Chapter 32 #2
THE ARCHIVIST: Not yet. That’s the only reason you’re not dealing with a bigger problem than Wren Dalton right now.
I read it twice before I let myself breathe out. The family Soren had spent his whole life afraid of was eating itself alive without him anywhere near the room, and for the first time that felt like something other than luck.
IRONPINE: Are we safe from the Daltons?
I meant, was Soren safe, and I waited as The Archivist paused. The Daltons hadn’t given any indication they knew that Asha had Dalton blood, but secrets never stayed buried long.
THE ARCHIVIST: I’m assuming there’s a connection between the Daltons and your omega?
I wasn’t going to say anything explicitly, but The Archivist was way too invested in this story not to have seen the obvious connections. I wasn’t going to confirm or deny, and I changed the subject.
IRONPINE: Did you get any further with the Center 14 omegas?
THE ARCHIVIST: Some. Also, FYI, Centers 1 through 19 are gone
IRONPINE: Gone how?
THE ARCHIVIST: Closed. Also, your ORT deep dive will be with you later today. You owe me big time
IRONPINE: Willingly owed
The ORT research was for Ronan, who suspected someone there of leaking his name to Soren’s brother—a betrayal he couldn’t prove.
He was still wanted in connection with the attack on Center 14, the ORT didn’t want anything to do with him, and he wanted to find out who’d talked, and I wasn’t going to argue him out of it.
He was living with us, using the empty west wing, and some mornings, he disappeared for hours, working contacts he never named, and came back saying nothing at all.
I didn’t ask questions because I knew he’d come to me if he needed to.
All I knew was that he was growing quieter and more stressed by the day.
We’d fallen into a rhythm that still caught me off guard some mornings, three adults and a baby moving around each other.
Ronan ate breakfast standing at the counter as if he still expected to be called into a briefing at any second, and most evenings he disappeared to work contacts on a laptop he kept locked in his room, but dinner had become the one meal none of us skipped.
That night it was Soren’s burned bread, and a pot of stew Ronan had managed not to ruin, and Asha propped in her seat between us, poking at Wolfie with fierce concentration.
“I want to run the east fence line again before the thaw properly sets in,” Ronan said, reaching past Soren for the salt. “Ground’s soft enough now that if there’s a weak point, we’ll find it before anyone else does.”
“Fine. Tomorrow.”
“You want to lead, or should I?” He caught himself a beat too late. “Alpha’s call.”
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. “Ronan.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry, just tired of saying it. “Habit.”
“Drop it.”
Something crossed his face, gone before I could name it, and he went back to his stew like nothing had happened.
Soren waited until Asha was down and Ronan had taken himself off to the west wing with a mug of coffee and a mumbled goodnight.
I was rinsing the last of the dishes when he came up behind me and rested his chin between my shoulder blades, arms sliding around my waist.
“Why does it make you angry when they call you Alpha?” he asked, quiet, into my shirt.
“It’s not who I am.”
“Ronan’s called you that since the first phone call I overheard,” Soren said. “Brec too. And you always say you’re not their alpha.” His arms tightened. “So why?”
I set the last plate on the rack, dried my hands, and turned around instead of answering with my back to him.
“I was Team Three’s leader,” I began with a sigh.
“When you lead a team like that, everyone under you calls you Alpha whether you earn it or not. It’s rank.
Habit. Nothing to do with our wolves.” I paused.
“Every op, every extraction, I made the calls, and they trusted them, and nobody died on my watch.” My jaw tightened around the next part, the part I’d never said out loud to anyone who hadn’t already lived it.
“Then Raff was killed, and I stopped being anybody’s alpha the same night I stopped being his. ”
Soren watched me, waiting for the rest.
“They kept calling me it anyway,” I said, and my throat felt raw around the words.
“Being somebody’s alpha means they follow you into something and trust you to bring them home.
I did that once. I lost the one person I loved most in the world doing it.
I’m not doing that to Ronan. I’m not doing it to Brec.
I don’t want anyone’s life resting on a call I make, not ever again. ”
“But you make calls for Asha and me,” Soren said with a soft smile. “Every day.”
“You’re different.” I reached for him, needing my hands on him as I said it.
“I’m not your alpha because a team gave me the title, or because some law says a bonded alpha owns his omega.
I didn’t earn you. You chose me, every single day since the first morning you came downstairs with a lamp in your hand ready to brain me if I looked at you wrong.
” That pulled the smallest huff of a laugh out of him, and I let myself smile too.
“That’s not command. That’s not a responsibility somebody handed to me.
That’s just us. I’ll always be your alpha, and Asha’s, not because that’s my designation, but because you let me be, and because I choose it back every morning that I open my eyes and you’re both still here.
Ronan and Brec want a leader again. I can’t be that. I don’t trust myself with it.”
Soren was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing slow circles against my hip.
“You already are one,” he said finally. “You just don’t want to be forgiven for the last time.”
I didn’t have an answer. I pulled him in instead, pressed my mouth to his hair, and let him hold on. My wolf paced somewhere under my ribs, unsettled and unconvinced, same as every time somebody said that word to me.
It didn’t fix anything.
But Soren didn’t let go, and for tonight, that was enough.
“Are you okay?” Soren asked, half-asleep himself.
“More than okay,” I said, and pressed a kiss to his hair.
The kitchen still smelled of Soren’s half-burned bread. Asha’s crib sat by the range where it lived now, and the wolf mug sat drying by the sink. I sat on the sofa in the corner, picked up a sleepy Asha, and pulled Soren onto my lap and we cuddled together in the warmth.
I worried about Boston, the Kastor family, Wren Dalton, and Ronan’s silence, and everything still circling us that hadn’t shown its face yet, but with Soren in my arms and little Asha safe, I was at peace for a while.
“I was thinking about Franco today. And Yannick.”
I knew who Yannick was—the omega who’d died at Center 14—but Franco was a new name.
“Franco?”
“He wasn’t pregnant; he was… I had to leave him. Do you think he’s okay?”
“Center 14 is closed, same as all the other centers. I’m already working on getting information on the omegas there with you.” I’d owe The Archivist a shit ton of favors, and probably a huge financial settlement after all this, but I’d have everything I needed soon.
“And we’ll find them? And Yannick’s twins and his family?”
“Yes.”
He buried his face in my neck, and I inhaled peaches and Soren, and my world was right. “I love you,” I murmured.
“And we love you right back,” Soren said with a yawn, and then my world—my precious, forever world—Soren and Asha slept in my arms.