Page 29 of Omega Hunted

SOREN

Cassian picked up his phone and dialed. He turned away from me while it rang, but the kitchen wasn’t big enough to make it private.

“It’s me.” A pause. “I know… did you find Ronan…where the hell is he? I need you to talk to him and get him to call me.” His voice dropped but didn’t soften. “Brec—” A short exhale. “I don’t care what you think about that. No.” His free hand pressed flat on the counter. “My wolf is not your business.” Something Brec said made his jaw set hard. “I need you to talk to Soren… the omega…no hospital… I don’t give a fuck… he doesn’t want to go. Talk to him.” He turned back and held the phone out across the table. “He wants to speak to you.”

I took it.

“Hello?” The voice on the line was calm as if he hadn’t just been argued with.

“Hello,” I said with so much caution I nearly tripped over the word.

“My name is Brec.”

“Soren.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Soren, sorry it’s under circumstances like these.” He stopped as if he expected me to fill the silence, then, when I said nothing, because I couldn’t think what to say, he continued. “Is this your first pregnancy?”

“Yes.”

“First viable?”

“First altogether.”

“Can I ask how old you are?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And Cassian says you’re a cat?”

“Yes.”

“What species?”

The answer locked in my throat.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to keep that secret. Naming my species narrowed me down to three Families. It turned me from an anonymous omega into someone who could be identified, claimed, hunted.

I looked at Cassian.

What choice did I have?

“Snow leopard,” I whispered, and watched Cassian’s expression, but it didn’t change. Snow leopards were rare. Omega snow leopard females were uncommon enough, but a male omega capable of carrying a child was rarer still.

A pause. “Any complications? Gestational hypertension, bleeding, glucose issues?”

“No. Just some recent pain.”

“Can you describe it?”

I told him. The pressure that had been building for weeks, the way it changed with position, the backache that never fully eased. He asked follow-up questions with a precision the doctors at Center 14 had never reached. I moved in the hard kitchen chair, trying to find something bearable, kept my hand on my belly, and answered everything. He went through the crash, the cold, how long I’d been unconscious, whether I’d had any bleeding since—all of it in the same register, no alarm, no softening.

“The baby’s position. You said she’s dropped.”

“More pressure in my hips. Lower than a week ago.”

“How long?”

“Three days. Maybe six. Before I… before I left.”