Chapter Thirty-Two
Hunter came to his senses when Cade shivered.
“Damn it, I’m sorry. We need to get you inside, get you warmed up.”
Before his omega could protest, Hunter picked him up, swinging him easily into his arms. Cade simply wrapped his arms around Hunter’s neck and huddled closer as Hunter set off toward the village.
Hunter laid him down on the sofa of the house Cade shared with Ollie and set about getting a fire going. He went to Cade’s room, returning with clean clothes, towels, and blankets, then stripped his own clothes before helping Cade out of his and drying him off.
Even in the dim light of the fire, the swell of Cade’s belly was unmistakable. Hunter sank to his knees and ran his hands over Cade’s belly. “Ours?” he asked.
Cade nodded. “Yours and mine.”
Hunter held Cade’s hips steady and leaned in to press kisses across his stomach.
The door opened and Ollie stood there, his eyes wide.
“Hunter, you’re back. That’s great, I… I’ll stay the night at Davyn’s. Enjoy the make-up sex.”
And then he was gone.
Hunter looked up at Cade, and the omega started to laugh. It took half a second for laughter to become tears and Hunter gently tugged him down to the floor and they lay side by side, Cade’s head against his chest as the omega sobbed.
“I was so scared that I’d never see you again. I thought Red Fang had got you or something terrible had happened. Where were you?”
Hunter knew his mate deserved answers, so he did his best to provide them.
“First, I went to the last place I’d lived with my mom, to try to track her down.”
“Did you find her?”
“No, no one had seen or heard from her in years. I did find someone who knew her around the time she had me but he couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Then I tried to find a bear, any bear, to see if I could track down my dad. But I got nowhere. And then I went north to look for Max and Dara.”
Cade went still beside him. “Wait, what?”
“I went to try to finish what you’d started in your search. I didn’t find them either, but I found their car. Very close to an old den on an island lake. It’s Red Fang territory now, but it wasn’t always. It had been too long for me to track them properly but I did find signs of a struggle. No blood, no bodies. My best guess is Red Fang captured them. I knew I’d been away too long, so I came back. And now I’m here.”
He’d wanted so much to just go rampaging into Red Fang’s territory. Fair play after what they’d put him and Cade through. But if they did have Cade’s brothers and they wanted them back safely, they were going to have to be careful about how they went about it.
“And now you’re here.” Cade sighed against him. “You can’t leave again like that, Hunter. I need you. The pups need you. We have to be a team from now on.”
Hunter pressed a kiss to Cade’s forehead. “We will be, I promise. I thought I had to find my mom or my dad to know who I am. But I found that answer out while searching for your brothers. I’m your mate, that’s who I am. Father to those pups in your belly. I’m sorry it took me so long to figure that out.”
The heat from the fire was warming them, finally. Hunter tilted Cade’s chin up and pressed a kiss to his lips. Cade kissed him back eagerly, then rolled to lie on his back, pulling Hunter with him.
“You owe me make-up sex,” the omega demanded heatedly.
Hunter grinned. “Who am I to deny you, huh?”
They kissed again, Cade parting his lips and letting Hunter’s tongue taste his. Cade bent his knees and Hunter broke the kiss to kneel between them, pushing inside Cade slowly, their eyes locked together. Cade’s chest rose and fell rapidly, his lips falling open in an ‘o’ of surprise.
“What?” Hunter managed to ask.
“You were gone too long,” Cade teased, gasping out a breath. “I almost forgot what this felt like.”
For the first few days, Cade didn’t want Hunter out of his sight, much to everyone else’s amusement. The alpha didn’t mind, he wanted Cade to feel secure and was happy to do whatever was needed. Gradually, the omega started to relax and realize that Hunter wasn’t going anywhere. He started putting more hours in at work and Hunter spent his time helping out wherever he was needed and talking with Jensen and sometimes Eamon.
It took a while for him to get his head around how a den worked. As best he could figure it out, the presence of an alpha conferred a sort of safety. Traditionally, one of those alphas was always a bear. But when the bears broke the pact, that all ended overnight. Now River Den and Hilltop had a medley of alphas. Eamon had been the first, and it was he who’d brought Jensen on board. Hilltop had two alphas as well.
“The biggest issue we have is space. We’re bursting at the seams. And I don’t mean buildings, I mean physical space, territory. In the past, there’d have been half the number of shifters in a den like this, and a third of those would have been kids. Now we have a mostly adult population,” Jensen explained one day as they walked the banks of the river.
“Why is that?”
“Well, think about it. Most of the omega in the country are now living in the dens. The dens have no contact with the three biggest groups of wereanimals; the wolves, the bears, and the lions. It’s strange to have so many unmated omegas but it’s probably because their mates are…”
“In the packs you don’t have any contact with.”
“Exactly. But we can’t exactly encourage them to go out and search for love. It’s too dangerous, for one thing. And for another, we don’t have the space for all the litters that would result.”
“That’s why Max and Dara were checking out the abandoned dens.”
“Yeah. Max, being an alpha and having come of age, would have been able to protect a new den like we protect the River.”
There was some hesitation in Jensen’s voice.
“You don’t think he was right?”
Jensen shrugged. “We needed him here, to take Eamon’s place. But he was looking to the future, to his and his brothers’ future kids, and he knew we’d need more space than we have right now.”
“Why do you need more than one alpha? Wouldn’t you be enough?”
“I guess it’s like having a backup, in case something happens. I get called out to Hilltop now and then, seeing as I’m the only doctor we have. Our nurse and midwife, Gina, lives over there. Speaking of which, we’ll have to ask her to visit in a few weeks, to check on Cade.”
“But you’ve seen him,” Hunter said. “Wouldn’t you know if anything was wrong?”
“As far as I can see, everything is coming along just fine. Fast, of course, but we knew it would be. But with a litter, we have to be careful.”
Hunter was also still trying to get his head around the matchmaking service the den offered.
“It’s simple,” Cade said that afternoon, as they chatted over lunch. He’d been very patient with Hunter’s many questions. “We offer a variety of services, depending on the person or people.”
“What kind of services?”
“We make matches, point people toward others. We run a dating website and we run events in different cities, where we introduce people to each other when we think there’s something there to build on.”
“Drawing on your… matchmaking skills.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which don’t work on your own relationships.”
“Nope.” Cade grinned. “And it can be wonky with people we’re very close to. Ollie was more certain about us from meeting you than knowing me.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s our role to play, where we fit in in the shifter world.”
“And despite everything, you still found it, right? Love?”
Cade let his hand rest on his stomach. “These guys are the proof. You can’t get a litter without love.”
“So your parents must have really loved each other, to have six of you.”
Cade’s smile faded just a little. “Yeah, they did.”
“But they didn’t get their happy ending?”
Hunter didn’t want to bring up bad memories but he did want to know as much as he could about his mate.
“The lions came back.”
Cade’s words didn’t make sense to him, not at first. Then… “The lions in the story you told me?”
His omega nodded. “My alpha father fought them off so that my omega father could get away. He managed to follow him but he was badly injured and he died. Dad eventually brought us to River Den and raised us here. But he was heartbroken after losing his mate. He never really got over it.” Cade looked away, wiping tears from his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Hunter offered. “But it won’t be that way with us. I’ve no plans to go anywhere. This is my home now. Wherever you are, is my home.”
Cade smiled through his tears, taking Hunter’s hand in his.
“They say home is where your heart is, right? Well, my home is right here.” He took their joint hands and pressed them to Hunter’s chest, just above his heart. “And here.” He pressed his free hand to his pregnant belly.