Page 93 of Omega Hunted

I couldn’t help smiling.

“He’s you.”

“I know, but…” He frowned. “Eight years is a long time to leave someone alone. So, maybe…” Soren said quietly. “Maybe we can meet each other.”

I brushed my fingers through his hair. “I’ll be there with you.”

His smile was small, uncertain, but real. “I think… I’d like that.”

“We’ll figure him out together.”

He let out a slow breath.

“I hope you like him.”

I chuckled and bussed his lips in a quick kiss.

“If he’s anything like his human, I think we’ll get along just fine.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

SOREN

On the night I’d chosen for my first shift, it was two full days after making love for the first time, with the new bond alive inside me. It felt like a silver thread stretching between us, impossibly light but unbreakable. When Cassian laughed, it seemed to glow. When he left the room, I could still sense where he was in the house, not through scent or sound, but through the quiet certainty he was there. The thread never pulled. It simply existed, asking nothing except that I trust it and trust Cassian.

The moon looked huge over the mountain peak. It wasn’t full, but its light still made every snowbank sparkle. The light caught the frozen crust of ice until the whole mountainside shimmered beneath the stars. The cold had deepened over the last few hours. My lungs ached with every icy breath, and frost lined my hair halfway through the yard.

I could feel Cassian in my chest. I couldn’t hear him talk. That wouldn’t happen unless he properly claimed me.

At least, that was what the old storybooks said.

No one seemed to agree on what a true claim was. Some said it happened during an omega’s first heat with their chosen alpha. Others insisted it was a bite freely given and freely accepted, one that carried as much intention as instinct. There were stories of bonded pairs who could speak to each other across mountains, who could feel each other’s fear, joy, or pain as clearly as their own. Most people dismissed them as legends from a time when shifters had been wilder, when packs had lived under the open sky instead of behind laws and paperwork.

I didn’t know what was true anymore.

I couldn’t ask Cassian. Not yet.

What we had was already more than I’d ever dared hope for—a quiet, perfect warmth resting inside my chest. I was afraid that asking questions would somehow force us to define it before it was ready, and if there was one thing I’d learned these last few days, it was that some things were too precious to rush.

So, I held on to the feeling instead, letting it settle a little deeper with every breath, and promised myself I wasn’t going to let go of it.

Behind me, warm light spilled from the kitchen windows where Asha slept inside, curled in the crib we’d carried downstairs that afternoon. Neither of us had wanted her alone upstairs if something happened. We hadn’t talked about it for long. Cassian had lifted the crib, carried it into the kitchen, and made a place for her beside the range where it stayed warm.

“Ready?” Cassian asked as he laced his fingers in mine. I held on tight and only then noticed what stood a little way beyond the house.

“Cassian? What did you do?”

He followed my gaze. “Oh.” As though he’d forgotten it was there.

A freaking shelter that hadn’t existed this afternoon.

Now spruce branches had been woven together along the side of a great slab of granite, forming a roof that would keep off the worst of the snow if the weather turned. A fire crackled beneath it, its warmth reflecting from the rock. Beside it sat two rucksacks, blankets sealed inside waterproof bags, bottles of water, food, and a folded pile of clothes. He’d scraped the snow back as best he could, but some had drifted in anyway, leaving a white carpet across the shelter floor. “You built all this?”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d need, but I’m treating tonight like a first shift and prepared for as much as I could.”

I wandered over to the shelter and crouched beside one of the rucksacks, lifting the flap to look inside. Bottles of water sat packed beside a flask that I’m sure would be filled with the herbal tea I liked, along with the wolf mug I called mine. Seeing that made my heart skip, and I glanced up at him, to see him pretending not to watch me at all. There were also protein bars, dried fruit, a first aid kit, spare towels, and more supplies than I could identify, every inch of space used with the kind of efficiency that seemed to come naturally to him.

“You thought of everything,” I said, feeling more cosseted in that moment than in all the time I’d been here. Somewhere over the last few weeks I’d stopped being surprised by the quiet ways he cared for me, and maybe one day… there could be more? I wished there could be with every fiber of my being, more than him being our protector, more than the new connection strengthening between us.