Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CASSIAN
Soren was desperate for reassurance I didn’t have time to give him.
Every instinct wanted me to promise that everything would be all right, but another burst of the alarm echoed through the house, and Soren nodded once, clutching Asha tightly to his chest as he turned and hurried down the corridor towards the library, already whispering to calm her even as fear shook every word.
I watched him disappear around the corner before forcing myself to move.
My phone was still lying on the kitchen table where we’d abandoned everything a while back.
I snatched it up as I crossed to the back door and opened the security system, my thumb already spinning up the camera feeds before I’d even reached the handle.
The perimeter map flashed across the screen, only a single section pulsing red, and my stomach tightened when I saw which sensor had been triggered.
The inner boundary by Raff’s grave. I opened the live feed, but the snowfall had been thick enough since this morning’s patrol that the picture blurred into shifting shades of white and grey.
For a second, I saw nothing at all, then a wolf slipped between the trees before disappearing back into the storm.
Large. Alone. There wasn’t enough detail to identify him, but only one alarm had been activated.
Nothing near the bridge or the eastern boundary.
I eased the back door open just far enough to taste the air.
Snow rushed inside on an icy gust, carrying pine, cold stone, and the clean scent of the mountain, but beneath it all was the unmistakable smell of another wolf.
My wolf recognized him, a flicker of familiarity buried beneath fresh snow and exhaustion.
Not a stranger. Not a hunter wanting to take Soren.
Ronan was alive.
Ronan was here.
Relief came so suddenly it almost buckled my knees, but it never had the chance to settle. Because alongside the relief was the fact that he was here without warning, which meant something had gone wrong.
I went out, pulled the door shut behind me, and slapped my palm against the concealed panel beside the frame.
The locks were still engaging when the shift tore through me.
One heartbeat I was standing on two feet, the next my wolf burst free, muscles stretching, bones reforming, instinct overwhelming thought.
I hit the snow at a run, the cold barely registering beneath my paws as I bounded through the drifts and into the trees.
Ronan’s scent lay fresh across the mountainside, cutting through the older traces of deer and fox, leading straight towards the clearing, and I slowed as the trees opened around me.
Raff’s gravestone stood half hidden beneath fresh snow, and in front of it sat a wolf with his haunches planted in the snow, his head bowed until his muzzle rested on the cold granite.
Ronan stayed perfectly still, and for a long moment I wondered whether he’d even heard me arrive.
I padded forward until I stood beside him, my shoulder almost brushing his, and only then did he stir.
He lifted his head, his amber eyes finding mine without surprise, without challenge, carrying nothing except an exhaustion so profound it seemed to reach right through his wolf.
He held my gaze for a heartbeat before lowering his eyes again, turning his head away and exposing the vulnerable line of his throat.
Submission.
My wolf recoiled from it. I hated that Brec and Ronan still called me Alpha.
Three years ago, as team leader, I accepted the responsibility that came with it, but that alpha side of me had died beside Raff.
Whatever remained of me wasn’t anyone’s alpha.
I stepped closer instead, refusing the gesture the only way I knew how.
I lowered my head until our noses touched, breathing him in, letting him breathe me in, the greeting carrying everything words couldn’t. Pack. Family. You’re safe here.
His eyes closed, and when he opened them again, some of the strain had eased, replaced by a quiet sadness that settled in my own chest. He turned once more towards Raff’s grave, pressing his muzzle lightly against the stone in silent farewell before rising to all fours.
We ran side by side through the falling snow to the house, neither of us trying to lead the other.
I shifted as I approached, slammed my palm to the reader, and released the lock, grabbing the first pair of sweatpants from the storage bench by the entrance while Ronan took his skin beside me.
Steam rose from him in the warmth of the house as he dragged on another pair without a word, his movements slower than I remembered, fatigue showing now that he was no longer running on instinct.
“They know Soren’s here,” Ronan said quietly. “They’re maybe an hour behind me.”
I didn’t remember crossing the room. One second we were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, melting snow pooling around our bare feet, and the next I’d driven him backward into the stone wall hard.
My forearm jammed across his chest, pinning him there, my wolf raging beneath my skin with a violence I hadn’t felt since the day Raff died.
All I could imagine was Soren disappearing into the library with Asha in his arms, believing every nightmare he’d escaped had finally caught up with him.
“Did you tell them?” I snarled, shoving him harder.
“No!”
“Did you sell him out?”
“Fuck you, Alpha,” he snarled, his claws extending before he could stop them.
They dug into my forearm through pure instinct, sharp enough to bite into skin without drawing blood, his wolf surging to the surface in furious protest. Every muscle in his body tightened as if he was about to throw me across the room, and for one dangerous heartbeat I thought he would.
