Page 6 of Omega Hunted

Still making that choking noise every morning.

So, I’m using the backup one, but it’s not as good.

I would have ordered another one, but the storm’s bad, and I think we’re gonna be closed in for the rest of the winter.

My wolf whined quietly, and guilt consumed me.

I’m sorry I’m thinking of replacing your coffee machine. I know how much you loved that old thing.

He was beyond caring about things that seemed so damned tragic to me, and I whined again as the trees creaked softly in the wind.

My wolf still reached for Raff every morning in those few blurred seconds before I was fully awake, searching for the other half of himself and finding the same terrible emptiness. That was the cruelty of surviving a broken bond. Time didn’t heal. You simply learned how to carry the absence.

Wolves with shattered bonds weren’t supposed to survive. Some walked into the woods and never came back. Others held on for months, even years, until the emptiness finally became heavier than whatever kept them breathing.

Three years later, against every instinct that told me I should have followed Raff into death, I was still here. Only because he’d made me promise I would keep living, and in those final moments, when I would have promised him anything, I’d given him my word.

“Finish it,” he’d said.

So, I’d spent three years turning Raff’s sketches into reinforced walls, hidden rooms, and an escape tunnel. Every camera, every steel door, every foot of wiring was another promise kept to the man I’d loved.

The house was almost finished.

I wasn’t ready to hand it over to the Haven Network. We’d had so many plans, and Raff had passed over original sanctuary plans to Haven. But we’d never completed the project. Hell, the Haven Network didn’t even know it existed now. I’d cut every tie after Raff died, telling myself I was protecting everyone when the truth was uglier. I couldn’t bear to fill these rooms with frightened omegas when every corner still held the life he and I had planned. So, I’d kept building while promising myself I’d make the call tomorrow.

Tomorrow became three years.

Even so, finishing what Raff started gave me a reason to stand up each morning. Coffee. Patrol the property. Reinforce another window. Check another camera. Stock another shelf. Keep moving. Most days, the routine kept the grief somewhere I could survive it, but today, standing beside his grave with a restless unease crawling beneath my skin, it wasn’t enough.

For one ugly second, instinct surged hard enough that I almost threw my head back and howled for him, the animal part of me still refusing to understand that nothing had answered in three years and nothing ever would. I stayed there anyway, staring at the grave.

You should still be here.

My omega soul.

My Raff.

For a heartbeat I imagined I caught his scent before the cold swept through me again, leaving only snow, trees, and the silence my wolf still circled instinctively. I wanted to lie down beside him and let winter bury me.

Not today, my wolf growled. Finish this house for Raff.

I pushed myself upright and headed home.

The Victorian rose through the trees as I crested the hill, three stories of dark stone, built in 1894, isolated five miles up a mountain road that winter buried every year. By January, the hunters disappeared, deliveries stopped, and even the sheriff only came if someone was dying.

The deeper the snow became, the quieter the world grew.

It was the perfect place to hide.

Or to wait to die.

I loped out of the tree line and slowed at the back step.

The shift took me at the door—fast and familiar, no more drama than cracking my neck. The cold hit differently on bare skin. I caught the rail to keep my balance through the last of it and reached blindly for the hook where gray sweatpants, soft from a hundred washes, were hanging, and I dragged them on without looking.

The kitchen was warm. I’d left the wood stove banked overnight, and it was still throwing out heat; my emergency coffee maker was already eight minutes into its cycle, the smell hitting me harder on two legs than it would’ve on four. Eggs, then. Four, scrambled, and the rest of yesterday’s bread torn up on the side of the plate. I ate standing at the counter with the dish towel slung over my shoulder. The snow kept coming down outside the window, slower now, the flakes thinning. I watched it the whole time I ate.

The two-way on the corner of the counter crackled.