Chapter 14 #2
I waited to see if he’d comment, but he picked up his fork, and we ate in silence for a few minutes.
Outside, the snow was a steady curtain, and the woodstove kept the kitchen warm enough that the windows were beginning to fog at the edges.
My wolf was awake and paying attention, tracking Soren’s breathing and the set of his shoulders, when the fork paused and when he started to eat again.
Ask carefully, I told myself. Not a debrief. Not an extraction. I just want to keep him safe.
“You have nightmares,” I said.
Soren’s fork stilled for a second. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.” I kept my voice level. “But my wolf heard the names you called from downstairs.”
He looked up—a quick look—then back at his plate. “I’m used to them.”
“Okay, but I have some questions.” I refilled his tea, and he wrapped his hands around the mug.
“I’m not—” He stopped. Tried again. “I don’t want to talk about my nightmares.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I just want to understand what I’m dealing with.
” I gestured vaguely toward the road. “I have a fence and a perimeter and a threat picture with a lot of gaps in it. If you want to talk about those gaps, I’m listening.
If you don’t, I’ll work with what I have.
” I paused because I was cautious about how he’d take bad news.
“You should know there’s a large bounty posted on the A/O hunters network emphasizing your vulnerability.
Whoever posted it is anonymous, but uses the word family, and wants you back home, no questions asked. ”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I don’t have a family. I don’t have a home.”
“I handle what comes to my gate.” I kept my gaze fixed on him. “And I’m not asking for your life story, but I need enough to know who I’m watching for.”
“How much money?”
“Two million.” His eyes widened. “I expected higher, but if whoever posted it doesn’t want to make your pure bloodline general knowledge, then they won’t post high. Two million is a solid amount of money to hunters.”
“Are you tempted to collect on the bounty?” he asked, staring at me.
My wolf snarled; my head hurt. “I swear no amount of money would make me hand you over to anyone.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
I gestured around me. “I have enough money.”
“You could have more.”
“Stop!” I growled. “I said no amount of money.”
Soren was confused, then set his fork down and stared at the table, and his hand moved to his belly as he sighed. “What did you hear in my nightmares?”
“Names, I think. One of them was Malachai?” I didn’t add that Soren had been so loud that I’d nearly jimmied the lock and forced my way in. Whoever this fucking guy was, he was dead if I ever met him.
“Malachai,” he corrected, and tears welled in his eyes, which he blinked back as if he couldn’t bear to cry. “He’s the alpha who they made… he’s the one who… he’s my baby’s father.”
“Can I have a last name?”
“Dalton.”
“Dalton?” He couldn’t mean the Dalton family, could he?
His jaw tensed, and then he deflated, and the rest came out staccato and quiet.
“Old money. Old alliances. Tigers.” He gazed at me as I put two and two together.
Malachai Dalton. The Daltons sat somewhere beyond wealth, their empire built on money, power, and organized crime.
“My family and his have been arranging things between them for three generations because our cats are the closest genetic match.” His lips twisted.
“I wasn’t a good omega because I said no to being forcibly bred, and he wasn’t a good alpha because he was already bonded to another omega, one from a bloodline that was far from pure, and refused to go through with getting me pregnant. My brother forced the mating.”
“How?”
“My brother had a gun to Malachai’s omega’s head…
Gabe was terrified, Malachai was crying…
” He seemed lost in memory, and I didn’t push.
“My brother let them go after, but after… at Center 14, he took pleasure in telling me that Asha’s biological father was dead…
” Soren swallowed hard. “Then, I was a prisoner at Center 14, out of the picture, locked away there until the baby was born and it would be registered as my alpha brother’s child. ”
A log shifted in the stove. My wolf wanted something to act on, and there was nothing here to act on—just a man sitting across from me in my kitchen telling me the stripped version of the worst thing that had happened to him, and the name of a man who’d been forced to carry out something heinous, lost his omega, and took his own life.
The mention of war was a punch to the gut.
“Okay,” I said.
“Asha is mine. The Daltons can’t have her. My brother can’t have her.” Soren curled in on himself, and I desperately wanted to reach over to take his hand.
