Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
CASSIAN
Soren excused himself as soon as the call ended, and I wanted to tell him not to go to his room and lock the door, just in case, but he was pale and exhausted. I followed him upstairs with snacks and water and put everything by his nest.
“Soren—”
“I promise I’ll shout if I need you.” It was as if he could read my mind.
He tugged my sweatshirt down around him as he climbed in with my help.
“Do you want me to shut the door?” I asked.
“No, leave it.”
Stay with our omega.
I ignored my wolf. “I’ll be in the kitchen, okay? I’ll check on you in an hour.”
“I’m okay.”
He buried his face in the growing collection of my clothes and sighed.
Nesting was normal, particularly this late in pregnancy.
I knew that. Every ORT operative who worked omega extraction knew that.
What wasn’t normal was my wolf staring at the pile of stolen sweatshirts and blankets and acting as though Soren had built it for us.
He was asleep, which was a relief, because I left the door ajar, and no locked doors meant I could help in an instant as I didn’t need to break a door down.
I had nothing to do apart from patrolling, and I wasn’t ready to leave the house right then, so I switched on my laptop to research more about childbirth and saw a flashing alert.
SKINSIDE // PRIVATE MESSAGE
THE ARCHIVIST: Tell me you don’t have him with you
I stared at the message before typing.
IRONPINE: Have who?
The reply came almost immediately.
THE ARCHIVIST: Don’t waste my time. You came looking for Emric Kastor. The private boards have exploded. Doubled bounty. No questions. Retrieval only.
A cold knot settled low in my stomach, and I didn’t answer.
THE ARCHIVIST: You have him.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. What could I say?
THE ARCHIVIST: You’re already behind; Emric Kastor isn’t stupid. He didn’t inherit the Kastor family empire by being the loudest man in the room.
Another message appeared.
THE ARCHIVIST: He follows patterns.
Then another.
THE ARCHIVIST: People don’t interest him. Connections do.
My shoulders tensed.
IRONPINE: Meaning?
The response came back instantly, and my pulse quickened.
THE ARCHIVIST: I saw a name today via ORT. Your former teammate, Ronan Moreau is off-books and listed as rogue.
I froze. Rogue? Fuck, that was a lone wolf, going out on his own, disavowed by the ORT.
THE ARCHIVIST: He’s accused of the attack at Center 14, and if the ORT is sharing names publicly renouncing your ex-teammate, then Emric can see it.
I stared at the screen.
THE ARCHIVIST: And if Emric researches Moreau...
Another pause.
THE ARCHIVIST: ...he finds you.
I typed before I could stop myself.
IRONPINE: You’re assuming too much.
THE ARCHIVIST: No.
A pause.
THE ARCHIVIST: I’m assuming an ex-ORT captain doesn’t suddenly start researching Emric Kastor for fun.
I swallowed.
THE ARCHIVIST: Emric isn’t stupid. If Ronan Moreau was involved in extracting the omega that Emric’s hunting, then he’ll work backward. Moreau’s known associates. Former teams. Safe houses. Retirement locations. Financial records. Old mission reports. Every person Moreau ever trusted.
The cursor blinked.
THE ARCHIVIST: You don’t beat Emric by disappearing.
THE ARCHIVIST: If Moreau’s still alive, tell him to keep moving.
The chat window closed.
I sat staring at the empty screen, my laptop forgotten.
If The Archivist had pieced this together from a handful of conversations on Skinside, Emric was already ahead of us.
Knowing Ronan’s phone was compromised, I called Brec immediately. It went straight to voicemail.
“Get Ronan to call me,” I said, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. “As soon as you get this.”
I hung up and stared at the phone, willing it to ring.
Nothing.
The silence settled around the kitchen. My mind kept circling back to The Archivist’s words. If Emric has Moreau… he has you.
Ronan hadn’t simply extracted Soren and disappeared.
He’d put himself between the Kastor family and the mountain.
Every false lead, every abandoned vehicle, every rumor planted on the private boards was different.
They hadn’t been clever distractions. They’d been one man trying to convince an empire to hunt him instead of an omega and his unborn child.
My chest tightened.
What if it hadn’t been enough?
Worse… what if it had worked?
If Emric had identified Ronan, then Ronan was no longer just another former ORT operative.
He was a witness. A loose end. The man who’d stolen something the Kastors believed belonged to them.
