Page 45 of Omega Hunted

I let him.

Chapter Sixteen

CASSIAN

Soren’s car was even more deeply buried under additional snowfall since this morning’s patrol, and no one would know it was there. I dug in enough to find the tiny stuffed wolf in the footwell of the passenger seat and pushed it into my pocket, but as I moved back to leave, I glanced at the back seat and saw two go-bags. One belonged to Ronan, the one he always carried, with the howling black wolf logo, wearing a hand-painted pink cap he’d added. I dug more snow away, retrieved the bags, and, through a gap into the trunk, I saw other things inside, so I kept digging until I could half-pop the trunk.

“What the hell?”

Guns. Ammunition. Grenades. Then, on the other side, a suitcase, so heavy it had to be full. Four small cardboard boxes taped shut, a fifth that had come open at one corner, revealing stacked tins of formula inside. I stood in the snow and stared at it, and then I started carrying things up to the house, one load at a time, because that was a problem I could fix.

By the time I’d finished, the kitchen table had disappeared under it all. I cut the tape on the boxes and went through them enough to understand what I was seeing. More formula, bottles, pacifiers still in their packaging, diapers in two sizes. The suitcase held clothes, tiny ones folded neatly, blankets in soft colors, and towels. A bag of medical supplies, clamps, and sterile dressings.

Ronan had been prepared for a baby. And for war. Why? How?

My gaze flicked to the laptop open next to me. The monitors showed nothing but snow drifting across empty cameras. Still, I found myself checking every feed twice before I looked back at the table. Then I tugged one of the kitchen chairs out of the way to make room and left it all on the table. Soren appeared in the doorway twenty minutes later, after his post-dinner nap, still in my sweatshirt, and stopped.

He crossed to the table slowly. Picked up the tiny onesies, impossibly small in his hands, pale yellow with something printed on the front too tiny for me to read from across the room. He stood there holding it. Picked up one of the bottles with his other hand.

“Did you have all this somewhere?” he asked.

“No. It was in the car you were in.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

He set the bottle down and pressed the sleeping suit flat to his chest with both hands, and his jaw tensed, and he didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Can we leave the bottles and formula here and take the rest of this upstairs?”

I remembered the stuffed wolf and gave it to him, noticing the dark staining and hoping to hell it wasn’t blood.

His eyes closed for a moment. “Yannick’s blood,” he whispered.

The name didn’t mean anything to me, but the grief on his face did. It softened something in him, stripping away the fear and stubbornness and survival instinct he’d been clinging to since he arrived. His fingers tightened around the battered toy, and I found myself wondering who Yannick had been and why there was blood on it and why it hurt Soren so much.

I lowered myself into the chair opposite him. “Yannick?”

Soren sat down on the couch, still gripping the toy, stroking slowly over the flattened fur between the wolf’s ears, avoiding the bloody part.

“He was at Center 14,” he murmured. “He was expecting twins.” His expression relaxed as if he had fond memories. “The omegas weren’t allowed to talk much. Not really. The SED kept us separated most of the time, and nobody wanted us forming friendships. But you see the same people every day, and eventually you learn things anyway.”

I stayed quiet.

“He always had this wolf stuffie with him. Mealtimes. Medical checks. Any time I saw him, he had it tucked under his arm.” A faint smile touched his mouth, then it faded. “And I learned he was expecting twins because he was in the room next to mine, and he talked to his babies, and I could sit in the corner of my room and listen through the vent.” Something tightened in my chest when tears filled Soren’s eyes. “I knew it was wrong, but sometimes I’d go a whole day without speaking to anyone…

“It’s not wrong,” I defended. “I bet if he’d known, he would have wanted you to know these things.”

“We did talk a few times. And he’d sit in the exercise yard with his hand here.” Soren rested his palm over his stomach. “And tell them stories. Tell them he was a twin himself, and what his brother was like, and how he’d love his nephews. What their room would look like. Whether they were going to like books or the beach. He had plans to find a little cottage, where the three of them could live, and howl at the moon, and be free.” The grief was back now, etched into every line of his face.

I glanced at the wolf. “How did you come to have it?”

Soren’s breath caught.

“I…” His voice disappeared.

He folded in on himself, both hands gripping his knees as though they were the only thing keeping him upright.

I crouched instinctively, stopping short of touching him.