say anything, shoulders hunching as if he was waiting for the shouting to turn into something worse.
I stepped forward, and Soren flinched. He was terrified, exhausted, and ready to run despite barely being able to stand upright, and beneath it all was something worse: resignation. He expected me to hurt him.
I knew what my words had done the second Soren had stepped into the doorway carrying that terrified scent, and underneath my anger and panic and grief there was a deep animal certainty that I’d fucked this up badly.
Fuck.
I hung up on Brec without another word.
“I didn’t mean any of that,” I lied. In my temper, I’d meant every word, but now he was in front of me; each of those words had been hateful and untrue.
“I don’t have a b-bonded mate.” Soren’s pale green eyes filled with more tears. “No one. I don’t belong to anyone, and nobody owns me.” He wasn’t shouting, and that made it worse. “It’s just us.”
I stopped. He was brandishing what was left of the heavy base of the lamp beside my bed. The way he was standing in the doorway, despite shaking badly, I could scent the despair on him as he confronted my bad temper with whatever scraps of bravery he still had left.
Pregnant. Alone. No alpha. Nobody coming.
“The father?”
Soren looked at me then, properly looked at me, and there was something dead behind his eyes that made my wolf go still.
“The alpha who was forced to hurt me is dead.”
Forced. Hurt.
My wolf lunged forward hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs, all fury and protectiveness and violent instinct, while one thought hammered through both of us with enough force to hurt: who the fuck hurt you?
“Shit, Soren, you’re pregnant and alone. That’s not normal.”
He staggered, his arms shaking from the weight of the lamp, as if I’d hit him, and I hated myself for it. What the fuck had I just said? What kind of alpha bullshit was that?
Normal.
As if there was a right way for an omega to survive being a father. Soren’s expression shut down right in front of me, every emotion disappearing behind something blank and practiced.
“I know,” he said quietly. “It’s okay, I’m leaving.
” His voice stayed flat and exhausted. He turned, still holding the lamp, and the sight of him trying to walk away while still shaking with fear hit something vicious inside me.
Who hurt you? My head hurt with the effort of holding my wolf back. Give me a fucking name.
I locked both thoughts down hard enough that pain shot through my skull. “You can’t leave.”
“I can.”
“I mean, the bridge is closed now, and it’s the middle of fucking winter, so you’re stuck here, and look, you need to eat.”
That was practical. Safe. Something I could do.
“No,” Soren said without turning. “What I need is to find somewhere safe for my daughter, away from alphas, away from… just away… and replace these dead man’s clothes.”
The words cut deep.
The comment about Raff’s sweatpants and T-shirts.
Fuck.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” The apology scraped out of me. “I forgot… no, that’s a lie. I didn’t forget. I reacted before I thought, and you don’t deserve that.” I shook my head. “I’ve been alone for a long time, Soren. I’ve forgotten how to be careful with people.”
His eyes widened, and for the first time since we’d started arguing, he looked at me instead of the floor.
“Okay,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if he was accepting my apology.
The knot in my chest loosened. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. Then I ruined it. “But you can’t leave.”
Soren went still, and fear spiked sharp enough to sour the air.
Wrong.
His shoulders pulled tighter, and I scrubbed my face hard enough to hurt.
“As I said, the bridge is out, we’re in the middle of a snowstorm, you’ve barely eaten, you nearly froze to death, and whatever Ronan pulled you out of has to be bad enough that he sent you to me for some godforsaken reason.
So, until someone arrives who can make better arrangements for you, you’re going to have to stay here with me.
” His chin came up then, defiant despite the fear pouring from him, and I forged ahead, the words sounding harder than I intended.
“Do you want to lose your child? You can barely stay standing long enough to argue with me.”
Color flushed hard across his face, humiliation hitting so fast I watched him try to swallow it down in real time while my wolf recoiled from the damage I was inflicting with my careless words.
Where was my compassion? Gone to the same place that my soul lived—with my dead mate.
Soren looked away first, his hands shaking from the weight of his weapon, and somehow that retreat felt worse than if he’d shouted back, because it carried the exhausted acceptance of somebody already used to being spoken to like this.
The silence stretched between us, ugly and heavy.
Somewhere along the line, whatever part of me used to know how to speak to frightened people without turning every conversation into a fight had vanished.
And the worst part was that I could hear myself doing the damage in real time and still couldn’t seem to stop.
I’d lost whatever part of me used to feel human around fear and pain, and Soren staring at me with that hunted expression was chaos and danger and another person I might fail to save.
His arms dropped a little, and he winced.
I reached for the biggest knife in the block and laid it on the table between us, handle toward him. “Take the knife, put the lamp down.”
He looked from me to the knife and back again, shuffling closer, and then resting the lamp base awkwardly with one hand on it, and picked up the knife as if it were unexploded ordnance. Only when he had his hand around the handle did he release the lamp.
“Will you sit and eat, if not for yourself then for the baby, and we can figure the rest out after.”
After a long pause, Soren stepped closer toward the chair as if he expected me to turn vicious if he did something wrong, before sitting down without another word, his hand gripping the knife.
I turned back to the stove.
I tried to let the work settle my wolf, but he wasn't settling at all.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
He made a noncommittal noise, and it occurred to me that maybe steak wasn’t good for him, so I focused on the chicken, plus eggs.
What did a pregnant cat shifter eat? I’d been turning that question over since I’d made his first tray, because I’d eaten for my wolf my whole life, but cats weren’t wolves, and pregnant wasn’t the same as not-pregnant, and the omega at my table was smaller than me by a huge margin.
The smaller the shifter, the harder the third trimester pushes.
I’d read enough ORT medical briefings in my time to fill a shelf, none of which covered a cat shifter, heavily pregnant, hypothermia, no vitamins, and emotional shock all in one go.
Eggs, cheese, chicken, sourdough from the freezer, and toasted and buttered heavily.
I put the plate down on my side of the table, then slid it over to Soren, who still held the knife.
He stared at it, and then he picked up the fork. “Thank you.”
“I eat for my wolf,” I said. “I’m improvising.”
“It’s fine.” He didn’t look up.
“If there’s anything that doesn’t work for you, tell me, and I’ll adjust.”
“I don’t want to stay,” he said, then coughed, “I don’t want any of this.”
There wasn’t anything useful to say to that, and I wasn’t going to offer him something that sounded like comfort and wasn’t, given how worry and a trace of temper still fizzed in my veins.
I moved back to the counter, drank my coffee, and didn’t watch him while I worked through the problem: Brec not knowing where Ronan was, why Ronan had sent the omega—Soren—here, and what the next step would be.
Soren managed most of the plate one-handed, and he put the fork down
“Can I get you anything else?” I asked.
He hunched again. “No.”
My wolf had been quiet since the moment Soren took the fork, and I stood at the counter with my coffee, and for the first time since the bond broke, it wasn’t pulling, and I had no idea how to handle that awful lack of feeling.
I didn’t want to examine it, but my wolf going still and warm in the presence of a frightened omega was a thing I didn’t understand.
Raff was dead. I had a purpose and a plan, and I was not going to complicate any of it by acknowledging that my broken, grief-rotted wolf had apparently decided he wasn’t done.
I put my mug in the sink.
He smells like hope, my wolf whispered.
“You’re wrong.” He’d been wrong before. Every morning, he’d expected Raff to answer, and every night, he’d searched the empty places inside us for a bond that was never coming back.
Hope wasn’t walking around my kitchen wrapped in one of my sweatshirts.
Hope was dead, and neither of us should have survived this long by pretending otherwise.
My wolf had become an unreliable narrator since Raff died, forever trying to convince me there was still something worth living for.
Wrong.