Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
CASSIAN
My wolf watched Soren go upstairs, then after a few moments, I shifted, got coffee, walked the rooms, and checked the locks.
Three years of doing exactly that meant I noticed the smallest changes without thinking.
There was a glass by the sink that wasn’t mine.
The kitchen smelled faintly of peaches beneath the coffee, his scent drifting downstairs before he did, and for one strange moment the house felt…
lived in. I took my fur and padded to the base of the stairs and stayed there, listening.
His footsteps were careful and slow. I heard the bedroom door opening, the creak of him moving around, using the bathroom, and I could imagine him getting into bed, trying to get comfortable, and only when it all went quiet did my mind stop churning.
I was in a permanent debate with my wolf over whether we should be down here at the door or up in our bedroom curled up next to Soren—he said yes, I said no fucking way—but there was no decision to be made, and my wolf needed to realize that.
Soren trusted me to stay away, and I was a good man and had integrity and moral strength.
Damn it.
Until his nightmares started.
My wolf hadn’t been happy; as soon as I’d shifted back into guard mode, he’d taken us upstairs and paced after the third cry, and I had to work to keep him outside the locked room.
An omega had every right to privacy and protection and wouldn’t want an alpha on the other side of a door he’d locked.
So, I curled up just inside the spare room, with my door open, and I listened and hated every second of it.
I knew what dreaming of fear smelled like.
The moment I rounded the corner and saw Raff bleeding out under the sodium streetlights; I knew a fear so intense it took me to my knees.
I heard the change in Soren’s breath, the low sound from deep in the throat, not quite a word and not quite a cry, his scent changing from warm peach to something burnt and harsh.
His breathing hitched, and his heartbeat spiked, and I could feel all that through the door.
When the light eventually changed, his nightmares stopped, and I headed down to the kitchen and shifted, standing for a moment in the grey pre-dawn, then tugged on the sweats I’d left folded on the chair.
My wolf settled when I took my skin, but still listened, and I opened my laptop before I started the coffee.
Old habit—check the networks first, then eat.
The A/O bulletin board loaded slowly on the satellite connection, and I scrolled past the usual noise.
Land notices. Pack disputes. Contraband alerts out of the eastern territories.
Then the bounty post that Ronan had spoken about, only a day old and already with forty-seven responses.
The photo was poor quality, taken from something official—an ID maybe, or a registration record. But it was Soren.
I read it twice.
Omega. Snow leopard. Traveling alone. Believed to be in distress. The reward figure sat at the bottom, and it was not a small number. Safe return to family. No questions asked.
The contact was listed as anonymous, routed through a third-party handler, nothing about Soren being pregnant.
“Fuck,” I muttered and tapped the table as I thought this through.
The bounty was the problem, not just the significant amount, which was enough to draw serious people, but also its structure.
An anonymous post, no named alpha, and no questions asked wasn’t the kind of begging from someone who cared about their missing omega.
Bonded mates who cared hired lawyers, filed registry claims, and worked the legal system.
Whoever had posted this wanted Soren returned without a paper trail, which meant they didn’t want anyone asking questions about what returned meant.
Which made me think that whoever came for Soren wouldn’t come quietly.
And they would come. A post that size on the A/O hunter’s network would be shared across channels I couldn’t monitor, passed among trackers, bondsmen, and people who operated in the grey space between the two.
Some would be amateurs, chasing the number without thinking it through.
Those I could handle at the gate. But the ones who’d run this kind of search before, who’d know to pull DMV records and road camera feeds and work backward from the Center 14 location, would be here within days of the storms subsiding and the bridge opening, before, if they were brave enough to chance the terrain only the locals knew.
I thought about the road. The bridge. Then I thought about the perimeter, the cameras, the points of approach to the house that I’d mapped, the underground tunnel that only a handful of people knew about, and the omega in my bed who needed my help.
The snow was still falling—new inches overnight on top of what was already there, and there had been nothing from Decker about the bridge, but just in case anyone was out there wanting to get here, I would patrol east along the fence line once Soren was up and had eaten something.
Then I put the coffee on and started thinking about breakfast.
