Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
CASSIAN
The bridge had been open three weeks before I let myself believe it wasn’t a trick, and even then I kept running the fence line every morning, checking the cameras before I let myself have coffee, because trust was a muscle I’d let atrophy for three years, and it needed the same slow rebuilding Soren’s body had needed after the birth.
I wasn’t watching for a threat. I was making sure the world I’d built for the three of us was still standing.
Decker came up twice that first week, once in uniform and once out of it, and both times he sat at my kitchen table with a mug of coffee he never drank and told me what the paperwork on my mountain now said.
Bodies were recovered and logged as out-of-state trespassers involved in a hunting accident.
Emric’s death never entered the system at all because a man who’d crossed state lines to steal an omega and an infant didn’t officially exist on the land that killed him.
Decker had favors owed to him in three counties, and he never told me what it cost him to make a Kastor Patriarch die on every record that mattered, and I never asked.
The news that Emric was dead hit Skinside, and I printed it out and gave it to Soren.
SKINSIDE // FIELD REPORT
KASTOR PATRIARCH CONFIRMED DEAD IN HUNTING ACCIDENT—FAMILY SILENT
Sources inside the northeastern bloodline network are confirming what official channels won’t touch: Emric, Patriarch of the pure-bloodline Kastor family, is dead. No law enforcement agency has released a statement. No obituary has run. No funeral has been announced.
Sources close to the family have not commented on the tragic death so close to that of Soren Kastor’s, which leaves the family without a viable heir.
Multiple independent sources place his death on private land in a hunting accident. Attempts to reach Kastor family representatives were unsuccessful. A source close to the family, speaking on condition of anonymity, would say only that “matters of succession are being handled internally.”
What “internally” means for an empire built on a bloodline registry with no clear heir is, right now, anyone’s guess.
Multiple parties with financial and territorial interests in the Kastor network are believed to be moving quickly to determine who will inherit control of the accounts, contracts, and outstanding claims still attached to the family.
Attention has also turned to the Dalton Consortium, led by omega Regent Patriarch, Wren Dalton, whose Family is widely regarded as the only bloodline power with the resources to influence whatever comes next.
He read it twice, then set it down on the table between us, and nodded as though it confirmed something he’d already known in his bones. “They don’t know I’m here.”
“No.” I watched him for a second longer than I needed to, and because I would have done anything for him, including asking a question I didn’t want the answer to, I made myself say it. “Do you want to go home?”
He looked at me as if I’d spoken in a language he didn’t recognize. “I am home. With my alpha and my child.”
“You have a claim on the Kastor family,” I said anyway, because it needed to be said, so neither of us could pretend later that I hadn’t given him the choice.
He huffed, and there was no humor in it. “A claim? As an omega?”
“Wren Dalton is an omega, and he’s stepped in as regent after Malachai died, and if the Skinside report is true, then he’s looking at taking over the Kastor family now.”
“As my alpha and bonded mate, you would take the role as Patriarch in my place.” He paused. “Is that why you’re asking? Is that what you want?”
I stood so fast the chair scraped back hard enough to wake Asha, and I didn’t care.
“No.” The words came out rougher than I intended, and I crossed the space between us and dropped to my knees in front of him, so we were eye to eye instead of me standing over him as if I had any right to. “Soren, no.”
He blinked at me, startled by the force of it, and I took both his hands because I needed him to feel this as much as hear it.
“I don’t want the Kastor name. I don’t want the money, or the territory, or the fear people carry when they hear it. I want you to be free of all of it, not handed over to me wearing a different collar.”
His eyes brightened, and he opened his mouth, and I shook my head before he could argue.
“The bond means I’ll feel you every day for the rest of my life, and Goddess knows I’m grateful for it.
It means I’m your alpha the same way I’ve been every day since Asha was born, standing between you and anyone who wants to hurt you.
” I brought his hands up and pressed them flat to my chest, over the place where the bond sat warm and steady now instead of broken.
“But I don’t control you. I never will. Your freedom isn’t mine to take, and neither is your love.
Every single day, I have to earn both, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.
That’s the deal I want. Not a claim. Not a title. You, choosing me because you want to.”
