Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
SOREN
Cassian found me in the kitchen before I’d finished my tea and set a single folded sheet of paper on the table between my mug and my hands as if it might bite.
“I want you to see this before it reaches you some other way I can’t control.”
I unfolded it slowly, and it took a moment for the words to arrange themselves into something I understood.
A screenshot, printed from something called Skinside.
I’d heard the name—it was some kind of forum for Alphas, I thought, and not something I’d ever seen.
This was a conversation between names I didn’t recognize, discussing an omega they’d never met, confirmed unaccounted for since the raid on Center 14, presumed lost to exposure in the blizzard that followed.
A moderator asking people to stop speculating about the identity out of respect for a family already grieving.
Then at the bottom, the identity of the deceased omega was revealed.
Soren Kastor.
A grieving family.
I read it twice.
“I’m dead?”
“There’s this person called The Archivist, and he did this for me. I asked him to seed that you’d died, and I should have told you I was doing it, and I crossed a line, I know.” Cassian paced the length of the kitchen, agitation in every step.
“You didn’t need to tell me,” I said, not sure how I felt about the words I was reading. “It makes complete sense.”
“It’s only when I saw it printed that… you’re dead to the world now, and I took your birthright away from you and—”
“Stop!” He stood across the table with his arms folded, watching me.
“I’m not that Alpha, I—”
“If I’m dead, then no one is looking for us,” I said, and relief began to warm in my thoughts.
He nodded. “It’s working. The SED closed the file. Officially, you’re dead.”
I set the paper down and waited for the grief to replace the calm. That seemed like the thing a person should feel, reading their own obituary dressed up as gossip on a website.
It didn’t come.
What came instead was quieter, and it took me longer to recognize it.
Every door I’d ever imagined walking back through was closed now. My brother, whatever he still was to me, would never again decide what I was worth.
I wasn’t dead.
I was free of them, in the only way that had ever been available to me.
“You’re allowed to be angry with me, or upset about the news,” Cassian said, when I hadn’t said anything for too long. “You’re allowed to feel whatever the hell you want.”
“I’m not angry, I’m not upset.” I looked up at him, and I meant it more than anything I’d said out loud since I’d landed on this mountain.
“Maybe I’m supposed to be upset?” I pushed the paper an inch further away.
“There’s nothing back there I want or I’d ever get even if I didn’t want it.
Not the house, not the name, not one single person in it.
” My throat tightened around the last of it anyway.
Knowing something and feeling it weren’t the same thing.
“I just didn’t expect it to be this easy to let go of something I already hated. ”
“It’s not going to feel easy every day,” Cassian said.
“No.” I thought about Asha upstairs, about the stubborn curl of her hair, about a name that would never once appear in a Kastor ledger.
“But I don’t care if it isn’t. I’m never going back, Cassian.
Even if the door reopened tomorrow, nobody was hunting us, and it was safe.
I wouldn’t walk through it.” I held his eyes.
“There’s nothing on the other side of that door I want back. ”
He came around the table then and crouched in front of my chair, taking both my hands in his. For a while, neither of us said anything else.
The new moon was three nights away. I’d been counting since the night Asha was born because every cat shifter knew the number.
Twenty-eight days. That was how long our bodies needed before attempting a shift after giving birth.
Muscles had to recover from being stretched beyond anything nature intended.
Cartilage settled back into place. Ligaments tightened again after months of relaxing to allow a baby into the world.
Brec had explained that shifting too early wasn’t simply painful; it could undo weeks of healing in seconds.
My cat didn’t care about any of that. He’d been prowling beneath my skin for days, restless and impatient, reminding me every waking hour we’d been trapped in this body long enough.
For the first time in months, my body felt as if it belonged to me again.
Pregnancy had become such an overwhelming part of every day that I’d forgotten what normal felt like.
I could breathe without little feet wedged beneath my ribs.
My lower back no longer burned every time I stood up, although it still complained if I carried Asha for too long, and my hips reminded me every morning what they’d been through before easing as I walked around the house.