But my head kept taking me back upstairs and to the two names I’d heard, out of a locked room from a sleeping man who’d shouted in his sleep.
Malachai. Emric. I had questions I needed to ask carefully because Soren didn’t owe me an explanation of his history, and I didn’t have the right to demand one. But I wanted to understand.
I heard Soren stir, the shower, the floorboards, the key in the lock, and was halfway through cooking when I heard him at the kitchen door.
I didn’t turn immediately because wolves are fast, and he’d spent enough time around bad alphas that sudden movement might scare him.
The scent was all around him—clean now instead of buried beneath blood, fear, and cold.
I stood there longer than I should have before realizing I might not be looking at him, but I was breathing him in.
“Morning,” I said to the pan.
A pause, then, “Morning.”
He came in, went to the table, and pulled out the chair he’d taken yesterday—the one farthest from me.
“Eggs?” I asked.
“I have to leave,” he said.
“Soren, you can’t.”
“You said the bridge is out, but I need to see it for myself. How far is it? Can I walk? I don’t want to walk, but I can’t stay here and wait for someone to find me…” his panic stopped on a sob. Fuck.
Inspiration hit me and I reached for the mic on the small radio and connected to the sheriff’s dispatch. It wasn’t Sheriff Decker who answered but the eternally bright Delia, a beta who ran the entire back office and, according to Decker, most of the county along with it.
“Sheriff’s office, copy.”
“Copy, this is Cassian Raines.”
“Cassian, hey, you okay up there?”
“Good. Wanted an update on the bridge.”
“Still closed. They’ve got crews on it, but the ice overnight set them back. Sheriff’s saying three weeks at the earliest.” A pause, and he heard the familiar sound of her keyboard.
“Someone came through before the road closed.”
“Sheriff told me. Are they okay?”
“All good,” I lied, and glanced at him to see him tense with fear and panic.
“Just a lost alpha tourist with bad directional sense. I’ve said I’ll give him a room until the bridge opens, but he’s worried I’m trying to keep him here,” I said and laughed as if it were all a joke, then shrugged as I met Soren’s steady gaze.
“Does he have family we need to tell?”
Soren put a hand over his mouth, shaking his head frantically. His eyes were wide with fear.
“Nah, he’s already done it; he’s happy to stay and get the break. Big-city alpha burnout—you know what I mean.”
“Sure, I get it. Listen, tell your guest not to worry. You know this happens every couple of years. Bridge crew knows what they’re doing. Nobody’s stuck; they’re just delayed. Big difference.”
“Appreciate it, Delia.” My gaze kept drifting back to the omega, one hand resting across the curve of his stomach without seeming aware he was doing it.
“You call if you need anything. As Sheriff said, we can maybe get a snowmobile up that road if it comes to it.”
“Copy that.”
“Hold, Cassian.” There was a muffled exchange as Delia covered the mic.
A second later, Decker came on the line.
“Cassian, you copy?”
“Copy.”
“I’ve had a few inquiries about that delivery you accepted.”
My grip tightened on the phone. He meant Soren? My stomach fell. Inquiries meant way too many people wondering who I had up here.
“Official?” I managed to push out.
“Not yet.”
That yet settled like a stone in my gut.
“No way off the mountain apart from snowmobile or shifted, okay? But that means no way on for anyone else? Keep everything buttoned up,” Decker said. “Don’t make any assumptions, and don’t get comfortable. If anything changes your end, I want to hear about it before anyone else does.”
“Understood.”
“And Cassian?”
“Yeah?”
“If you need another pair of hands, you call. Doesn’t matter what time.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
We ended the conversation. Soren nibbled at his lower lip, then dipped his green eyes. Had he picked up on any of that coded intel? He didn’t appear any more distressed than normal or appear to have seen through what Decker was saying.
Instead, he was focusing on getting off the mountain. “So, a snowmobile is a way out?”
“If you’re desperate.” I gestured pointedly at his belly, then held up the handset.
“Any time you want to check, or you need help in any way, press here to transmit; release to listen. Give your location, and they’ll respond.
” I set it back on the table between us.
“Channel’s already set. You don’t have to touch anything else. ”
He stared at it.
“You can use it at any time,” I added.