Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
SOREN
I’d only come downstairs because lying in that bed had become impossible—too warm, too still, too much space for my brain to run.
I’d used the attached bathroom and stood at the sink for a long time with the cold tap running, washing my face and the back of my neck, scrubbing my arms until the water ran clear.
I couldn’t face the enclosed space of a shower, the undressing, and the long blank minutes of staring at tile with too much time to think—so I’d done what I could at the sink, put another log on the fire, and came down.
I’d heard every word he said, but he hadn’t said he’d found out who I was, nor had he threatened me in any way. Then he’d handed me a knife. Not that it would do much good—he was huge, and he could snap me in half without breaking a sweat. But then he was asking what else I needed.
Everything. That was the answer. A crib, tiny clothes, blankets, bottles, medical care in case of emergency. Safety. Asha and I needed everything, and we had none of it, and it was all wrong.
I couldn’t trust my own instincts right now.
What was I doing?
Nothing. That was what I was doing. Helpless as a kit with my whole world fractured, standing in a stranger alpha’s kitchen, with no plan, and Yannick’s face still there every time I let my attention slip.
Yannick.
The grief welled up and came out of me before I could stop it—a sob, brief, involuntary. Where were his babies?
I pressed my hand to my belly.
Focus on Asha.
She was there—lower than she’d been a week ago, the shifted weight of her, the new pressure—and she turned when I pressed, slow and unhurried. Still there. I breathed out.
“Are you okay?” Cassian asked.
“I don’t know.” I was dizzy and exhausted and hungry, but none of those things were the real problem. I’d eaten what I could but now it was stuck and I needed to stand.
He moved to help me, and Goddess help me I brandished the knife at him and he stopped.
I’d understood how big he was when he carried me and then cradled me in bed, but the reality was different. His eyes, when they came up briefly and found mine, were amber. His wolf was still close to the surface; that much I knew.
He hadn’t watched me eat. His feet were bare on the stone floor, no shoes—an alpha at ease and not positioned to strike.
My cat tried to tell me something.
Look, he said.
The wolf scent wafted through the kitchen when Cassian stood to refill his coffee—a shift in the air, the warmth of him—and my cat’s head came up and turned toward it, but not with alarm.
Nope, it was way more complicated than that: an instinct that had woken him in the first place, pulling at him, interested.
Look, my cat demanded, then huffed, and curled back up.
My back hurt, and the trembling that’d been in my hands since I woke had settled deeper, into a vibration at the core of me.
I couldn’t hold the knife much longer, and I rested an elbow on the table, because I needed a few seconds to just get through it.
I dropped the knife, and it clattered to the table, and I tried to grab it, and nearly cut myself, until I managed to grip it again.
I heard the clunk of the refrigerator and the opening of a cupboard.
“Here.”
I lifted my head.
He placed a glass of orange juice and a mug in front of me and stepped back.
“Vitamin C.” He nodded at the juice. “And I found this at the back of a cupboard.” He looked at the mug with a frown. “It’s green tea, is that okay for you?”
For months, my jailers had brought me chamomile tea every morning and night and waited as I drank it along with taking my vitamins.
It was good for the baby they said, and even though it made me sleep, made my connection to the cat side of me dull, I wasn’t going to argue with anything that might keep my baby safe.
I always knew it was drugged; I just didn’t have it in me to fight.
“Yes. Thank you,” I said, shakily.
He nodded.
I sipped the juice and then the tea, and outside the window the snow was still coming down.
Cassian cleared his throat, and I braced. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“Like what?” I knew I sounded suspicious, but this alpha might want to know things that would make me vulnerable, like my family name and who the baby’s father was. I was already at the middle of a potential war, and I had no one on my side.
“How pregnant are you?” A pause. “Do you need a hospital, even if we can’t get to one right now.”
“I’ve got another eight, maybe ten weeks. And you can’t make me go anywhere,” I said, defiant, because goddess, if he wanted to take me somewhere—anywhere—I wouldn’t be able to fight him.
He frowned. “Are you saying no to medical care only because you’re an unbonded omega?”
Under shifter law, my baby’s nearest biological alpha had legal claim, and betas barely registered in laws written around alpha authority and omega reproduction.