Emric wouldn’t stop until he’d squeezed every name, every contact and every safe house out of him, whether Ronan gave them willingly or not.
I checked my phone.
Still nothing.
Ronan wasn’t careless.
I stopped the thought before it could finish.
Sitting here waiting wasn’t protecting anyone. Every minute I spent hoping the phone would ring was another minute Emric Kastor could be closing the distance between us.
I shoved the laptop closed, grabbed my keys, and headed for the door. I needed to patrol. I needed space. I needed to kill something.
After lunch that same day, Soren, exhausted, went to bed early, complaining of back pain.
Well, not complaining—he didn’t do that—but wincing when he moved with tightness in his expression.
I banked the fire in his room, checked the windows, and headed downstairs, pausing halfway through the kitchen.
A second mug already sat beside the kettle because I’d started putting it there without thinking.
Tea for Soren went into a wolf mug that Raff had bought because he claimed every house with a wolf in it needed at least one ridiculous mug, and this one had Fluffy with Attitude on one side.
I rolled my eyes when Raff handed it to me, as he told me that I was the fluffy wolf with too much attitude, but that he’d never tell anyone that his big bad alpha was a softie.
Soren said it was his favorite, and I didn’t tell him the backstory.
I reached for it every morning. Coffee for me.
Routine had always been important to me.
Somewhere along the way, the routine had quietly become ours instead of mine.
Like the fact that I headed to the bedroom, shifted, and climbed into the nest. He let out a happy sigh and curled into me.
The next morning, I woke to warmth after the best night’s sleep either of us had managed in years.
It took me a few seconds to understand why I was so comfortable.
Soren had curled into me sometime before dawn, his face tucked into the side of my neck, one arm draped across my chest while Asha rested between us.
At some point after I’d retaken my skin, my arm lay around his shoulders, holding him as naturally as if we’d always slept this way.
I stayed where I was, afraid that even breathing too deeply would disturb him.
His breath warmed my throat with every slow exhale, carrying the soft scent of vanilla and peaches that had become as familiar to me as the smell of the forest outside.
Waking didn’t feel like dragging myself through broken glass.
I knew where the grief lived inside me, but it hadn’t been the first thing I felt in a few days.
Holding Soren should’ve felt wrong, but it hadn’t taken Raff away from me, dulled my love for him, or made me miss him less.
Somehow, it had eased the weight pressing on my ribs, and I couldn’t understand how that was possible without feeling guilty about it.
“I haven’t forgotten Raff,” I whispered into the quiet room, the words meant as much for myself as for the wolf.
We never could.
The certainty behind the answer tightened my throat.
Of course I hadn’t. Raff had been my mate.
He would always be my mate. Loving him wasn’t something that could be undone by time, or distance, or death itself, and yet my wolf wasn’t troubled by the man sleeping in my arms. He accepted both truths without conflict, as though one didn’t diminish the other.
There is room, he murmured.
“There shouldn’t be,” I breathed, closing my eyes for a moment.
My wolf didn’t argue. He settled again, his quiet confidence infuriating because some small part of me wanted to believe him and that we were safe, and there was a future for Soren and Asha that made sense.
Every patrol I expected to find prints beyond my own, but every patrol ended the same way.
Nothing. Somehow, that worried me more than if I’d found tracks because I couldn’t shake that the sheriff had warned about my delivery, and I was waiting for the axe to fall.
I stayed a while longer, until every breath coming out of Soren was slow and even and my wolf finally settled beneath my ribs.
I eased out from beneath the blankets, tucked them back around Soren’s shoulders, and stood there another few seconds watching for any sign he was surfacing.
He didn’t stir. Good. Ronan hadn’t called me, and I needed to talk to Decker, and I wasn’t having the conversation with Soren awake and listening through the floorboards.
Downstairs, I shut the office door behind me before I even reached for the handset, an old habit that had kept me alive more than once and switched over to the sheriff’s private frequency.
“Raines,” Decker said, in that flat voice he used when he already knew the call wasn’t good news.
I kept my voice low. “I wanted to talk without anyone listening.”
He took his time answering, long enough that I wondered if he’d put his hand over the phone again. “Go ahead.”
“You mentioned inquiries.”
“I did. Regarding former ORT Captain, Cassian Raines.”
My stomach dropped and kept dropping, past worry into something colder. “That’s specific.”
“Specific enough.”
“Official?”