Chapter 12 #2
The snow kept falling as I stood there for one long moment— Raff, Soren, three years of this sanctuary, a traitor in the ORT.
A baby
I ran the fence line faster on the way back, pulling on sweats in my kitchen The burner phone vibrated across the kitchen counter just as I finished rinsing my coffee mug.
I frowned at the anonymous caller. Unless this was some freak accident where a person called randomly, it had to be someone Brec gave the number to.
Ronan. I hoped it was him and I picked it up, leaning one shoulder against the counter as I answered. “Ronan? “
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but breathing. Then a voice I hadn’t heard in three years said my name so quietly I almost thought I’d imagined it. “Alpha, I wasn’t sure you’d answer.”
“I’m not your alpha.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. We’d spent enough nights sitting side by side after bad operations to know silence didn’t always need filling, but three years had settled into this one, carrying everything we’d never managed to say after Raff died.
“You have the omega?” Ronan asked eventually, his voice rough with exhaustion.
“His name is Soren,” I said, and my gaze drifted toward the hallway. Somewhere upstairs, my guest was probably asleep, wrapped in blankets.
“How is he?”
“Alive.” I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck. “Doesn’t trust me worth a damn, but he’s alive.”
A breath left Ronan that sounded suspiciously like relief. “Good.”
I waited a moment before asking the question that had been circling my head since Soren had whispered Ronan’s name against my throat out in the snow.
“Why me?”
“What?”
“You heard me.” My voice stayed level, but only because I’d spent years learning how to keep anger under control. “You had one chance to get him out, and you sent him here. Not to a safe house. Not to another ORT team. To me. Why?”
Ronan didn’t answer immediately, and I wondered whether the call had dropped. When he finally spoke, there was a weariness in his voice I’d never heard before. “Because I knew he’d be safe with you, Alpha.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“I did.”
“I’m feral with a destroyed bond,” I snapped and heard his sharp intake of breath and felt like shit. “And you haven’t spoken to me in three years.”
“I didn’t need to, and you’re not feral. You still have things to fight for.”
“That’s a hell of a gamble to make with an innocent omega’s life.”
“It wasn’t a gamble.” His voice hardened just enough to stop me interrupting again. “I knew exactly who I was sending him to.”
I closed my eyes. “You knew the man I used to be.”
“I know the wolf who loved my little brother.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. I stared into the darkness beyond the window, remembering Raff standing in this very kitchen laughing because he’d somehow convinced Ronan that pineapple belonged on pizza.
Ronan had spent twenty minutes arguing the point while eating three slices anyway, and Brec had laughed so hard he’d nearly choked on his beer.
“Raff trusted you,” Ronan said. “Completely. There wasn’t a place on this earth he’d have felt safer than beside you.”
My throat tightened.
“He’s gone.”
“I know.”
“So don’t tell me what Raff would’ve wanted.”
“I’m telling you what I know.”
I rested my free hand on the edge of the sink, gripping the stainless steel hard enough that my knuckles whitened.
“You think because I loved Raff that somehow qualifies me to look after a traumatized omega carrying a baby?”
“I think loving Raff tells me everything I need to know about the kind of man you still are.”
“You’ve got more faith in me than I do.”
“I always did, Alpha.”
His answer came so simply that I had nowhere to go with it.
“I couldn’t keep Raff alive,” I said.
“No.”
“I failed him.”
“No.” Ronan’s voice was suddenly firm, carrying the quiet authority that had once steadied an entire team. “You loved him until his last breath. Those aren’t the same thing.”
I swallowed hard.
“The facility I took the omega from was SED, one of their supposed safe centers, but I’m telling you now, it’s a fucking prison, and they’ll come for Soren,” Ronan continued after a moment. “They’ll throw everything they have at finding him. Not to mention there’s a bounty on him—a big one.”
“Fuck.”
“I needed someone who’d stand in front of him instead of handing him over.”
Another silence settled between us, but this one felt different. Not empty. Not broken. Just… familiar, the kind we’d shared on stakeouts and long drives home when words weren’t necessary because we already understood each other.
“Why didn’t you send him to a Haven safe house? You could’ve called one of the ORT teams still operating. Hell, you could’ve left him with one of our own.”
He paused way too long. “I don’t know who’s clean anymore.”
“Explain.”
“I don’t know everything yet, but fuck, every operation we’ve ever run has to be questioned. Every report. Every extraction. Every safe house. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”
“You think the ORT’s compromised?”
“I don’t know that it isn’t.” He sounded tired now, carrying a weight I’d never heard before.
“After what happened with Raff… hell… maybe it’s one corrupt administrator.
Maybe it’s someone feeding names to the SED.
Maybe it’s nothing. But until I know, I’m not handing Soren to an organization whose security I can’t swear to. ”
“Okay. What do you know about the Center you took him from?”
“Center 14 files are heavily redacted.”
The answer frustrated me more than it should have. “Why? “
“I’m digging.”
I growled down the phone. “Dig faster!”
“Yes, Alpha!”
“I’m not your freaking alpha!” I snarled, but Ronan ignored me. “And you sending me Soren…”
“I sent him to the one person I know isn’t compromised.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because nobody owns you anymore. Nobody gives you orders. Nobody can threaten you.” He paused before adding quietly, “You’re the only person I know who’s completely outside the system, and I’m not sorry.
I can’t be sorry when there’s so much… fuck…
so many omegas dying, so many…” his voice hitched, and I heard the familiar growl of him regaining control over his emotions.
He’d always hated to feel out loud, another trait where he was the opposite of Raff.
“I’ve missed you, Alpha,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him, but the admission caught me completely off guard, and he didn’t give me a chance to reply. “I’ll call if I find anything out.”
Neither of us said goodbye.
The line went dead, leaving me alone in the quiet kitchen with the phone still pressed to my ear and snow falling steadily beyond the window.
I stood there for another minute before slipping the burner into my pocket and heading upstairs, because there was still one frightened omega sleeping under my roof, and he needed me.
We need him.
“Whatever,” I told my stupid-ass wolf, who huffed back at me.
Great.