Chapter 21 #2
“Weeks,” he whispered. “That was all, but we didn’t tell anyone else apart from Ronan…
” He closed his eyes for a moment, then lifted his chin and stared at me.
“Command understood I would’ve gone with him.
They knew I would’ve stopped him going alone.
So, they waited until I was outside, until I was far enough away that I couldn’t do a damn thing, and they sent him back. ”
His fingers tightened around the mug.
“They decided one more omega was worth the risk. Raff was the risk.” His voice cracked, and he looked away. “His life became currency they could spend.”
The kitchen seemed to shrink around us.
“Raff found the missing victim trapped beneath a collapsed beam and got him free. They made it to one of the loading bays. There was a trafficker there, hidden while we cleared the building.” Cassian swallowed.
“Raff pushed the omega out of the way when the alpha fired. Took the bullet instead. Too close to his heart for the shift to save him.” His hand shook around the mug.
“I got to him before he died. Held him while he bled out and promised him whatever he asked just so he’d stay with me. ”
He stared down at his hands.
“ORT called it a regrettable but acceptable loss.”
His voice dropped to almost nothing.
“Raff wasn’t a fucking loss. He was my mate.
His life had value.” Neither of us spoke.
The fire crackled in the stove, and outside the snow slid from the roof with a dull thump.
Cassian drew in a slow breath and scrubbed both hands over his face.
“I resigned from the ORT and came here to die.” There was no drama in the words, only fact.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough, and he glanced back at me.
“You asked me who he was, and the first thing I did was tell you how he died.”
“You lost your omega, and your baby,” I whispered. Then louder, “You love him.”
“I do.”
“Of course.” I knew there wasn’t room for anyone else in his heart; I knew what we had was transient, and he was just being brave and stoic for me, but I reached across the table before I had time to think myself out of it and rested my hand over his. “Tell me the rest. About the person he was.”
He looked down at where my fingers covered his, and for a long moment, he didn’t answer. Then something softened in his face, grief giving way to something warmer.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
“He talked.” I blinked. “Constantly.” The smile reached his eyes now. “I’d say something, and Raff would answer with a story that somehow involved three complete strangers, two dogs, a detour of fifty miles, and somewhere we’d stop for pie on the way home.”
“He liked pie?”
“He liked everything.” Cassian shook his head fondly.
“At our old place in the city, we’d go out for groceries, and by the time we’d reached the checkout, he’d know the cashier’s daughter’s name, and that the woman behind us in the line bred goats, and if he saw them again he’d ask them for more news about weddings, or goats, or someone’s husband. ”
I laughed.
“He remembered all of that?”
“Every single detail.” He snorted. “He’d happily spend twenty minutes talking to a stranger while I stood there wondering if we’d ever get home.” The humor lingered on his face, but grief rested beside it now instead of swallowing it whole.
Silence settled comfortably between us. I expected it to hurt. Instead, it felt important, as though Cassian was finally remembering the man for me, not the tragedy.
I wrapped my hands around the ridiculous wolf mug. “Did the bond happen with him immediately?”
“Yes,” he narrowed his eyes. “But I was already…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “He had this extraordinary gift of making the world feel worth saving.”
His gaze drifted around the kitchen, seeing another time.
“If we came home after an operation, there’d be music playing at our old apartment the second he stepped through the door, and he’d be dancing while he cooked, despite having absolutely no sense of rhythm.
He’d read passages out loud from whatever book he was halfway through because, apparently, I needed to hear them right away.
He loved the snow, though, and every time it snowed, he’d declare it the perfect excuse to light the fire, make hot chocolate, stay in pajamas all day, and ignore the rest of the world.
That’s why he found this damn mansion in the middle of nowhere.
He always said it was the perfect place to curl up under a blanket and read a book, among other things.
” He smiled, and this time there was more love than grief in it.
“I used to tease him that he was trying to domesticate my wolf.”
“Was he?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Did it work?”
Cassian smiled briefly, but there was nothing warm in it. “I think I’m only just beginning to realize maybe it did.”
“And he was successful in the ORT?”