Soren was crying before I finished, quiet tears that he didn’t bother to hide from me anymore, and he leaned forward.
“I choose you,” he whispered. “I’ll choose you every day.”
“That’s all I want,” I said, and meant it more than I’d meant anything in three years.
“Then we need to talk.” Soren pulled back just far enough to look at me properly, wiping his face with the heel of his hand, and something had settled into his expression that hadn’t been there a moment ago, resolve instead of grief.
“I want you officially registered. As my alpha. As Asha’s father. ”
I went very still, kneeling there with his hands still pressed to my chest, because I hadn’t expected those words tonight, not after everything else we’d just said, and my wolf came up so fast and so hard that for a second I couldn’t find my voice at all.
“Soren.”
“I mean it.” He said it steadier this time, as though he’d needed the first pass to hear how it sounded out loud before he could commit to it fully.
“I know what it means. I know exactly what it means, better than almost anyone, because I spent my whole life watching what that paperwork does to people. I watched it decide who owns who.” His fingers tightened around mine.
“But I want it to say your name next to hers. Not because the law forces it. Because I’m choosing it. ”
“The registry is the same system that let your family lock you in Center 14,” I said, and I needed him to hear the warning in it even though every part of me wanted to say yes before he’d finished asking. “The same system Emric used to justify taking her.”
“I know.” His chin came up, that stubborn tilt I’d learned to recognize weeks ago, back when it was the only thing standing between him and a stranger’s kitchen table.
“And I hated it for that. I still do. But right now, it’s the only thing standing between Asha and every distant cousin who decides the Kastor seat is worth fighting over.
If your name is on that record as her father, legally, permanently, then there’s no argument left to make.
No claim through blood that isn’t already answered.
” He swallowed hard. “You said you didn’t want the Kastor name, and I don’t want you to have it.
I want the opposite. I want her to have yours. ”
My chest ached, and for once grief had nothing to do with it. It was all about what he was offering me, and what I wanted.
“Raines,” I said.
“Asha Raines.” He said it as if he’d already been saying it in his head for days, maybe longer, waiting for the right moment to let me hear it. “And Soren Raines, if you’ll have me.”
“Soren.” My voice cracked clean in half on his name, and I didn’t bother hiding it. “Are you asking me to bond you on paper, or asking me to marry you?”
“Both.” A small, wet laugh escaped him. “I’m asking for both.
I want it official. I want my name changed from Kastor to something that was never built to own anyone.
I want Asha to grow up never once wondering whether she belonged to a bloodline instead of a family.
” He pressed his forehead back against mine, and I felt the bond flare warm and steady between us, matching the racing thump of his heart under my palm.
“I want us to be real. On paper, in the registry, everywhere anyone could ever look. Not because someone forced it. Because I asked, and you said yes.”
“Yes,” I said, before he’d even finished, because there wasn’t a version of this where I said anything else. “Yes, to all of it.”
I asked The Archivist about registration the same night I asked about everything else, sitting alone in my office so Soren wouldn’t watch my face while I read the answer.
IRONPINE: We want my name as the official registered Alpha father for our daughter, Asha. Can you help?
Pause.
THE ARCHIVIST: You’d owe me even more than you owe me already
IRONPINE: I’m willing to do whatever it takes without us going to Boston.
THE ARCHIVIST: What names?
IRONPINE: Cassian Raines, alpha. Soren Raines, omega. Asha Raines, first daughter.
There was a short pause, and then a message flashed up
THE ARCHIVIST: Done.
IRONPINE: ?
THE ARCHIVIST: You are an official daddy.
IRONPINE: Just like that?
THE ARCHIVIST: Yes
IRONPINE: Thank you
A document came through, dated a month before, with my details in the space next to Soren and with Asha’s name below.
I printed that one out too.
Twice.
THE ARCHIVIST: FYI, Wren Dalton is circling what’s left of the Kastors.
IRONPINE: How bad.
THE ARCHIVIST: The Kastor Fam is a mess.
Two cousins are already suing each other over board seats at the foundation.
One shipping partner pulled a triple nine-figure contract this morning and cited leadership instability.
Three people have asked me, off the record, whether the dead brother had children before he died.
IRONPINE: Do they know about Asha?