Page 78 of Omega Hunted

“I know,” I whispered.

His ears flicked, and I wrapped one hand tighter in his fur.

For the next hour, whenever a contraction came, I buried my face into him and rode it out while Cassian’s scent surrounded me and my cat stayed close. The contractions kept coming, closer together and harder every time, but I wasn’t facing it alone.

They weren’t regular, not in any perfect way, but they headed in one direction only—closer together, longer, harder. At some point between contractions, he shifted back, pulled on a pair of sweats, and resumed his place beside me, but he didn’t try to talk me through them. He didn’t say much at all. He put his hand flat on my back when it got bad and left it there, warm and steady. Every time he left the bed, my cat tracked him. When he crossed to the bathroom for more towels, I found myself watching the door until he came back.

It didn’t make sense. I knew where he was, but some deep instinct in me still wanted him close. His scent was everywhere in the nest, and my cat stayed. I focused on Asha, on the next contraction, and on Cassian’s hand on my back, and that was all I could do.

Sunrise began to lighten the room, and a contraction hit while I was braced on my hands and knees, lasting almost two minutes. I pressed my forehead into the headboard and bit my hand to keep from screaming.

Cassian called Brec. “Last contraction was nearly two minutes.”

“Okay.” Brec was crisp, awake, no hedging. “Cassian, you have everything you need. Trust your hands. First babies can move fast. Don’t assume you’ve got all day, and Soren, listen to your body. When you feel the urge to push, don’t fight it.”

“I know,” I said. “I know, I know, I know⁠—”

Another one. Enormous. I rode it and rode it. It broke over me and left me gasping, and I was already repositioning without thinking about it. I turned toward the pale light filling the window, and the urge arrived with the next wave—total, undeniable, the most animal thing I had ever felt in my life.

“Cassian,” I said. “Now. I need to push now.”

He was there. I heard him say something brief and technical to Brec, and the phone went on speaker. Then it was just his hands and his voice, low and even, telling me what he needed from me. The light in the room was gold by then, early sun spilling across the bed and my cat was very quiet.

Waiting.

Cassian’s scent was everywhere. It had been in the nest for days, but now it was immediate—on the sheets, on the sweats pulled up around his hips, on his hands and arms—and my cat leaned into it and held on.

Three hours since the first contraction. Maybe a little more. The sun was fully up.

“One more,” Cassian said. “One more, Soren. You’ve got this.”

I pushed.

And then Asha was there.

I didn’t hear her.

The silence went on too long. I could hear Cassian working, hear Brec’s voice from the phone giving instructions in a steady murmur, and I waited, and nothing happened, and the quiet stretched, and I thought please, please, please in a loop that didn’t have words attached to it, just the simple animal fact of needing her to be here and not knowing yet if she was.

Cassian said. Fearful. Urgent, “Come on.”

Then she cried.

Outraged. Thin. Real. And something in my chest that had been clenched since Center 14 let go all at once, so hard my vision went white at the edges.

“She’s here,” Cassian said, his voice cracking. “She’s crying, Soren. She’s okay. She’s beautiful.”

One second, he was moving, listening to Brec, and doing all the practical things. Then he really looked at her, and his eyes widened in wonder.

He worked fast and sure, listening to Brec, clearing her airway, checking her over with hands that didn’t shake, wrapping her in the clean towel he’d had ready. I heard him talking to Brec in a steady murmur, answering questions, confirming things, and I understood almost none of it because I couldn’t take my eyes off Asha. Then he clamped the cord, talked me through the cut, guided my hand around his and held it steady, and I felt the resistance, then the give, and then it was done, and she was fully, completely free.

He cleaned me up without fuss, efficient and careful, and I sat propped against the headboard because I had no energy left. A glass pressed into my hand. “Drink,” he said, and I drank as he fussed with formula and a bottle and towels, all while holding her.

Then he put her in my arms.

Asha. Small and furious and perfect, fists still clenched against her face, smelling of me and of something new that was entirely her own. My cat surged forward immediately, crowding close beneath my skin as though it had been waiting for this all along. I wasn’t crying. I thought I would be, but I wasn’t. I turned her to the bottle that Cassian passed me, and she rooted immediately, instinctive and determined. I laughed at that—a short, broken sound—and Cassian, standing at the end of the bed, stared. My cat pressed close and went still. Asha batted at me and made a tiny noise, and my cat purred.

Family.