Page 44 of Omega Hunted

Fertile. Viable. Pure bloodline success. Womb structure within the standard range for successful gestation.

My father’s relief when she said it became a calculation because I was no longer the one nobody had found a use for yet. Suddenly, I had value, and from that day, my room had become my prison as alpha after alpha kept me from the world. My first heat came a few months later. After that, my family tracked my cycle as carefully as they watched over their money and power, recording every date, every change, every sign that my body was doing what they needed it to do. My father wanted to wait, kept me in a gilded cage, a suite of rooms on the family estate in Weston, waiting for the perfect alpha match, but Emric? He was different. As soon as our father died, he’d hurried the timeline, forced Malachai to use me, all for a pure-blood child to cement his power.

I was nothing more than a number in a registry and a bloodline they could use.

“I won’t lose you.” Asha moved again, pressing into my palm, and my cat nestled close.

Cassian said I was safe, his focus on me. He’d understood the weight of my family name, alphas with money and power and half the legal system of the North East in their pockets, and he hadn’t blinked. The matter was apparently settled, but I’d wanted to tell him it wasn’t that simple, only I hadn’t, because some part of me was too tired to argue with someone who sounded that certain about my life, and some other part of me had wanted to hear it said again.

I wanted someone to protect us.

Someone who cared.

“He’s strange,” I told Asha. She kicked at my ribs, and I adjusted the pillow. “He’s angry at everything, including himself. He says things wrong and then knows he’s said them wrong and doesn’t know how to fix them.” I let my eyes close partway. “He made me breakfast, showed me the library, and went out in a snowstorm to walk a fence line. You saw how he slept in wolf form against the back door all night.” I was talking to both Asha and my cat now. “But we’re leaving when the roads clear; try to make it to the border at least. That’s what we agreed.”

My cat said nothing, which wasn’t the same as agreeing.

The afternoon went quiet after that. The snow kept falling, the fire burned steadily, and I was so tired it had settled deep in my bones. At some point, I stopped holding myself awake and let my eyes stay closed.

The dreams were muted. More color than content. Fragments of fear, Yannick’s voice, the smell of Center 14, the locked doors. When I woke, it was to darkness and Asha pushing steadily at the right side of my ribcage with what felt like both feet.

“I get it,” I told her, groggy, and lay still for a moment while the room came back to me and the knock came while I was still putting myself back together.

I worked myself upright. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me. I have some stuff you might need.”

“Hang on.”

I made my way to the door, worked the key lift-then-turn and opened it a crack. Cassian was standing in the hall carrying a stack of white towels folded neatly, a shallow wooden crate balanced on top.

“Brec gave me a list,” he said and tilted his head at the crate. “Go through it and check, but I just wanted you to know it’s here.” He set the crate down just inside the door—without crossing the threshold, I noticed—and straightened. “The towels are for… well… you know.”

“I do.”

“Right. Well, there are scissors, sterilizing tablets. A lamp I can move if you want more light in here. Brec sent some notes on positioning for a cat shifter in a first birth. I can print them if that’s useful for you.”

I looked at the crate. Folded cloths. A sealed first aid kit with an ORT label half-stripped from the side. Three small bottles of sterile saline, medical gloves still in the packaging. He’d found things, thinking it through, and my throat constricted again.

“Thank you,” I managed. “There’s something in the car I need. I know it’s probably snowed in, but I… would you be able to get it? I understand if it’s too much to get it, but…”

“Of course.”

“It’s a wolf, a stuffed wolf.”

He seemed confused but didn’t ask me to explain. “Not a problem,” he said. “The car’s buried deep, but I’ll check after dinner. I made lasagna. Can you manage to come down for something, or do you want me to bring it up to you?”

“I’ll come down.”

He glanced back at the nest, which made me feel odd because nests are very personal, and I waited for him to tell me I was doing it wrong. Not that I’d know if it was wrong or not, given that I’d never had this instinct before, but he didn’t criticize, just smiled gently, then pulled the door almost closed and went downstairs.

I got the feeling he approved.

Our alpha loves our nest, my cat corrected.

“He’s not ours,” I muttered, then took a moment to breathe, sitting on the edge of the bed with the crate on the floor, and my cat was quiet and satisfied in a weird way that I wasn’t used to.

Safe, my cat said, one more time, and curled up.