Page 101 of Omega Hunted

Silence settled between us, and he reached for my hand, his fingers curling around mine with a trust that would have been impossible when he first arrived days ago.

“What do you need me to do?”

“The door stays locked until I open it.” He nodded. “No matter what you hear.” Another nod. “If somebody says my name, you don’t answer.”

“I won’t.”

“If somebody tells you I’m hurt…”

His hold on my hand tightened. “I won’t open it.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

I let out a slow breath and rose to my feet. Every instinct screamed at me to leave now, before the hunters reached the house, but I couldn’t make myself move.

Soren stood as well, careful not to wake Asha. For a moment, we looked at each other. “I wish I could help,” he whispered.

“You are.”

“How?”

“By staying alive.”

His eyes glistened, and then, so quiet I almost thought I’d imagined it, he said, “We love you.”

The words punched every bit as hard as a bullet, and I forgot to breathe. My wolf surged forward with such violence that for a heartbeat I thought I’d lose control altogether. The hollow place beneath my ribs, silent for three long years after Raff, cracked wide open under three simple words I hadn’t expected to hear again in this lifetime, and our bond flared and was so beautiful it almost took me to my knees.

Before I could think better of it, I closed the distance between us, cupped his face in both hands, and kissed him.

Hard.

Desperate.

Everything I couldn’t say poured into it. Fear. Hope. The promise I’d made and intended to keep. When I drew back, we were both breathing harder than we should have been.

I pressed the gentlest kiss to the top of Asha’s pale silver-white hair.

We love them.

I couldn’t say the words; they were stuck in my throat. “I’ll be back soon,” I managed, but my voice caught so badly that I hardly recognized it. Then I turned before either of them could see the tears in my eyes, closed the steel door behind me, and locked my family away from the coming danger.

The first camera failed at eleven twenty-three. Not the feed, but the camera itself.

The image on the monitor froze for barely a heartbeat before dissolving into grey static. There was no flickering signal, no interference, no gradual loss of picture. Someone had disabled it and I was already on my feet before the second screen went dark.

“The west perimeter,” I said.

Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He was at the kitchen table stripped down to combat trousers, boots unlaced and body armor discarded in favor of freedom of movement when he shifted. The old knife scar crossing his ribs disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants, and his rifle lay broken open beside him while he checked the chamber for the third time.

Three seconds later, another monitor vanished. North. Then, almost before I’d registered the pattern, the eastern camera dissolved into the same wall of static.

Ronan nodded. “They’re clearing their approach.”

He crossed to the screens, studying the three dead feeds before glancing at the two that remained. They wanted us heading west while they came from somewhere else.

Ronan’s mouth tightened. “I hate the bad guys who think like us.”