Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
CASSIAN
No. He’s not leaving. My wolf scrambled to get me to stop him.
“You can’t leave.” The words came out hard before I could stop them, my wolf driving them with enough force that Soren stiffened.
Fuck. I’d scared him, and regret hit me immediately.
“I don’t mean you can’t leave. I mean, there’s no bridge.
It’s snowing. You crashed a car. You nearly froze to death.
You don’t have shoes.” I was sounding increasingly desperate.
“I’ll manage somehow.”
“How, exactly?” Fear sharpened my voice, made me push harder than I should have because he still didn’t seem to understand what could happen out there.
“Walk me through it. You go out the front door, and then what? The bridge is still shut. The temperature dropped another six degrees last night. Where do you go, Soren? How do you keep yourself and your baby safe?”
His jaw pulled tight, and his hand pressed harder under his belly. “I want to take care of myself.”
Want to, not can, I thought. He wanted to be independent; he wanted control, but even now, he knew it would be nearly impossible.
Be kind, my wolf urged, which was rich coming from the bastard flooding me with fear.
Soren’s eyes were bright, and his face was too pale, and even as he’d told me everything with quiet confidence, he was shaking, a tremor through his hands and shoulders that hadn’t stopped.
“I know,” I said quietly. “But you’re exhausted, you’re injured, and pregnant.
” Regret hit before I’d even finished speaking.
I’d reduced him to everything that made him vulnerable, not the sheer strength it had taken to escape Center 14, steal a car, drive through a blizzard, and drag himself out of a snowbank with his daughter still alive inside him. My wolf growled low in my chest.
Be kind.
Soren’s expression shuttered. Hurt flickered across his face before he buried it so quickly most people would have missed it. He swallowed hard, pushed himself away from the table, and took a step toward the hallway.
“Soren.”
He kept moving.
“Wait.” I tried to block him, not fast, not threatening, just putting myself between him and the door the way I’d put myself between exits and targets for a decade of my life, and he stopped, but his shoulders had already gone up around his ears, and his chin had dropped, and his whole body had hunched inward, protective. He was breathing fast.
“You can’t keep me here.” His voice shook, stretched thin with panic. “You’re not my alpha. You were ORT. Ronan said you worked with Haven, that you helped omegas. You’re supposed to be on my side. You don’t have the right to keep me here.”
“I am on your side, and I’m not keeping you anywhere,” I said with exaggerated patience, which I was sure sounded patronizing as fuck.
Breathe. “I’m telling you the road is impassable, your car is totaled at the bottom of my hill, and you’re not strong enough to walk in the conditions outside. You’re not a prisoner.”
He went bone-white and took another step sideways, working the angle and looking for space around me.
I stepped with him.
“Move,” he demanded.
“Soren…”
I reached out—not for him, just to block the frame, hand to the doorway—and Soren flinched.
Not a small flinch. A full-body recoil, both arms coming up and crossing over his belly.
Then he was going down, controlled but fast, folding toward the floor until he was on his knees, both hands wrapped over his head, his whole body curled inward around the curve of the baby, making himself as small as he could.
The sound he made—a short, sharp catch of breath—sliced right through me.
I went still.
My hand was still on the doorframe. I hadn’t touched him. I hadn’t been anywhere near him. And he was on the floor in front of me, breathing in ragged pulls, shaking badly now, protecting her with every inch of himself while he waited for what came next.
My wolf dropped to silence.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” I stepped back, both hands up, away from the frame, away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” My voice came out rough and quiet. “I’m not going to touch you. Check my hands.”
He didn’t look up.
“Soren.” I crouched, keeping distance, keeping myself lower than him, because everything in me that had spent ten years reading threat levels in people’s bodies knew that my size and my designation was the problem right now, not the door.
“I’m not—” The words felt inadequate. Useless. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re an alpha.” His voice came up muffled, still curled in. “That’s what alphas do.” he’d gone from confident and certain to a mess of pain in a few minutes, and it was all my fault. My chest hurt.
I didn’t have an argument. The anger drained out of me so fast I was hollow. That’s what alphas do. Nobody should have to defend their right to exist the way Soren did, but somewhere along the way the world had convinced him they did.
My wolf fell silent, the silence that came before violence, while a cold fury spread through me so completely all I wanted was to shift and tear apart every person who’d ever made him afraid.
And Soren was on the floor of my hallway with his arms over his head, waiting for a blow that wasn’t coming, and I was the reason he was there.
I lowered myself the rest of the way until I was sitting on the floor, back against the opposite wall, both legs stretched out, hands open on my knees. Getting as unthreatening as an alpha wolf my size was capable of.
