Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
SOREN
The closet at the top of the stairs had more than enough blankets and pillows.
I took all of them and headed to the large bedroom that smelled of Cassian—worked into the fabric of the duvet and the pillows already on the bed.
My cat went still, then settled, and some of the tight alertness he’d been carrying all day went with him.
I stood in the middle of the room with my arms full of blankets and waited to feel wrong about being in here, but all of it just felt right, and I couldn’t explain why, so I concentrated on building my nest.
I knew it was a throwback to ancestors who’d made dens in actual caves, who’d needed the physical boundary of layered material to feel safe enough to sleep.
I knew it wasn’t rational. I also knew that without it I wouldn’t sleep at all, and Brec had said rest, so rationality had to wait.
I folded the duvet, doubled up, across the mattress.
Layered the spare blankets on top. Built the pillows up on three sides and arranged them until the weight and the height were right and there was a clear space in the middle that was just mine and Asha’s.
My cat approved, and he put his head down when I got into the nest and tucked myself around Asha and tugged the top blanket over both of us.
This smells good, my cat whispered.
“I know,” I said. Out loud, quietly, into the dark. It smelled of Cassian.
Home, he added.
“It’s not home.” I adjusted the pillow under my hip and tried to find the angle where my back wasn’t hurting. “Don’t get used to it. We’re here until the roads clear, and then we’re leaving.” Although I had no idea where we’d be going, it turned out I didn’t know what the word home meant at all.
My cat said nothing to that.
I shifted again, restless. The mattress was soft—better than the one I’d had at Center 14—and the room was warming up. I was exhausted, but sleep didn’t come. Too much in my head.
“Okay,” I said to Asha. “So, this is it.” She moved again, so I took that as permission to continue.
“We’re at a house on a mountain. It’s winter and it’s snowing.
The road is closed for now.” I kept my voice low.
“The alpha who lives here isn’t your papa, so don’t go getting any ideas.
” That last part was for my animal as much as it was for Asha and me.
He smells good, my cat said again, unrepentant.
“He doesn’t want us here, and he’s not going to pretend he does. But he fed us, and he called a paramedic called Brec, and he changed his sheets, so he’s trying to help.”
I closed my eyes.
Stay.
“I’m just so tired of carrying this alone.”
My cat pressed close, and Asha kicked, hard, right under my ribs.
“I know,” I told her. “I know; we’re fine. Go to sleep.”
Eventually I did too, because one second, I was watching the ceiling, and then I wasn’t.
The dreams weren’t good.
They weren’t continuous either, more like pieces—fragments that didn’t hold their shape long enough to follow but left the feeling behind when they broke apart.
Malachai’s hands. My brother, Emric’s voice, tight with control, cold past the point of anger and his expression when he’d found out about the pregnancy, calculating, planning how he’d take Asha as the new bloodline heir to the family.
The baby is mine, our bloodline, for the succession.
Malachai’s voice as he sobbed and fucked into me, as I tugged at ropes, a gun at his omega’s head. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I woke up with my heart pounding and my hands already around my belly. The room was dark; I was sweating under the blankets, but cold at the same time, and my breath was too fast as I lay still and counted—Asha moving, her rhythm, her weight—until my pulse rate slowed.
I stared at the ceiling and turned my face into the pillow. My cat had been right about the scent—it smelled of wolf, which should have been weird but felt right.
I wasn’t going to sleep again. My body knew it, and my cat knew it, and my stomach made itself known. Loudly.
I was thirsty too, and Brec had said hydration three times in his speech about self-care, so I needed to drink, and was the water in the bathroom okay?
Should I get it from there, or head to the kitchen?
I clambered out of the nest, lifted the key in the lock until I felt the catch, turned it, and opened the door onto the dark landing, unsure of what I was doing. Wondering if I was safe.
The house was quiet. I stood on the landing and listened, hearing nothing except the howling wind at the windows, and then I headed downstairs, one hand on the wall, taking each step with care.
The kitchen was dark except for the glow from the woodstove’s glass panel, orange-red and low. Enough to see by if I stepped with caution around obstacles. I knew where the glasses were, so I crossed the kitchen with my hands out, found the counter, and reached up for a glass.
The scent of wolf was strong, and a large shadow shifted in the corner by the back door.
I went still.
The shape resolved slowly, the stove’s glow reaching just far enough: a stunning dark-grey wolf was curled against the base of the back door, head up now, amber gaze fixed on me.
I froze, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
Every instinct I had slammed awake at once, dragging me backward through months of fear before my mind had a chance to catch up.
Alpha. Predator. Danger. I waited for the panic and the sick drop in my stomach.
For the certainty that I’d done something wrong.
For the need to make myself smaller, quieter, less noticeable.
Only the fear never came, and I stared across the kitchen while confusion slowly replaced the adrenaline.
“Oh,” I said. “I needed… I just… a drink…”
It had been so long since I’d shifted, before the attack, before Asha, and I had this crazy impulse to press myself against Cassian’s wolf and bury my nose in his fur. The thought hit hard enough that I stopped with the glass halfway to the tap and stared at him across the kitchen.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Every alpha I’d trusted had eventually hurt me, and I should have been afraid standing in a dark kitchen with a wolf watching my every move. Instead, I loved the way he was by the door, as if nothing was getting past him without his permission.
I told myself it was the pregnancy. It had to be. Maybe carrying Asha had scrambled something inside me. Maybe I was so exhausted, so desperate for somewhere to stop running, that I’d stopped recognizing danger when it was standing right in front of me. None of those explanations felt convincing.
Cassian’s wolf didn’t stalk closer or stare me down.
He didn’t make me feel cornered. He watched while I filled my glass, his body stretched across the gap between the house and whatever waited outside in the darkness.
There was no threat in him. No expectation. No demand for anything I couldn’t give.
Safe, my cat said quietly.
I looked away first, suddenly unable to meet those amber eyes. I wasn’t as ready to believe in safety as my cat was.
I filled the glass. My hands were steady, and I drank it all standing at the sink, refilled it, although I’d be peeing all night now, and then I turned around.
“I’m going to get something to eat if that is okay,” I told him because it felt rude not to say anything, and he was clearly paying attention. “And then I’ll go back upstairs.”
He tilted his head, listening to me, and then put his head back down on his huge paws.
I found bread, then butter, and stood at the counter and ate it, then drank my second water, while my cat kept his eyes on the wolf in the corner. When I was done, I rinsed the glass, put it upside down by the sink, and turned to go.
“Goodnight,” I said to the wolf, who lifted his head, blinked at me, then stretched with a wide yawn, revealing his cat-killing teeth.
Why wasn’t I nervous? A predator that size, focused on me, should have made every instinct scream danger, but instead I saw that he was safety, and that no one could get to me without going through him first. I barely knew Cassian.
He didn’t want me here. But whatever was waiting for me out there in the world couldn’t reach me tonight because there was a wolf the size of a small horse stretched across the threshold, and every instinct I had trusted him to hold the line.
Safe, my cat repeated.
I took a step closer, held out a hand, and shuffled nearer, and he reached up and sniffed my fingers, nudging my hand, and then curling back into himself.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Back in my room, I used the bathroom, then rebuilt the nest from the places it had shifted, not thinking about the fact that I’d put the pillow with the strongest scent of Cassian at the top.
My cat put his head down as soon as I pulled the blankets around us, and said home one more time, but I was too tired to correct him.
I should have slept deeply, but the nightmares returned.