Page 13 of Omega Hunted

I slid beneath the blankets.

He found me immediately.

Still asleep, he curled against my chest, seeking warmth before his mind had any say in the matter. One hand rested against my ribs while his daughter shifted between us, and my wolf settled with a low rumble I hadn’t heard in years as long silver hair twisted around his face.

Ours to protect.

“Shut up,” I muttered.

The omega sighed in his sleep and burrowed a little closer.

My wolf went quiet.

I lay in the dark, didn’t move, and couldn’t understand why he was so still.

We could keep him and his kit.

I ignored my delusional, moon-drunk, asshole wolf. I’d had my chance with fate.

The stranger breathed against my collarbone.

Keep him.

Touch him.

Save him.

Chapter Five

SOREN

I came back slowly, surfacing through heat and weight and the distant crackle of wood burning somewhere nearby while I fought to stay unconscious for just a few more seconds.

The blankets over me were heavy enough to pin me in place, layered across my legs and chest, trapping warmth to aching muscles that felt bruised all the way down to the bone. Pine smoke drifted through the room layered with the sharper scent of hot iron from the stove, but underneath both of those things was something wilder that made my pulse stumble before I was even fully awake.

Forest and pine sap and wet earth and snow surrounded me and threaded through all of it was the unmistakable scent of alpha. Pregnancy had killed my heats months ago, but my body still knew an alpha when it smelled one. Some instincts didn’t need a cycle to wake them.

The recognition slid through me, and my body reacted before my mind caught up. I stopped breathing for a second while every muscle locked tight beneath the blankets.

It was a wolf and male and strong enough that my body recognized the danger before I was fully awake, but I forced myself to breathe again, slower this time, and the second I understood my vulnerabilities, fear hit hard.

I touched my stomach under the blankets while panic rose thick and suffocating in my throat. My belly felt tight and aching and horribly still beneath my palms, and for one awful second, there was nothing at all. No flutter, nothing.

I squeezed my eyes shut hard enough to hurt.

Wait.

One. Two. Three.

Then Asha moved, a shift low on the right side of my stomach hitting me with enough relief to make me dizzy.

My throat closed around a whimper before it could escape, and tears pushed hard into my eyes while I turned my face deeper into the pillow, which was warm from sleep, so the Alpha at my back wouldn’t hear me.

Okay. She’s okay.

I was awake enough to understand that the blankets kept me warm while the alpha pressed along my back, solid and sleeping and unmistakably male, and a slow, steady breath touched the nape of my neck.

We were skin to skin. My pulse jumped so violently it hurt.