“I’m sitting down,” I said. “I’m against the wall. I’m not between you and the door anymore.”
A pause. Stillness. Then he lifted his head. He was pale and shaking, his eyes were wet, and he was exhausted.
“The door’s right there,” I said. “I’m not touching you. I’m not blocking you. If you want to go, go.”
He didn’t move.
“I just—” I stopped. Tried again. “I need you to understand that I don’t—I’m not—” Fuck.
When had words become this hard? I hadn’t stumbled over a sentence in years, and now I was sitting on my own hallway floor trying to tell a frightened omega that despite everything, I wasn’t going to hurt him, and nothing I reached for felt like enough. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
His breathing was slowing, in increments, but he was still watching me the way he’d watched me eat breakfast, expecting me to do something awful.
“You’ve been angry since I got here,” he said.
“I know.” I didn’t try to soften it. “It’s not. I’m not good at dealing with people anymore. I’ve been alone a long time, and I’m bad at it.”
Soren sat back slowly, shifting his weight, resettling himself.
Still on the floor. Still in my hallway.
I took off my jacket, balled it into a pillow shape to show him, and then tossed it over.
It sat between us until he finally picked it up, made the same shape of it, and pressed it between the base of his spine and the wall.
I’d spent three years alone here, knowing what I needed to do and doing it—running the property, and working on the to-do list for the safe place this was supposed to be.
But Soren had a baby due soon, and the mountain was closed, and I’d called Brec, and there was silence from Ronan, and my wolf was still.
Also, what the hell did I know about pregnant omegas?
ORT had taught us enough to keep one alive until the professionals arrived, which mostly meant don’t make things worse and get them to the paramedics or someone like Brec as fast as possible.
I’d spoken to Brec, but after that I was working with a whole lot of nothing.
I’d held one baby in my life—the daughter of a friend, a few weeks old, pressed against my chest at a team barbecue while her dad ate with two free hands and Raff laughed at my expression. I’d been terrified of dropping her. She’d yawned and gone to sleep.
He’d said one day maybe we’d be lucky enough to have a child.
My chest pulled hard at the memory, and I pushed through it.
“I don’t know anything about this,” I said.
The words came out flat. “I don’t know what you need, medically.
I don’t know what’s normal for a cat shifter.
I don’t know what changes to watch for or what—” I stopped.
“I have a contact I called who gave me some advice. His name is Brec, and he’s a medic. ”
“Another alpha?” Soren asked in a dead tone.
“If you talked to him—”
“I’m not talking to another alpha.”
“He’s not—he’s not anyone who’d—” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence in a way Soren would believe. He had no reason to believe any version of it. “He’s trustworthy. I know that doesn’t mean anything coming from me. But he is, and you need to think about your baby.”
“That’s all I think about,” he snapped, and then recoiled as if the anger had shocked the hell out of him. “She’s everything to me.”
The silence stretched, and something about Soren on the floor of my hallway, breathing steadily, hand on his belly, broke it in a way I hadn’t expected.
“And you named her already,” I said. I didn’t know why I said it, but birthing was a dangerous time for an omega, their bodies changing so much that sometimes nothing could save father or baby. “What if…”
He glanced up. “Nothing will go wrong.” His expression was fierce, chin tilted again.
My wolf pressed forward, and I sat very still and let him, even though Soren had nothing to do with me.
But my wolf had already decided. This has everything to do with us, he said, and I sighed.
“You have to stay,” I said. “You don’t have to trust me. You don’t have to do anything except stay in the warm and let me get you what you need. Then…” Inspiration hit me. “Then, as soon as the bridge is open, you can take my car and go wherever you want if that is what you need.”
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move for the door either.
After a long pause, he pushed carefully off the floor, one hand braced on the wall, getting himself upright with the practiced effort of someone who’d been doing it alone for months.
I stood too, keeping my distance. He straightened, and his hand went back to the curve of his belly.
“I can leave as soon as the roads are clear,” he said, not looking at me.
“As soon as you’re able, if that is what you want.”
“I don’t want anyone knowing I’m here.”
“Only Brec knows.”
“And Ronan.”
“Yeah, and Ronan.” Then before he could ask any more questions, I added, “I’m going to call Brec; he’s a trained medic. Will you talk to him?”
He turned and walked back toward the kitchen, swaying a little, and I stayed where I was until I heard the chair scrape and the quiet that meant he’d sat down. “Will you talk to Brec?” I asked again, waiting in the doorway. “For Asha?”
He paused, his eyes glassy with emotion, his hand on his belly, protecting his daughter. “Yes.”
Then I went to find my phone and call Brec.