Page 99 of Omega Hunted

He didn’t.

His claws remained where they were, curled into my arm, his chest heaving with restrained anger as he fought every instinct telling him to fight back. Submission warred with outrage in his eyes. He refused to lower them, refused to challenge me, trapped somewhere between the wolf that wanted to bare its throat to its alpha and the man who’d rather die than be accused of selling out an omega.

“You think I’d sell him out?” he said, the words rough with disbelief. “After everything we’ve done? After everything we’ve lost?”

“Then explain why they’re behind you,” I shouted.

“I followed, then got ahead of them,” he shouted back.

For a heartbeat, I stared at him, my anger colliding head-on with words that made no sense. He waited, not trying to force my arm away, not lowering his eyes and giving me the chance to hear him. When I didn’t move, he drew a slow breath and continued. “They’re out of Boston. I don’t know if it’s the Kastor family or hunters,” Ronan said, holding my gaze.

“They must have ID’d you. The Archivist says they have your name.”

He was stricken. “I know. Fuck!”

I searched his face for anything that seemed like hesitation, any flicker suggesting he’d left something unsaid, but there was nothing except exhaustion. Snow melted from his hair onto the flagstones, his chest rising and falling harder than it should after the run through the forest, and all at once I realized he still hadn’t made the slightest attempt to get me off him. He wasn’t smaller than me, or weaker, or frightened. If he’d wanted to put me on my back, he could have done it before I’d even realized I’d overcommitted.

“They changed direction this morning,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Until then, they were working east. When they turned towards the mountain, I cut across country to get here first. I wasn’t trying to lose them. I was trying to beat them.”

The fury that had carried me across the kitchen didn’t disappear, but it shifted into something colder and far more dangerous. I pushed away from him, taking two steps back before dragging both hands through my hair. My wolf was still pacing furiously beneath my skin, desperate to get outside, to hunt, to kill whatever threatened the house, but now that instinct had a target. Somewhere beyond the trees, people who wanted my omega were heading my way, and upstairs, hidden behind a bookshelf, Soren would be holding Asha, convinced every second brought those men closer.

I pointed at Ronan. “Show me where they were when you left them.”

He crossed to the kitchen island, where my phone still showed the security map, and leaned over it as if he’d already memorized every contour line on the mountain. “Here,” he said, tracing a route with one finger through the western woods. “This is where I broke away; they’ll fan out through the valley.”

“They’re coming here,” I said, more to myself than to Ronan. “Not to the mountain. To this house.” I stared out through the dark kitchen window, watching the snow swirl through the security lights, my mind trying to find a route that made sense. “How? How did they connect Soren to you?”

Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He stood still, his brow furrowed as though he was replaying every second of that night in his head, searching for something he’d overlooked. Then I watched the moment it came back to him. His eyes widened fractionally, and his hand lifted to his face. “They saw my face when Soren panicked,” he swallowed. “He grabbed me, pulled my mask off. I mean, for a second, maybe less. I got it back on immediately.” He shook his head once, disgust written across his face. “They connected me to Omega Rescue, then to you, then to this place from plans Raff filed with the ORT. Fuck, I’ve tried to shut everything down, but…”

It was possible. Security footage. Facial recognition. A name. Former ORT. One connection led to another until somebody eventually found a mountain property belonging to a man who’d vanished three years ago.

It was possible but it was also irrelevant because we couldn’t rewrite the past. I blew out a slow breath.

“We can spend the next week working out how they found me, and now Soren. They got your face—we’ll deal with that. If somebody talked, we’ll deal with that. If they followed you, we’ll deal with that.” I felt my wolf settle. “None of it changes what’s happening.”

“No.”

“They’re coming.”

“Yes.”

“And Soren is upstairs believing the world’s just caught him.” I straightened, every scrap of anger burning away into something colder and far more useful. Strategy. Instinct. Survival. No point in asking why once the shooting started. There was always time to pick apart mistakes afterward, but there wasn’t always time to keep people alive.

“We protect him,” Ronan said.

“We protect him,” I agreed. “Everything else can wait.”

For the first time since the alarm had sounded, we weren’t talking as two men trying to understand the past. We were two wolves deciding how to keep Soren safe.

“I already called in Brec,” Ronan said, “He’s a couple of hours away, too late to assist, but…”

Unspoken… if we need medical help.

“If one of them walks away…”

“They’ll come back with fifty.”

Silence settled over us because there was no decision to make.