Page 16 of Omega Hunted

Because that was how the world worked.

Everybody belonged to somebody, and the people with the most power always decided what happened to the people with the least.

“I won’t let you take my baby.”

He nodded. “I don’t want to take your baby.”

“Then why are you in here with me alone? Where is everyone else?” The question burst out of me before I could stop it. “Ronan said you were part of the Haven Network. Where are the medics? Where are the other omegas? Why am I here?” I checked out the bedroom, stared at the fire, and looked out the windows at nothing but snow.

“It’s my home.”

“Not a Haven facility?” Terror gripped me.

“No.”

I curled tighter beneath the blankets, shame and fear tangling together until I could barely breathe.

Cassian stared at me for another second, his jaw clenched tight, and I shrank farther away as questions crowded my head faster than I could make sense of them. He watched me through all of it without trying to invade my space. There was no alpha pressure rolling off him, no orders and no impatience, only exhausted eyes and tension pulled tight through his shoulders, holding himself together by sheer stubbornness.

“Are you hungry?” he asked in the softest tone.

I nodded.

“Okay,” he said, his voice gentling further. “Is there anything you need for the baby?”

“I don’t…” My breathing was shaky. “I don’t understand any of this.” My tears burned hot and were impossible to stop once they started. “I was at Center 14, and Yannick is dead, and someone called Ronan was there, and there was blood and shooting, and I had to leave them all.” My voice cracked. “I d-don’t know what’s happening.”

I was unraveling in front of him, powerless to stop, and for one panicked second I thought I’d pushed him too far.

But he didn’t come closer, and he didn’t shout.

He glanced at me once, jaw tight and eyes hard with something I couldn’t read, then turned and walked out of the room.

The door stayed open behind him.

I folded forward around the baby while the crying hit, clutching the blankets to my chest hard enough that my hands hurt.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Chapter Six

CASSIAN

My wolf went still the moment the first sob came out, and I had to get out of there.

The hall was dark and cold. I stood with my back to the wall and my eyes shut, and I breathed, slow and even—the discipline I’d learned after bad ops. It worked on adrenaline and rage. It’d never once worked on the sound of someone in that kind of pain, and it didn’t work now.

He was right to fear an alpha.

Not us. We’re safe, my wolf pointed out, but I ignored the insistent whine, and after I’d calmed down enough to walk away, I headed to the east wing just to get away from the scent of peaches flooding my bedroom.

Raff had stood in every doorway and named each room—the study, the library, something he called the morning room that got the light, a place for omegas to have quiet time, therapy, learn skills they’d need to survive—and I’d nodded and said yes to all of it and carried through on as much as I could after he’d died. This was a space he’d named, and I headed into the middle room and sat on the floor in the corner, back against the wall, one knee up. An old wool blanket was already there, one of a dozen kept in corners of the house because I didn’t sleep well unless I was in my fur. Outside the window, it was black and still, snow reflecting faint light at the tree line. I worked through emotions so complicated I didn’t know where to start.

The omega’s face when the crying hit him…fuck… that was so wrong.

He’d folded forward over his baby and let them fall, everything at once, and I’d stood there long enough to know there was nothing I could do, and then I’d walked out.

Raff had cried in our old apartment exactly once, on our last Christmas, when our bond was still new. We’d come back from a job in Newark that hadn’t gone the way we’d planned, and there’d been a child we hadn’t gotten to in time. That night Raff had sat at the kitchen table and cried quietly for a long time, holding up a hand to stop me from consoling him.