Chapter 23 #2
Tears welled in my eyes. Had Yannick met his twins at all? Had he held them? Had he been given even this one perfect moment before he died?
“Thank you,” I whispered, setting the little wolf beside Asha on my aching belly, my fingers brushing its worn ears.
I smiled. “Hey Asha, this is your first real friend… his name is…” I frowned. “You should give it a name.”
“Me?” Cassian glanced from me to the toy and frowned. “I’ve got nothing.”
“You’re a wolf,” I said. “You must know hundreds of wolf names.”
He pretended to consider it with great seriousness, studying the stuffed toy as though the answer carried enormous importance.
“Wolfie.”
I blinked. “Wolfie?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s the best a wolf can do?”
He grinned, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “It’s tradition.”
I laughed, the sound catching me by surprise. “You’re making that up.”
“Absolutely.” Cassian’s smile was gentle. “Looks like a Wolfie to me.”
I looked down at Asha, and the little stuffed wolf that had survived almost as much as we had.
“Hello, Wolfie,” I whispered. “Welcome to the family.”
At some point, Asha finished the bottle and drifted off to sleep on my chest. One minute she was determined to stay awake, tiny fists flexing on the blanket; the next her eyes closed, and her breathing settled into a steady rhythm.
The room had gone quiet around us. Brec had finally disconnected after making Cassian promise to call again if anything changed, and the adrenaline that had carried me through the night was fading fast, leaving me heavy and exhausted.
Cassian was still standing at the end of the bed.
He hadn’t sat down yet. He’d cleaned up the room, gathered towels, checked on me, checked on Asha, made sure I drank water, and somehow managed to keep watch over both of us at the same time. Now he stood with his arms folded, as though he was waiting for the next emergency to arrive.
“You can hold her again,” I said quietly.
His eyes lifted to mine. “I’ve held her.”
“Not really.”
For a moment he didn’t move, but when I shifted Asha toward him, I saw something I’d never expected to see from Cassian—hesitation.
The man who’d helped deliver a baby in a bedroom with nothing but Brec on speakerphone suddenly unsure of himself.
He slid his arms beneath her with extraordinary care and settled her to his chest as though she were made of glass.
Asha mewled and wriggled once before relaxing completely. Her tiny body seemed to melt against him, and Cassian went still.
I watched him stare down at her, and something changed in his expression.
It wasn’t dramatic. There were no tears and no visible crack in the armor he’d worn since the day I’d met him.
But grief, relief, wonder, and something dangerously close to happiness flew across his face before he could hide it again.
His thumb brushed over the edge of the towel near her cheek. Asha was asleep, and Cassian stood beside my bed, watching her as though she were the most precious thing he’d ever seen.
“You are ours to protect,” Cassian murmured to her, his voice rough with absolute certainty.
“Cassian?” I asked, and he met my gaze, and there wasn’t a trace of doubt in his eyes.
His voice deepened and grew compelling, as if he were pulling something ancient from his soul.
“My wolf has claimed that duty, and so have I. No one will ever lay a hand on you or your omega father while we’re still breathing.
I swear it to you both. If anyone comes for you, they’ll have to come through me first. Through my wolf.
We stand between you and the world until our last breath. ”
I couldn’t drag my eyes away from him. This was a declaration from old stories, a claim.
But he isn’t mine.
What if he could be?
He wasn’t only making the kind of promise heroes made before they threw themselves into danger or talking about dying for us.
He was talking about everything that came afterward, about waking every morning with the space Raff had left inside him and choosing to keep going anyway.
Choosing to carry that grief, to live with it, and still stand between us and anyone who wanted to hurt us.
My throat tightened until it hurt to swallow.
Asha slept on against his chest as though she’d already decided he was safe; her tiny fingers curled into the front of his shirt.
My cat stirred quietly inside me, wrapping itself around the warmth of his wolf without a flicker of fear, and something inside me ached because I wanted to believe it too.
“You’ve already lost everything,” I managed, my voice barely more than a whisper. “I can’t let you have to suffer the loss of Raff for the rest of your life by staying for us.”
“You. Asha. Ours.” His amber gaze never left mine, his wolf eyes bright, and his jaw tightened for a second before he shook his head. “It’s what we want.”
The quiet certainty in his voice stole what little air I’d managed to draw into my lungs.
There wasn’t any hesitation, no sense that he thought he ought to say it.
This wasn’t duty. This wasn’t pity. Somewhere between finding me in the snow and placing Asha in my arms, he’d made his choice to stay here in this world and be the barrier to protect us from the world that wanted my daughter.
I sat there with a blanket around my shoulders, aching from the effort of bringing Asha into the world, and for the first time since I’d arrived at the house, I felt something inside me loosen.
For so long I’d been waiting for disaster.
Waiting for my family to find me, for something to go wrong.
I’d never completely believed we were safe.
But now at least we had someone on our side.