Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
CASSIAN
I opened the panic room, Ronan right behind me, and Soren looked up immediately.
He was sitting on the sofa I’d dragged in there, with Asha wrapped in one of my sweatshirts, asleep in his arms, only a tiny fist and a shock of silver-white hair visible.
The room was warm, soundproof, stocked with enough food, water, and supplies to last for days if necessary, but all I saw was the two of them together.
Family.
The word hit so hard I nearly stopped in the doorway.
My wolf leaned forward, quiet but utterly certain.
Ours.
Soren’s gaze went from me to Ronan who was behind me, and I watched the wariness settle over him, his arms tightening around Asha before he caught himself doing it, then his eyes widened.
“Ronan,” he said.
“Hi, kid,” he murmured. “Glad you’re both still breathing.”
“Same,” Soren said.
“And this is the little one,” he cooed, bending closer as his smile softened. “She’s perfect.”
Asha stirred, a small whimper of protest at being disturbed by nothing at all, and Soren’s whole focus dropped back to her instantly, one hand smoothing over her back until she settled again.
Ronan straightened and watched the two of them with an expression I hadn’t seen on him before, something unguarded, and when he glanced back at me there was a question in it I didn’t need him to say out loud.
This is what we are protecting.
Then he turned and left, as if he knew I needed time with my mate. My bonded. My Soren.
Soren didn’t wait long before he said exactly what I thought he was going to.
“I want to help,” he said.
“No.”
“I have claws, Cassian—”
“No.” I crossed the room until I was standing in front of him.
“I’m not completely helpless—”
“You have Asha; that is your job, okay? Stay here.” I gestured at the box in the corner. “You remember the code for the weapons?”
“Raff,” he said. “18166.”
I crouched in front of him and rested one hand on his knee. “The only job you have is looking after our girl.”
His eyes filled.
“‘Our girl’?”
I glanced down at the sleeping bundle tucked safe in his hold. “Mine to protect,” I said roughly. “Both of you.”
Silence settled between us, and he reached for my hand, his fingers curling around mine with a trust that would have been impossible when he first arrived days ago.
“What do you need me to do?”
“The door stays locked until I open it.” He nodded. “No matter what you hear.” Another nod. “If somebody says my name, you don’t answer.”
“I won’t.”
“If somebody tells you I’m hurt…”
His hold on my hand tightened. “I won’t open it.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
I let out a slow breath and rose to my feet. Every instinct screamed at me to leave now, before the hunters reached the house, but I couldn’t make myself move.
Soren stood as well, careful not to wake Asha. For a moment, we looked at each other. “I wish I could help,” he whispered.
“You are.”
“How?”
“By staying alive.”
His eyes glistened, and then, so quiet I almost thought I’d imagined it, he said, “We love you.”
The words punched every bit as hard as a bullet, and I forgot to breathe.
My wolf surged forward with such violence that for a heartbeat I thought I’d lose control altogether.
The hollow place beneath my ribs, silent for three long years after Raff, cracked wide open under three simple words I hadn’t expected to hear again in this lifetime, and our bond flared and was so beautiful it almost took me to my knees.
Before I could think better of it, I closed the distance between us, cupped his face in both hands, and kissed him.
Hard.
Desperate.
Everything I couldn’t say poured into it. Fear. Hope. The promise I’d made and intended to keep. When I drew back, we were both breathing harder than we should have been.
I pressed the gentlest kiss to the top of Asha’s pale silver-white hair.
We love them.
I couldn’t say the words; they were stuck in my throat. “I’ll be back soon,” I managed, but my voice caught so badly that I hardly recognized it. Then I turned before either of them could see the tears in my eyes, closed the steel door behind me, and locked my family away from the coming danger.
The first camera failed at eleven twenty-three. Not the feed, but the camera itself.
The image on the monitor froze for barely a heartbeat before dissolving into grey static. There was no flickering signal, no interference, no gradual loss of picture. Someone had disabled it and I was already on my feet before the second screen went dark.
“The west perimeter,” I said.
Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He was at the kitchen table stripped down to combat trousers, boots unlaced and body armor discarded in favor of freedom of movement when he shifted.
The old knife scar crossing his ribs disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants, and his rifle lay broken open beside him while he checked the chamber for the third time.
