Page 80 of Omega Hunted

I couldn’t drag my eyes away from him. This was a declaration from old stories, a claim.

But he isn’t mine.

What if he could be?

He wasn’t only making the kind of promise heroes made before they threw themselves into danger or talking about dying for us. He was talking about everything that came afterward, about waking every morning with the space Raff had left inside him and choosing to keep going anyway. Choosing to carry that grief, to live with it, and still stand between us and anyone who wanted to hurt us.

My throat tightened until it hurt to swallow. Asha slept on against his chest as though she’d already decided he was safe; her tiny fingers curled into the front of his shirt. My cat stirred quietly inside me, wrapping itself around the warmth of his wolf without a flicker of fear, and something inside me ached because I wanted to believe it too.

“You’ve already lost everything,” I managed, my voice barely more than a whisper. “I can’t let you have to suffer the loss of Raff for the rest of your life by staying for us.”

“You. Asha. Ours.” His amber gaze never left mine, his wolf eyes bright, and his jaw tightened for a second before he shook his head. “It’s what we want.”

The quiet certainty in his voice stole what little air I’d managed to draw into my lungs. There wasn’t any hesitation, no sense that he thought he ought to say it. This wasn’t duty. This wasn’t pity. Somewhere between finding me in the snow and placing Asha in my arms, he’d made his choice to stay here in this world and be the barrier to protect us from the world that wanted my daughter.

I sat there with a blanket around my shoulders, aching from the effort of bringing Asha into the world, and for the first time since I’d arrived at the house, I felt something inside me loosen. For so long I’d been waiting for disaster. Waiting for my family to find me, for something to go wrong. I’d never completely believed we were safe.

But now at least we had someone on our side.

Chapter Twenty-Four

CASSIAN

Promising to protect someone meant showing up tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day after that. It meant making plans. It meant building a future sturdy enough that someone else could lean against it without falling, when for three years I’d refused to think further ahead than the next sunrise.

You are ours to protect

The promise wouldn’t leave me alone.

I’d made it on instinct, more my wolf than me at first, without weighing the words or considering what they meant, because Soren had been staring at me with frightened pale-green eyes and trusted me with his daughter and his future. He hadn’t asked me for forever. He’d asked me for safety and somehow, after talking to Raff, after making sense of things, I’d answered with my life.

He had the impossible belief I could keep them alive and safe, and it made my wolf strong and calmed my human self.

Only afterward had I realized what I’d said. I hadn’t promised to protect them until we found somewhere safe for him. I hadn’t promised to keep them safe until the snow vanished. I’d promised them my life over theirs. I’d accepted that promise the second my wolf thought them and the words left my mouth. There hadn’t been any hesitation, just a deep, steady certainty that had been missing from him for three long years. Ours. Protect. Family.

The way Soren sat on my lap and clung to me, seeking comfort, felt as familiar as the bond I once shared with Raff. A connection so deep I couldn’t begin to unravel it. A week after Asha arrived, the house had settled into a rhythm neither of us had planned, but both of us had come to depend on.

The mornings belonged to routine. I shifted before dawn and patrolled the property while the world was still quiet, my wolf checking the perimeter with relentless focus. By the time I came back, Soren was usually awake, Asha tucked to his chest, coffee waiting after he’d learned I always wanted coffee before I spoke to anyone. He’d smile when I walked through the door, tired but genuine, and somewhere along the way, I’d stopped being surprised to find someone waiting for me.

Habit had me glance at the monitors every ten minutes I was awake. Empty road. Empty gate. Empty trees. Another day nobody had found Soren, another report from Decker saying no one was asking after me.

I should’ve felt relieved. Instead, it only made me wonder how much longer our luck would hold and wishing the winter would thaw enough for us to get Soren and Asha out of here, whilst worrying about that same thing leaving us exposed.

The days filled themselves. Feedings blurred into naps, laundry appeared from nowhere despite there only being three of us, and every room began to lose the feeling of being frozen in time. Soren moved carefully, still healing, still under strict instructions not to shift until the full twenty-eight days had passed, but each day he walked a little farther through the house. He spent hours curled into the armchair by the north window with Asha asleep in his lap, reading whatever books he found on Raff’s shelves or the two of us watching a random episode of The Den, arguing with the characters’ decisions as though they could hear us.

Aldric was most definitely a dragon, and we were waiting for the big season finale reveal because that had somehow become very important to us both.

Asha became the center of everything. She had a healthy set of lungs when she objected to being hungry, a stubborn determination to stay awake whenever she thought she might miss something, and an uncanny ability to settle the second one of us held her. My wolf had decided she belonged to our pack from the first moment she’d come into the world, and every day that certainty grew stronger.

The bounty climbed again.

Brec called twice a day without fail for an update, and today he’d asked us the impossible—he wanted us to weigh Asha. On the only scales I had in the house, an old kitchen set that barely worked. Soren stood at the table, all kinds of nervous, Asha in his arms, and Brec tried his hardest not to laugh when I grumbled that this was going to be impossible.

“I’m not convinced this is how pediatric medicine works,” I muttered.

“It’ll do for now,” Brec replied. “Unless you’ve secretly got a baby clinic hidden up that mountain.”

“Nope, just kitchen scales.”