Page 9 of Omega Hunted

I stared as the camera caught them from a different angle. They were smaller than I’d first thought, long blond hair whipping around their face, dressed in what looked like pajamas, and when the arm shifted, I realized they weren’t cradling an injury at all—they were protecting something.

My chair slammed backward into the wall as I shoved it away and closed the distance to the monitors. The figure stumbled again, curling around the unmistakable swell of a heavily pregnant belly, one hand spread protectively across it as they fought to stay upright.

My wolf surged without permission, a low, rolling growl vibrating through my chest before my mind had caught up with what my instincts already knew.

Omega.

The urgency hit hard, and instinctively, my wolf already drove me toward the stairs at the sight of an injured omega crawling with one hand under his belly.

By the time my brain caught up with instinct, I’d abandoned any thought of winter gear or the snowmobile and was already half shifted as I burst through the door.

Chapter Three

SOREN

I’d fallen out of the car, and although the snow was soft, the impact punched a grunt out of me and sent fresh pain through my head. Blood spilled down the side of my face, and I crouched, one hand buried in ice and the other locked over my belly as I’d planted my free hand on a half-covered rock and pushed myself forward.

“We’ll be okay,” I said to reassure Asha…and myself, but there was no answering flicker of comfort or brush of my cat’s fur against my thoughts.

Nothing.

The silence stretched on.

Was I anywhere near the place I was supposed to be?

My sneakers were half on, half off, sliding off my feet as I crawled on hands and knees up the bank—and I lost one and didn’t go back for it. Blood kept finding its way into my eye. Every few feet, I had to stop and scrub at my face with the back of my hand, smearing red across my sleeve and seeing little more than snow and darkness afterward.

I crawled.

The bank was steep, and it crumbled under me. Every time my knee lifted, the pain came up under my belly, low and dragging, and a sound came out of me that wouldn’t stop, somewhere between sobbing and whimpering, as I made it to the verge somehow. But I couldn’t move anymore, lying on my side in the snow with one arm under my belly and my face turned into the cold.

Where had I been sent?

My pulse kicked harder.

Trees surrounded me. The road curved away below. I knew that farther up the mountain, a track branched off into the forest, disappearing toward the nothing where I assumed the alpha wolf’s house was. I’d thought the bridge I’d crossed would kill me. Wind shear had slammed the car sideways; the barrier was a foot away, and below was nothing but dark. I’d crawled across in second gear and said thank you out loud when the tires found solid ground on the other side. Then I’d stopped for a while, breathing heavy, not knowing how I’d even managed to get over, until the flash of lights behind me in the distance made me carry on.

A bend I never saw coming put me in the ditch, and there was no telling whether this Cassian’s house was a hundred yards from here or fifty miles away, no telling whether I’d crashed in front of his door or in the middle of nowhere, no telling whether I was supposed to walk up the road or off it, no idea, no idea⁠—

How close was the alpha wolf?

The snow kept coming. Somewhere far away, a branch cracked under the weight of it, and the sound carried through the cold and was gone.

Then something moved on the road, and for a second, I thought it might be a car.

I couldn’t make out the shape through the snowfall, but my terrified mind supplied answers anyway. Someone had found me. Center 14 had realized I was gone. My brother had finally caught up to me. The family of the man who’d fathered my baby had found out and wanted her. I watched the snow fall, my heart pounding faster with each second, and suddenly, the once silent mountain didn’t seem so deserted anymore.

The shape kept coming through the snow.

I fought to push myself upright, but my arms shook beneath me, and pain tore through my body. The figure was closing the distance, and through the panic, I saw a wolf. Huge. Dark fur. It sprinted down the road toward me, snow spraying beneath powerful paws, its breath fogging in two steady plumes.

I tried to scramble, but my legs didn’t work, my hands slipped in the snow, and my belly wouldn’t let me get up. I had nothing between my baby and whatever was coming down that road.

A thin choked noise came out of me, and I tried to crab walk away, but the wolf was on me.

I screamed.

He stood over me, very close, his breath hot on my face, and terror hit me, and my gaze dropped. My shoulders hunched. Every instinct I had warned me not to challenge him, not to give him a reason to pin me down. My body knew what to do before I could think, chin lifting, throat exposed, making myself small and harmless so maybe he wouldn’t hurt me.