Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
CASSIAN
I carried out perimeter checks twice daily, and the tree line was quiet. Whatever hunters were tracking Soren hadn’t followed him here yet. I reassured him each time that he was safe, and he just looked at me with all that hesitation and distrust of an alpha carved into every instinct he had.
The worst part was when he slept, and the nightmares happened. Every time they started, my wolf moved us toward the stairs, but I had control. Right?
The first night, I let my anxious wolf get to the bottom step before I pulled him back, and the second, I made it to the top of the stairs and sat in the hall waiting it out, and both mornings, I was in the kitchen before he came down.
Tonight they started earlier.
My wolf had been front and center all day, particularly since Soren had sat in my lap and snuggled in, and we’d shared space in his nest. Not even an after-dinner run had made him settle, so I was a long way past restless even in my fur, and just after midnight, I heard him call out.
Cry.
Sob.
I took the stairs at speed, skidding to a stop outside his door,
Go in, my wolf said
It’s not right, I told him in return, and he snarled
Despite the internal battle, I sat back on my haunches outside his door and listened.
Soren’s voice came through low and frightened, and then the fearful cries I couldn’t catch clearly.
I didn’t know what they’d done to him, but I’d already made a note of them and started a new file to track them down and remove their faces from this earth.
It was easier when there were names. Easier when there was something I could do.
Find them. Break them. Make sure they never touched another omega again.
That was a problem I understood, and one my wolf wholeheartedly agreed with.
Go in, my wolf said again.
No. He won’t trust us if we do that.
You have to help; he snarled at me.
He had a point. I did have to help, because…
Fuck, I don’t know why.
Because I could? Because Raff would’ve kicked my ass if I hadn’t. Because it was what we did with the ORT.
I’m not ORT anymore.
We’re Alpha, my wolf insisted. It’s our job.
I stayed where I was, and my wolf paced inside me while the sounds went on; distress, broken breathing, and something underneath it that was worse than fear.
So much pain.
So. Much. Pain.
My wolf hated it. Fuck, I hated it. Because there was something unbearable about hearing fear and sitting outside a door while someone suffered and choosing not to go in, and every sound through the wood scraped at something raw inside me that I’d thought I’d buried deep enough to stay buried.
I fought my wolf, but in the end he won, and nosed at the door, and it swung open.
He didn’t lock us out, he said, sounding triumphant, as if this proved Soren wanted us to go in and check on him.
I guess it wouldn’t be wrong just to check on him.
Soren’s scent hit first, then the nest, then his rapid heartbeat. He was sitting up, half-awake, both hands fisted in the bedding, not tracking the room yet, and he mewled in pain.
I stepped through the door.
The nest was deeper than I’d registered from the doorway, more layered and more deliberately made than it had been a few days ago, and I circled the outer edge while Soren tracked me with pale green eyes that were wet at the corners and not yet focused.
He didn’t pull away. Didn’t make himself smaller.
I put my forepaws on the edge of the bed and looked in.
Hurting, my wolf whimpered.
Slow and careful, he shifted over, made room, and then patted the space.
“Please,” he murmured, and he wasn’t afraid.
He’d been scared for so long, yet he’d made room for me, and for a second I froze, waiting for him to change his mind.
Even my wolf hesitated because this was a big thing.
“Your wolf. Please,” he said, and I was already working out the logistics, knowing how to settle without putting weight where it shouldn’t go, jumping in as lightly as I could, then curling into his side.
Silent tears ran down his cheeks, and I had no idea what to do with them.
Give me a target, and I could deal with it.
Give me a threat, and I’d put it in the ground.
But tears?
I nosed at his cheek, licking away one of them before it could disappear into the pillow, and when another followed, I did it again.
My wolf whined softly.
Fix it.
As if I knew how.
“I’m so scared,” he sobbed brokenly, and I continued to press my muzzle to his skin, and finally his breathing evened as I nudged him and fussed over him, and his grip on my fur loosened.
The place where my bond with Raff had lived ached, and I knew exactly what that meant.
Disloyal. Soren’s grip had loosened in sleep, fingers still curled in my fur.
I lay still and let his warmth seep into me, hating that it felt good, hating that I was warm for the first time in three years and couldn’t make myself move away.
The worst part was that some part of me had stopped listening for the pain of losing my bonded mate, and for a few minutes I’d forgotten to hurt.
I was too tired and too ‘wolf’ to fight sleep.
Soren’s heartbeat was loud and even under my ear, and I pressed my muzzle harder into his shoulder.
The scar was quiet again; the pressure eased so my chest didn’t seize when I breathed too deeply.
What did I do with this? Raff’s voice, or my brain doing what it always did at the edge of sleep, conjuring him from exhaustion and guilt.
Cass? You have a chance to heal. Let yourself help him.
I curled tighter into Soren’s side because either Raff or my subconscious had to be wrong. If I let myself heal, what happened to the part of me that still belonged to my bonded mate?