He frowned. “Yes, but he wanted out of the ORT, and I understood why. He said it had stopped being about the omegas.” His expression hardened.
“That they’d just become numbers. Twelve rescued meant a successful operation, no matter how many we failed to reach.
No matter who got hurt. No matter what happened to them afterward.
They paraded every rescue as proof we were the good guys while people behind desks decided which lives were worth risking and which ones were acceptable losses.
” His jaw tightened. “He was right, but it was too late, and Raff died because someone made that calculation.”
“Omegas really are on their own,” I whispered, grief hollowing me out.
The ORT and its connected Haven Network had been the last hope, the one place that was supposed to stand between omegas and the SED, between us and the alphas who believed they owned us.
Even when I’d known they couldn’t save me, I’d believed they were saving someone.
Now even that small hope was gone.
“Raff wanted this place to be a home, somewhere we could help omegas without answering to the ORT.” His expression tightened.
“Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he became expendable.
Maybe they knew we were halfway out the door.
Maybe they thought losing Raff would break me enough that I’d stay, bury myself in the work and let them use my grief to keep me loyal.
” He looked at me. “They were wrong. And maybe that’s why you being here feels right. ”
Something in Cassian’s voice changed before he’d even finished the thought, and a small smile touched his mouth. Whatever he’d remembered, it mattered to him. “Can I show you something?”
“Another library?” I teased gently, as whatever question had been sitting in my chest eased.
“Better,” He said and offered his elbow, and I took it, letting him lead me down the hall to his office.
I stopped dead on the threshold the second I saw the images that cycled silently across four screens, each one showing a different stretch of snow-covered road, tree line, fence, or approach to the house, motion sensors and thermal overlays and time stamps ticking over in the corners as if the house itself never stopped watching.
“You can see everything?” I asked.
“I have to make sure the system works before I hand it over to the Haven Network.”
“When are you handing it over?”
He frowned. “Not yet.”
“Yet?” I asked, not that I wanted an answer.
“It’s not ready.”
It didn’t look unfinished to me. It looked ready, waiting for the first omega desperate enough to need it. Anyone who made it this far would find locked gates, cameras, warmth, food, and Cassian standing between them and whatever they were running from.
“So, this place is meant for omegas who need somewhere safe?”
“Yes.”
I checked the screens, working through what it meant. Nobody could walk onto this property without him knowing. Nobody could drive up the mountain unseen. Every approach was covered, every angle accounted for, and somewhere in my chest the tightness started to loosen on its own.
“You’re a good alpha, Cassian.”
He stiffened. “It was all Raff’s idea. I’m doing it for him.”
I huffed, “And for the many omegas who might need your help.” I viewed quiet images of empty woodland, at how still and ordinary they were, nothing moving anywhere on any of them, and when I spoke, my voice had lost most of its edge. “You really did build a fortress.”
“I built a sanctuary.” He crossed to the desk and picked up a photograph, a small smile touching his face as he held it out to me. “But this is what I wanted to show you. My ORT team.”
I took it carefully. “There’s you,” I said.
“Yep. That’s Brec, our medic.”
“The one smiling.”
“Yep, and that’s Ronan, and my… my Raff.” He pointed, and my attention settled on the men beside him, seeing a similarity in Raff to the shifter who’d rescued me from Center 14.
“Raff looks like Ronan.”
A smile got away from him before he could stop it. “They’re brothers. Raff was the youngest.”
“I can see it now. The eyes.”
“And the nose.”
“The smile’s different.”
He laughed, easier than I’d heard him laugh in a while. “Completely different. Unless he was messing with the team, Ronan spent most of his life as though smiling might kill him, and Raff smiled enough for both.”
I studied the picture again, lingering on Raff’s finger guns, and something about the photo made me all warm inside. “He looks happy.”
“He usually was.” The words came out warm, not pained. “We’d come back from rescues exhausted, wondering how we’d survive another week, and somehow Raff would have everyone laughing before we’d even finished cleaning our weapons.” He smiled.
I traced a fingertip just above Raff’s face without touching the glass of the frame itself. “I wish I’d known him, omega to omega.”
“He would’ve liked you.”
I frowned. “You can’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”