Page 49 of Omega Hunted

The bounty on the A/O hunters network had increased to five million. Anonymous escrow, verified payment, no questions asked. Someone wanted Soren found badly enough to throw another three million onto the table, and there were only two possibilities that made any sense. Either Ronan was right and Emric Kastor wanted his missing omega brother before anyone learned what they’d lost, or the Daltons had found out that Asha had their blood and were determined to reclaim the child their dead son had fathered. Whichever family was behind it, the message was the same.

Someone with deep pockets had decided Soren was worth a lot, and that meant the omega hunters would keep coming. I stared at the numbers for a long time, then went back to the chat window hoping The Archivist would still be around.

IRONPINE: If I wanted this to end differently. If the world thought an omega died the night of the raid on Center 14?

The cursor blinked for a long time before the reply came.

THE ARCHIVIST: You’d need something people already want to believe. A body helps. A believable reason works almost as well.

IRONPINE: There’s already a body count nobody’s finished counting.

THE ARCHIVIST: Interesting.

Another pause, longer this time.

THE ARCHIVIST: I can seed it. Slowly. Too fast and it reads like a lie. These things need to breathe. Grief needs a shape people already expect before they’ll accept it.

IRONPINE: How long.

THE ARCHIVIST: Weeks. Longer, if you want the right people believing it instead of just repeating it. Give me something to work with. A cause. Something that fits what already leaked out of that facility.

I thought of the four confirmed deaths the SED’s own report had never sorted into names, and the blizzard that had swallowed the roads the same night.

IRONPINE: Exposure. He was pregnant, injured, and unaccounted for the night of the raid. Nobody’s found him since.

THE ARCHIVIST: That works. We’d need a body. Costs more. Give me time.

The connection dropped again.

I spent a lot of time going through the Center 14 records The Archivist had given me, but the facility ran clean on paper, and I didn’t have access to go any deeper, though there were some worrying threads I wished I could pull on.

Then it was on to the birthing files Brec had sent me, which were extensive, and I read them so many times I could quote some parts verbatim. The clinical protocols were dry and gave me nothing to work on, but some of the personal experiences were more useful. I printed everything and left the folder on the kitchen table where Soren would see it, and it was gone the next morning, along with the old grey sweatshirt I’d left on the back of a kitchen chair. I deliberately left the second one, and it disappeared the same way.

My wolf approved of it all.

The bastard was practically preening.

“How can you forget Raff?” I asked my reflection in the window as I made dinner that night.

My wolf lifted his head. Never. The certainty behind the single word stole my breath. Raff is ours. Forever. A pause. Love doesn’t leave. Love makes room.

“Stop,” I whispered.

No betrayal. Only protect.

“Stop!”

But my wolf had already settled the matter—protecting Soren didn’t mean we were betraying Raff.

Only, each missing sweatshirt reminded me of the way Raff had stolen my clothes and left them in a pile next to his side of our bed, and for a second, I could almost hear Raff laughing about it.

It hurt.

Raff did it because we were bonded, and he’d known about his worn ORT T-shirt I kept in my desk drawer, but why would Soren want my things? I researched it, and it was likely that Soren, under sustained stress, was instinctively tracking the scent of an alpha they’d registered as non-threatening. The essay I found suggested he was being led by his animal side.

I couldn’t imagine Soren felt safe, but his cat seemed willing to trust me. I’d left a fleece and another blanket outside his door before breakfast, and by lunch they’d vanished. Soren himself came downstairs just after two, later than he’d been managing lately. I heard the creak of the stairs behind me while I was making coffee, but I kept my attention on the coffee maker because I’d learned sudden movements still put him on edge, and it was easier for both of us if I let him come to me in his own time.

The fridge opened. Closed. A pause.