It didn’t matter whether it was my family or the father’s.
The law didn’t care who’d hurt me, or who loved her. It only cared about blood.
My throat tightened.
Cassian knew that. Every alpha did.
The law would never be on my side.
If nobody else had found me before Asha was born, Cassian would have become the nearest alpha to take temporary care.
The law would hand him my baby to do whatever he felt was right, because he was alpha and I was an omega, and nobody would ask what I wanted.
Nobody ever asked omegas what they wanted.
He could give Asha to my brother, or worse…
My hands started shaking.
I clenched them against my stomach, but I couldn’t stop. My heart hammered so hard it hurt, every instinct screaming that I’d said too much. That I’d handed an alpha exactly the information he needed. He knew I was alone. He knew there was no one standing between him and my baby.
Terror clawed at my throat.
I couldn’t read his expression. Didn’t know him well enough to know whether he was horrified by the law or already weighing what it would give him.
Life had taught me that the worst monsters didn’t always look cruel.
Sometimes they smiled. Sometimes they spoke softly.
Sometimes they waited until you trusted them.
My stomach twisted. “They’ll find me,” I whispered, my voice breaking.
“One birth record, one hospital file, and they’ll know exactly where to start looking and once they know where I am…
” I swallowed hard. “It won’t matter what I want.
They’ll say they’re acting in my child’s best interests.
They’ll say an omega can’t raise a baby alone.
They’ll take her, and everyone will tell me it’s legal. ”
Something hardened in his expression. “I’ve never agreed with that law,” he said quietly. “No omega should lose their child because they aren’t bonded to the alpha sperm donor.”
He fell quiet, his gaze dropping to the fire as he thought it through. I could almost see him fitting pieces together, searching for a way around laws that sounded as though he’d hated them for a long time.
“If I can talk to Ronan, I can get him here,” he said at last, “and he can smuggle you over the border before the baby’s born. Different jurisdiction. Different laws. We’ve done it before, through the Haven Network.”
My head came up so quickly it made me dizzy. “So, you do work with Haven?”
Hope flared, and it hurt.
If there was an underground, if omegas escaped this way, maybe people could keep us hidden. Maybe there was somewhere beyond Center 14, beyond my brother, beyond every law that had decided I belonged to someone else.
Cassian shook his head once, and my fragile hope cracked.
“Not me, no,” he said quietly. Silence settled between us before he let out a slow breath. “Raff wanted us to.”
His eyes drifted away from me, and he made a small gesture around the room, as though everything here explained what he meant.
I looked around automatically.
The solid walls. The mugs on the shelves. The discarded sweatshirt folded over the back of a chair. The quiet warmth of the house. The isolation.
None of it meant anything to me.
I didn’t know who Raff was. I didn’t know why saying his name made Cassian’s voice soften, or why the air between us suddenly felt heavy with grief. Whatever had happened, it lived here with him. I could feel that much.
After a long moment, he looked back at me.
“I assume Ronan still has contacts,” he said. “If getting you and your daughter somewhere safe means calling in every favor he’s owed, he will.”
There would never be a safe place for me, and the truth of why was heavy and dangerous.
Once I explained it to him, I couldn’t take it back.
Cassian would know exactly what I was and why everyone wanted my baby, and he’d have every advantage.
He was bigger than me, stronger than me, an alpha standing between me and the only road off the mountain.
If he decided to lock the door, sell me back to my family, or hand me back to Center 14, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.
My hand settled over my stomach. I was so tired. Tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of being treated like some mythical prize instead of a man.
A fucking unicorn, I thought bitterly.
My cat stirred. Trust him.
The certainty wasn’t loud. It wasn’t overwhelming.
It was just… there. I’d stopped trusting my own instincts a long time ago, but I’d never stopped trusting my cat.
I let out a slow breath, lifted my head, and met Cassian’s eyes.
I could keep my secrets but that would mean nothing after a while.
I had to roll the dice and see how they fell.
“My baby has a pure bloodline,” I said quietly, and every trace of color drained from his face. He stared at me as if I’d said something impossible, shock widening his eyes.