Page 18 of Omega Hunted

I’d messaged Brec with the bare minimum.

Cassian: Omega alive. Conscious now. Talking. Where’s Ronan? I need a number.

His reply had come almost immediately.

Brec: No idea where he is. No contact number. Trying to find out.

Fuck Ronan. Fuck him to hell and back.

When I put the next tray there around lunchtime, the first one was empty apart from a few crumbs and the empty tea thermos, with no sign of the two water bottles or extra snacks. The relief was huge, and I spent the next hour planning what kinds of extra snacks I could give him, researching as much about pregnancy, and fretting that I had barely anything that he really needed, like vitamins and supplements and a freaking medical facility. It was next on my list, but I’d put off calling the one person who could help me set it up—Brec—because fuck if I wanted him back in my life until I was ready to face anyone from my old team.

The omega didn’t come downstairs, or call me, or even open his door apart from to get the food.

I called through a couple of times, just so I knew he was alive, but all I got was muffled responses and more crying.

I didn’t know what to do with the crying because it broke me into pieces.

I left him as much healthy food as I could pull together. He opened the door when I made some deliberate noise going downstairs, and I glimpsed him as he checked the corridor. He was pale and drawn, but still pregnant—of course—and so damn scared I didn’t have to see it; I could scent it on him.

I finally received a message from Brec after I’d sent numerous requests for him to just fucking message me with news about Ronan. The last one was the only word I could find.

Cassian: Ronan?

Brec: Still nothing

Why did Ronan send him to me? When he knows I’m not the alpha I used to be. When he knows how much it would hurt. I can’t keep an omega here.

The house isn’t ready.

I’m not ready.

Chapter Seven

SOREN

I stopped crying when there was nothing left, and I lay with my cheek on the covers and my hands over my belly while fear and confusion faded to nothing.

Asha moved. A slow turn, deep inside. Settling. I couldn’t hear her, but she was calm.

“I know,” I said to her. My voice came out wrecked. “Me too.”

The room was still warm, but the light had gone low and dark, and the pillow smelled of cedar and cold air. My cat put my face into it before I could stop him, and I was too exhausted to fight anything.

I inhaled in my sleep.

Cedar smoke. Rain.

I woke with a cry and lay still for a moment, staring at a ceiling that wasn’t mine while the room around me came back slowly, and I counted beneath my breath until I felt movement. There. A kick. Another one a few seconds later, firm enough that the tight panic waiting at the edge of my thoughts loosened its grip before it could take over. My throat hurt, my head hurt, and most of the rest of me ached, but Asha was there, and that was enough to make everything else wait its turn.

The crash came back after that. Snow. Trees. The road vanishing beneath the tires. A huge wolf coming through the storm. Being lifted. Being carried. The alpha. I turned my head toward the bedroom door and was out of bed before I could stop myself, one hand braced under my stomach as the room tilted and settled again. The door was closed. Locked after I had to force the key to turn. I checked the handle anyway, then checked the key, but the door didn’t move.

The house creaked around me as the storm pressed against it. Somewhere downstairs, a floorboard groaned, then another, and my whole body tightened because the alpha was awake. Not coming upstairs, not heading toward my room, just moving around his own house, leaving me food and drink. But fear didn’t care about logic, and mine had kept me alive too long to disappear overnight because one alpha had dragged me out of the snow and given me a room with a lock.

My cat lifted his head inside me, blurry with sleep but not frightened, which made one of us. The scent drifting through the room had him interested in a way I didn’t understand and didn’t trust. Wolf. Woodsmoke. Coffee. It was threaded through the blankets and the pillows and the air itself, all of it belonging to Cassian because this was his house, and I was the one locked in a borrowed bedroom with no shoes, no car, no phone, no plan, and a baby everyone seemed determined to take from me.

The knock came while I was still standing beside the door.

“Hello?”