Page 53 of Omega Hunted
“No.”
“Then why do you watch it?”
He folded his arms and fixed his attention on the screen. “Because the raven shifter keeps stealing everyone’s spoons, and last season a badger tried to tunnel out under the pantry.”
I had to press my hand over my mouth because that was funny, and Cassian side-eyed me.
“You asked.”
The episode began with breakfast, which apparently involved four separate arguments before anyone managed coffee. A fox accused a bear of eating his yogurt. The bear denied it while visibly holding the empty pot. A raven perched on the top of the kitchen cupboards and watched everyone. A small otter shifter, gripping a pebble, kept sliding across the polished floor in socks and flailing into walls.
“This is ridiculous,” I said after three minutes.
Cassian nodded. “Completely.”
“I love it.” An involuntary laugh escaped me, and Asha shifted as if startled by the movement of my body. I rested my hand over her automatically, murmuring an apology, and Cassian’s gaze dropped to my belly for a moment before returning to the screen.
Halfway through the episode, there was great fanfare when the final shifter of twelve arrived.
The doorbell rang on screen, and the house fell into chaos. Everyone guessed species based on scent before the door opened, arguing over whether the newcomer was bear, bison, elk, or something nobody wanted to name because the producers loved drama too much. Then the door swung inward, and a shifter called Aldric stepped inside.
He was tall, broad, dark-haired, and the others went quiet around him.
Cassian sat forward, and his shoulder brushed the edge of my nest. “No way,” he muttered. “Dragon!”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“He’s a dragon.”
“There’s no such thing as dragons.”
“That’s what they want you to think. But he walked straight to the fireplace.”
“It’s cold.”
“He chose the chair nearest the heat source.”
“So do I, and I’m not a dragon.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re a heavily pregnant cat shifter, and it’s cold.”
I smiled at that, and my back complained. I had to shift onto one elbow while holding my stomach because Asha decided this was the moment to press somewhere unhelpful. Cassian moved immediately, then stopped himself before he crossed whatever line he’d drawn in his own head. His hands stayed on his knees, fingers flexing once before going still.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” I breathed through the ache until it settled, and he was still watching me. “Your dragon startled the baby.”
“Our dragon.”
“You’re so wrong,” I said and wished I could take the bantering words back. He was alpha, I was omega, and bantering was wrong. I waited for him to do something, anything, that was a demand for me to agree.
Instead, he smiled and tapped my arm. “You’ll see.”
On screen, Aldric refused to answer three separate questions about his species, made tea without asking where anything was, and arranged spoons on the table in order of size, before pocketing the shiniest ones. Cassian pointed at the screen as if the matter had just been settled in court.
“Hoarding behavior.”
“Because he stole cutlery?”