He didn’t.
His claws remained where they were, curled into my arm, his chest heaving with restrained anger as he fought every instinct telling him to fight back.
Submission warred with outrage in his eyes.
He refused to lower them, refused to challenge me, trapped somewhere between the wolf that wanted to bare its throat to its alpha and the man who’d rather die than be accused of selling out an omega.
“You think I’d sell him out?” he said, the words rough with disbelief. “After everything we’ve done? After everything we’ve lost?”
“Then explain why they’re behind you,” I shouted.
“I followed, then got ahead of them,” he shouted back.
For a heartbeat, I stared at him, my anger colliding head-on with words that made no sense.
He waited, not trying to force my arm away, not lowering his eyes and giving me the chance to hear him.
When I didn’t move, he drew a slow breath and continued.
“They’re out of Boston. I don’t know if it’s the Kastor family or hunters,” Ronan said, holding my gaze.
“They must have ID’d you. The Archivist says they have your name.”
He was stricken. “I know. Fuck!”
I searched his face for anything that seemed like hesitation, any flicker suggesting he’d left something unsaid, but there was nothing except exhaustion.
Snow melted from his hair onto the flagstones, his chest rising and falling harder than it should after the run through the forest, and all at once I realized he still hadn’t made the slightest attempt to get me off him.
He wasn’t smaller than me, or weaker, or frightened.
If he’d wanted to put me on my back, he could have done it before I’d even realized I’d overcommitted.
“They changed direction this morning,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Until then, they were working east. When they turned towards the mountain, I cut across country to get here first. I wasn’t trying to lose them. I was trying to beat them.”
The fury that had carried me across the kitchen didn’t disappear, but it shifted into something colder and far more dangerous.
I pushed away from him, taking two steps back before dragging both hands through my hair.
My wolf was still pacing furiously beneath my skin, desperate to get outside, to hunt, to kill whatever threatened the house, but now that instinct had a target.
Somewhere beyond the trees, people who wanted my omega were heading my way, and upstairs, hidden behind a bookshelf, Soren would be holding Asha, convinced every second brought those men closer.
I pointed at Ronan. “Show me where they were when you left them.”
He crossed to the kitchen island, where my phone still showed the security map, and leaned over it as if he’d already memorized every contour line on the mountain.
“Here,” he said, tracing a route with one finger through the western woods.
“This is where I broke away; they’ll fan out through the valley. ”
“They’re coming here,” I said, more to myself than to Ronan. “Not to the mountain. To this house.” I stared out through the dark kitchen window, watching the snow swirl through the security lights, my mind trying to find a route that made sense. “How? How did they connect Soren to you?”
Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He stood still, his brow furrowed as though he was replaying every second of that night in his head, searching for something he’d overlooked.
Then I watched the moment it came back to him.
His eyes widened fractionally, and his hand lifted to his face.
“They saw my face when Soren panicked,” he swallowed.
“He grabbed me, pulled my mask off. I mean, for a second, maybe less. I got it back on immediately.” He shook his head once, disgust written across his face.
“They connected me to Omega Rescue, then to you, then to this place from plans Raff filed with the ORT. Fuck, I’ve tried to shut everything down, but… ”
It was possible. Security footage. Facial recognition. A name. Former ORT. One connection led to another until somebody eventually found a mountain property belonging to a man who’d vanished three years ago.
It was possible but it was also irrelevant because we couldn’t rewrite the past. I blew out a slow breath.
“We can spend the next week working out how they found me, and now Soren. They got your face—we’ll deal with that. If somebody talked, we’ll deal with that. If they followed you, we’ll deal with that.” I felt my wolf settle. “None of it changes what’s happening.”
“No.”
“They’re coming.”
“Yes.”
“And Soren is upstairs believing the world’s just caught him.
” I straightened, every scrap of anger burning away into something colder and far more useful.
Strategy. Instinct. Survival. No point in asking why once the shooting started.
There was always time to pick apart mistakes afterward, but there wasn’t always time to keep people alive.
“We protect him,” Ronan said.
“We protect him,” I agreed. “Everything else can wait.”
For the first time since the alarm had sounded, we weren’t talking as two men trying to understand the past. We were two wolves deciding how to keep Soren safe.
“I already called in Brec,” Ronan said, “He’s a couple of hours away, too late to assist, but…”
Unspoken… if we need medical help.
“If one of them walks away…”
“They’ll come back with fifty.”
Silence settled over us because there was no decision to make.
“No one leaves,” I said.
Ronan met my eyes.
“No one leaves.”