Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SOREN
On the night I’d chosen for my first shift, it was two full days after making love for the first time, with the new bond alive inside me.
It felt like a silver thread stretching between us, impossibly light but unbreakable.
When Cassian laughed, it seemed to glow.
When he left the room, I could still sense where he was in the house, not through scent or sound, but through the quiet certainty he was there.
The thread never pulled. It simply existed, asking nothing except that I trust it and trust Cassian.
The moon looked huge over the mountain peak.
It wasn’t full, but its light still made every snowbank sparkle.
The light caught the frozen crust of ice until the whole mountainside shimmered beneath the stars.
The cold had deepened over the last few hours.
My lungs ached with every icy breath, and frost lined my hair halfway through the yard.
I could feel Cassian in my chest. I couldn’t hear him talk. That wouldn’t happen unless he properly claimed me.
At least, that was what the old storybooks said.
No one seemed to agree on what a true claim was.
Some said it happened during an omega’s first heat with their chosen alpha.
Others insisted it was a bite freely given and freely accepted, one that carried as much intention as instinct.
There were stories of bonded pairs who could speak to each other across mountains, who could feel each other’s fear, joy, or pain as clearly as their own.
Most people dismissed them as legends from a time when shifters had been wilder, when packs had lived under the open sky instead of behind laws and paperwork.
I didn’t know what was true anymore.
I couldn’t ask Cassian. Not yet.
What we had was already more than I’d ever dared hope for—a quiet, perfect warmth resting inside my chest. I was afraid that asking questions would somehow force us to define it before it was ready, and if there was one thing I’d learned these last few days, it was that some things were too precious to rush.
So, I held on to the feeling instead, letting it settle a little deeper with every breath, and promised myself I wasn’t going to let go of it.
Behind me, warm light spilled from the kitchen windows where Asha slept inside, curled in the crib we’d carried downstairs that afternoon.
Neither of us had wanted her alone upstairs if something happened.
We hadn’t talked about it for long. Cassian had lifted the crib, carried it into the kitchen, and made a place for her beside the range where it stayed warm.
“Ready?” Cassian asked as he laced his fingers in mine. I held on tight and only then noticed what stood a little way beyond the house.
“Cassian? What did you do?”
He followed my gaze. “Oh.” As though he’d forgotten it was there.
A freaking shelter that hadn’t existed this afternoon.
Now spruce branches had been woven together along the side of a great slab of granite, forming a roof that would keep off the worst of the snow if the weather turned.
A fire crackled beneath it, its warmth reflecting from the rock.
Beside it sat two rucksacks, blankets sealed inside waterproof bags, bottles of water, food, and a folded pile of clothes.
He’d scraped the snow back as best he could, but some had drifted in anyway, leaving a white carpet across the shelter floor. “You built all this?”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d need, but I’m treating tonight like a first shift and prepared for as much as I could.”
I wandered over to the shelter and crouched beside one of the rucksacks, lifting the flap to look inside.
Bottles of water sat packed beside a flask that I’m sure would be filled with the herbal tea I liked, along with the wolf mug I called mine.
Seeing that made my heart skip, and I glanced up at him, to see him pretending not to watch me at all.
There were also protein bars, dried fruit, a first aid kit, spare towels, and more supplies than I could identify, every inch of space used with the kind of efficiency that seemed to come naturally to him.
“You thought of everything,” I said, feeling more cosseted in that moment than in all the time I’d been here.
Somewhere over the last few weeks I’d stopped being surprised by the quiet ways he cared for me, and maybe one day…
there could be more? I wished there could be with every fiber of my being, more than him being our protector, more than the new connection strengthening between us.
I wanted him to love me as much as I loved him.
“I tried.”
There wasn’t an ounce of pride in his voice, nor any expectation that I’d praise him for it. The fire crackled, and the forest stretched away into darkness beyond its light, silent beneath the snow.
“It’s been so long,” I murmured, staring into the flames.
He squeezed my hand, then tugged me close and kissed me. Eight years since I’d last shifted the night I’d presented.