“Okay,” I repeated, and this time, I did reach over but kept my hand close enough that if he wanted to take it, he could. He didn’t move because he didn’t trust me yet, even if I wanted him to.
“And the other name,” I said. “Emric?” It hit me that I recognized the name, in context, but I couldn’t believe it was the Emric I’d heard of.
“My older brother.” Soren’s expression closed.
“He wants Asha. Not me. Asha. My brother can’t have children, and she’d be the first kit born into the family in twenty years, and a baby without a named sire reverts to the birth family in the registry—” He stopped and shook his head.
“You know how the Omega Registry works.”
“I know how it works,” I said. An omega carries a child.
Gestates it, births it, bleeds for it. And if no alpha’s name appears on the Registry paperwork, the child belongs to whoever the Registry designates as the birth family of record.
Not the person who gave birth. An omega could do everything right—bond, nest, raise a pup from infancy—and a single clerical fact can undo all of it.
No sire named means the child reverts. Like the omega was just… borrowing them.
“Okay,” I said, and he stared at me. Was he expecting me to ask for more? Was he expecting me to go into fight mode? My wolf wanted to fight, but I was the rational part and I had control. Tenuous right now, but control was there. “Okay,” I said again. “That’s what I needed. Thank you.”
I took my plate to the sink.
“What are you going to do with what I told you?” he asked, sounding fearful.
“Keep watching the road.”
“You can’t win against my family. They have money and power and…”
“Are you ready to tell me your family name, Soren?”
“Please—”
“Emric?” I prompted and he winced. “Emric Kastor? Boston” He nodded and I swallowed. If I thought him being connected to the Dalton family was bad, the Kastor family was worse.
“Yes.”
Every ORT operative in the northeast knew the names of the Families.
Every cop, every politician worth a damn, every crime boss, every family that had spent generations trying to stay alive knew it too.
The two families weren’t simply rich; they’d built an empire that reached into legitimate business, organized crime, private security, judges who owed favors, politicians who looked the other way, and bloodline contracts older than most modern laws.
Nobody crossed them unless they had no other choice, because people who stood in their way had a habit of disappearing, changing their minds, or ending up dead while someone else called it an accident.
They didn’t need to rule openly. Fear did the work for them.
“My father died… My brother Emric inherited the role of Patriarch.”
“Emric Kastor is your brother,” I murmured.
Somehow that chilled me even more. Empires survived their founders.
Sometimes the sons proved even worse, and the younger Kastor alpha had been a nasty piece of work back when I was ORT, but now…
hell, I didn’t know the former Patriarch had died. I was so out of the loop.
The old Kastor Patriarch had been one of the most feared men in the world of organized crime, a man whose influence reached far beyond his own territory.
We’d investigated him more than once and never managed to get close.
Witnesses disappeared. Evidence evaporated.
Cases collapsed before they ever reached court.
We’d long suspected he never dirtied his own hands unless necessary and had his son Emric do his dirty work.
The word trafficking echoed through my head.
Soren wasn’t just a frightened omega who needed somewhere safe.
Suddenly, my mountain didn’t feel isolated enough.
I couldn’t leave this to a safe house, a locked gate, and good intentions.
If the Kastor family came for Soren, they wouldn’t stop because the trail was difficult.
They’d keep coming until they found him—or someone stopped them.
I need help. I need to call this in to the ORT.
No! My wolf snarled, gripped my chest, and ripped through my bond. Fuck. I pushed back against it, but he didn’t budge.
No, he repeated. Think. No trust!
He was right. I had to trust Ronan this was out of hand and worse than I’d thought. Keeping an omega safe, or getting him somewhere secure, was one thing, but having the head of the most powerful crime families hunting Soren down? Fuck. I sent a quick message.
Cassian: Call me
Cassian: Now
Soren finished his food in silence, then took his plate to the sink, leaning there, glancing at my phone, before he turned to face me. “Are you going to call my brother?”
I didn’t get defensive to the accusation. “You’re safe here with me,” I said, as if I hadn’t said it before. He stared at me, waiting for an axe to fall, and I had to think on my paws. “I’m going to show you what would have been the library.”
He blinked at me, likely expecting that I’d be contemplating calling the Kastor family or using Soren somehow. “The what now?”