Even my balance had returned. The awkward heaviness I’d carried everywhere had disappeared, replaced by muscles still weaker than they had been before Center 14, but stronger than they’d been since I’d arrived on the mountain.
Recovery wasn’t dramatic. It came in tiny victories only I noticed: climbing the stairs without stopping halfway, standing at the kitchen counter long enough to cook breakfast, or reaching for something on the top shelf without instinctively protecting a belly that was no longer there.
Brec had become almost evangelical about rehabilitation.
Every couple of days he called to check on Asha, asked after me, then added another exercise to the growing list I’d pinned to the fridge.
Pelvic tilts to wake up muscles that had forgotten their job.
Gentle bridges on the rug in front of the fire until my glutes stopped shaking.
Stretching my spine on my hands and knees while my cat complained that we should be running through snow instead.
Slow squats holding onto the kitchen counter, careful lunges, shoulder exercises because I’d spent weeks curled around my daughter.
The first time he’d talked me through the routine I’d barely managed three squats before my legs trembled so hard I’d had to sit down laughing at myself.
Yesterday I’d reached eight without stopping, and this morning I dropped into another set while the kettle boiled, counting under my breath as dawn spread pale light across the mountains beyond the kitchen window.
By the time I reached ten, my thighs had started to burn in the satisfying way Brec insisted meant muscles were waking up rather than complaining.
Outside, the landscape was beginning to change with the season.
Snow still clung stubbornly to the higher slopes, but the drifts nearest the house had retreated enough to reveal small strips of dark earth and flattened grass beneath.
Somewhere beyond the trees the bridge was finally scheduled to reopen, reconnecting the mountain to the rest of the world, yet neither of us seemed in any hurry to acknowledge that life existed outside this house.
Our days had settled into a rhythm revolving around Asha.
She ate, slept, protested loudly whenever either of us believed she’d settled for the night, and somehow filled every room with life despite being only four weeks old.
We were due to leave at the end of the week—heading to Quebec—and we had go-bags packed and ready, and I hated we’d be leaving, but as long as it was the three of us, I imagined we’d be okay.
Four days to go.
The kitchen door opened behind me before I heard footsteps.
I looked up to find Cassian standing there with Asha asleep against his shoulder.
She’d somehow managed to wrap one tiny fist around the collar of his T-shirt, her cheek tucked beneath his jaw as though she’d claimed that spot as hers.
He was smiling and loving it rather than acting inconvenienced, one large hand supporting her back with the unconscious confidence that had replaced the terror he’d worn the first time he’d held her.
“I thought you’d escaped,” I said, straightening with a quiet groan.
“So did I,” he replied. “Apparently my shoulder is preferable to her crib.”
I smiled despite myself. “I did warn you.”
“You did.”
He crossed the kitchen until he stood beside me, his eyes dropping briefly to where I’d been exercising before returning to my face. “How many?”
“Ten.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You were shaking after three the first time.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve been working hard.”
The words were simple, but they warmed something inside me.
Nobody had ever praised my body for what it could do before.
It had always been about what it was worth, who it belonged to, or what it could produce.
Hearing someone notice that I was getting stronger, rather than simply recovering, felt precious.
I took Asha from his arms before he could protest. “I’ll put her down,” I said.
Cassian surrendered her with the reluctance of someone who’d just discovered how much he enjoyed holding a baby. “Traitor,” he murmured to her.
Asha answered with a sleepy sigh and tightened her tiny fingers around my thumb before settling against my chest. She was warm from sleep, impossibly light compared to how she’d felt inside me a month ago, and I carried her into the hallway where the crib sat beneath the stained-glass window.
Cassian had built it from an old wooden storage box he’d found in the workshop, sanding every edge smooth before lining it with blankets until it became the safest place in the house.
During the mornings, light spilled through the glass and painted the blankets in soothing greens and blues.
Cassian claimed Asha liked watching the colors.
I wasn’t convinced a baby this tiny appreciated stained glass, but I loved that he’d thought about where the sunlight fell.