I remembered the panic more clearly than the pain. My cat had fought to get free, confused and frightened, while people I’d never met pinned me down and filled my body with drugs until every instinct simply… disappeared.
Not gone.
Never gone.
Buried.
Over the last few weeks, I’d begun to feel stronger, and my cat had become more than a flicker at the edge of my thoughts.
Then came dreams filled with golden eyes watching me from between snow-covered trees.
Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I could almost feel the brush of a thick tail against my legs.
Tonight he paced beneath my skin with quiet purpose, not impatient, not frightened, simply waiting.
Safe.
The word drifted through me so gently I almost thought I’d imagined it. “I know,” I whispered.
Cassian smiled at me. “What?”
“My cat.”
Understanding softened his expression and my eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how to do this.” I frowned. “In the past, alphas believed they could force an omega to shift. I mean, command them. Push them through it.”
He shook his head once, then cradled my face and pressed a kiss to my nose. “I wouldn’t even if I could, because this isn’t mine to take from you.”
Something tightened in my chest because my entire life everyone else had decided what happened to my body. Whether I shifted. Whether I carried a child. Whether I lived. Whether I obeyed.
Tonight, for the first time since I was fourteen, the choice belonged to me.
“I’ll look after Asha,” he said after a pause.
“But you’ll stay here for a while and watch me?” I asked, unable to keep the uncertainty from my voice. Would he love my cat? Would he think I was beautiful in my fur? “Just… until it happens.”
Or until it didn’t.
What if I’d waited too long?
What if I was broken beyond repair?
What if my cat had come back only to disappear again?
Cassian studied me for a long moment before giving a single nod.
“Only if you allow me to.”
“I do.”
He didn’t move closer or touch me again, instead he settled on the log opposite the fire, elbows resting on his knees, giving me space while making it clear that if I needed him, he was there.
I closed my eyes.
The silence settled around me, broken by the crackle of burning wood and the distant whisper of wind through the pines.
Somewhere inside the house Asha slept peacefully, unaware that her papa was about to become someone who’d finally have half a chance of protecting her.
I breathed in slowly and the air tasted of snow, pine resin, woodsmoke, and Cassian.
My cat stirred.
Not pacing anymore.
Waiting.
Ready to try? He asked. For years every drug they’d forced into my veins had taught my body the same lesson.
Don’t shift. Don’t change. Don’t let your cat out.
Fear had become habit, and that had become instinct. The fear was still there, but it wasn’t the strongest thing inside me anymore.
“I want this,” I whispered. The words disappeared into the cold night. “I want you.”
Something answered, but it wasn’t magic crashing through my veins or lightning splitting the sky. It was warmth deep inside my chest so small I almost missed it, sitting right next to the space where my bond with Cassian sat.
It spread with every heartbeat, slipping through muscles that had forgotten what they were capable of, into bones that suddenly seemed too solid, too fixed, too human.
Pressure built beneath my skin, not painful at first, only impossible to ignore, as though every cell in my body had remembered what it had always been meant to become.
My breath hitched, and the warmth became heat, and that became fire. I doubled over with a cry as it swept through me and every muscle locked.
My spine arched hard, and pain exploded through my shoulders, my hips, my ribs, driving the air from my lungs. I dropped onto my hands, fingers digging into the snow as my body refused every shape it had known for the last eight years.
It hurt.
Goddess, it hurt.
Because I’d held it back for so long.
I heard myself crying out, the sound torn somewhere between terror and relief, while bones shifted beneath my skin with dull, grinding pops that echoed through my whole body.
My arms shortened. My legs folded beneath me.
My jaw ached until I thought it would split apart, and then abruptly every scent around me intensified so violently that it stole what little breath I had left.
Snow.
Pine.
Ash.
Smoke.
Rabbit.
Fox.
Cassian.
Cassian.
Cassian.
His scent wrapped around me before my eyes had even opened.
Cassian. Safe. Mine. Alpha. Protection.
I blinked.
The world had changed.