Three seconds later, another monitor vanished. North. Then, almost before I’d registered the pattern, the eastern camera dissolved into the same wall of static.
Ronan nodded. “They’re clearing their approach.”
He crossed to the screens, studying the three dead feeds before glancing at the two that remained. They wanted us heading west while they came from somewhere else.
Ronan’s mouth tightened. “I hate the bad guys who think like us.”
“So do I.”
He reached for the rifle and snapped the action closed. “They’ve got one wolf leading, two hyenas flanking—they’ll try to separate us until the humans have a clean shot.”
Outside the window, the mountain was peaceful. Fresh snow lay untouched beneath the pines, every branch heavy with white, the wind carrying nothing except the faint whisper of falling flakes and somewhere in the trees in there were people who would do anything to get Soren and Asha.
“Wolf,” Ronan said, and walked to the mudroom and finished unlacing his boots before pulling them off.
His instinct was to work this in our fur, and I glanced down at my body armor, and my wolf was unhappy and restless.
In the end, there was no decision to be made, and I lay my rifle within easy reach while I stripped down.
Three years ago, this had been routine for Team Three. Brec. Ronan. Me. Raff.
Mission prep. Weapons. Routes. Extraction. Only today there wasn’t going to be an extraction, and there was only one objective.
Protect Soren and Asha.
“The humans will want elevation,” Ronan said.
“I’d put one on the ridgeline covering the western clearing, and the second overlooking the creek. The wolf will push us; the hyenas circle. They’ll keep us moving right into overlapping fields of fire.” It was as if we’d never stopped being a team.
“You ready?”
I glanced in the direction of the hidden bookcase, where Soren and Asha waited.
My wolf rose silently inside me.
Ready.
Ronan’s eyes held mine for a long second. Then we opened the back door together, locked it behind us, and disappeared into the trees.
Every sound carried farther. Every snapped twig echoed between the pines.
Even my breathing sounded too loud as I moved through the trees, my rifle resting on my shoulder while Ronan disappeared westward without another word.
Three years hadn’t dulled any of it. We no longer needed hand signals or whispered plans. We both knew our jobs.
My wolf surged closer to the surface.
Enemy.
The wind stayed in our favor, drifting down from the ridgeline. Whoever had planned this had done their homework, approaching from three directions to avoid bunching together, but they’d made one mistake in that they didn’t know this mountain as I did.
I crossed the frozen creek at the narrow point where the rocks sat just beneath the ice. Two more steps brought me behind a stand of old cedar that obscured me from the western approach. I crouched, slowing my breathing until it matched the rhythm drilled into every member of Team Three.
See. Listen. Wait.
The human appeared first. He wore white camouflage, picking his way cautiously from tree to tree with a suppressed rifle cradled to his chest. Professional.
Every few yards he stopped to study the house through a compact monocular before continuing.
He wasn’t looking for me. He was waiting for one of the wolves to flush me into the open.
I watched him, learning his rhythm. Six steps, pause, scan, six more... he never once looked behind him. I eased the rifle into position, slowed my breathing, and waited until he stepped into the only clear lane between two pines before squeezing the trigger.
The man dropped into the snow, and I was on him before the echo faded, reaching him in seconds. His radio crackled once.
“...West? Report.”
I tore the earpiece free before smashing the radio against a tree.
One down. Four to go. And a heartbeat later, another rifle cracked somewhere high above the eastern ridge.
Then silence.
For several long seconds, nothing moved. Then the first enraged howl rolled across the mountain. Another howl answered from farther south.
The hyenas had heard the rifle shots and abandoned stealth.
I leaned the weapon out of sight behind a pine and shifted, bone and muscle rearranging beneath skin until my paws landed silently in fresh snow.
Cold air flooded my lungs, bringing the world alive all at once. The scent of pine, blood, and wolf.
Close.
Very close.
Kill, my wolf growled.
The forest blurred around me, branches whipping past as I followed the scent uphill through untouched snow. He’d crossed one of the old logging trails less than a minute ago, his stride long and deliberate, no attempt to disguise his tracks now that the humans were dead. Good.
Movement flashed through the trees.
Grey fur and broad shoulders.
We hit each other head-on.