Chapter Text
The motel room barely registered as livable.
The wallpaper had peeled in wet curls, the carpet was stiff with old stains, and the air was thick with the scent of mildew, bleach, and something worse—emptiness. A silence so absolute it pressed against Cas’s chest like grief. No Omega scent. No heat. No comfort. Just sterile decay and the hollow echo of neglect.
Cas stood in the doorway of room 207, his clipboard useless in his hand, medical bag forgotten at his feet. His Alpha instincts—so often steady, clinical—rushed forward like a tidal wave, crashing into his lungs as he took a slow, deliberate breath.
The scent was wrong. Or rather—there was none.
“Welfare check,” they had said at dispatch. “Unbonded Omega, mid-20s, suspected suppressant crash. Refused all clinic follow-ups. Neighbor reported wheezing, coughing, no signs of life for three days.”
He’d expected a barricade.
He hadn’t expected the door to be unlocked. He hadn’t expected the room to be dark. He hadn’t expected to find—
That.
Curled in a shredded nest of mismatched blankets, towels, and clothes that hadn’t been properly washed in weeks, lay an Omega. At first, Cas wasn’t sure he was breathing. The figure was so still, folded in on itself like a burned-out star, limbs trembling under the fabric, a low rasp of air the only clue that life still lived in that fever-wracked body.
Cas’s heart stuttered in his chest.
The Omega was skeletal. Pale. His face was flushed with the blotchy color of fever and stress, jaw slack, mouth slightly open, lips cracked and bleeding. One of his eyes was swollen, the other fluttering erratically as if even unconsciousness was trying to escape the pain.
But worse—worse than the visible signs of illness—was the scent.
Or what was left of it.
A whisper. A ghost. The ashen remnants of what should’ve been warmth and honey and home. Suppressed. Starved. Beaten down until it barely registered. Cas had smelled dying Omegas before. But this wasn’t death. Not yet.
This was abandonment.
This was survival turned hollow.
This was a body that had learned it couldn’t afford to be wanted.
Cas dropped to his knees.
He didn’t announce himself again. Didn’t try to assert authority. Didn’t ask for permission. He simply reached out—slowly, carefully—and touched the Omega’s shoulder with fingers as gentle as breath.
The reaction was instant. The Omega flinched violently, eyes cracking open. There was no recognition in them, just panic and pain layered in haze.
“Don’t—don’t call anyone,” the Omega rasped, voice shredded and desperate. “I’m fine—I’m not—I’m not in heat—”
“You’re not fine,” Cas said, voice low and steady, trying not to let the shake in his chest betray the quake in his soul. “You’re burning up. You’re dehydrated. And you’re alone.”
“I just need…” The Omega tried to curl tighter, a raw cough tearing through him. “A few more days… I’ll be fine.”
Cas moved in slowly, letting his scent bleed into the room in soft waves—calm, neutral, not invasive. Just there. Just safe.
“I’m not here to take anything away from you,” he whispered, voice thick. “I’m here because someone should’ve come sooner. And because I’m not leaving.”
The Omega’s breath hitched, and a single tear slid across his fevered cheek, disappearing into the nest.
“Why would you care?” he whispered. “You don’t even know me.”
Cas felt something rupture quietly in his chest. Something instinctual and ancient. Something that had nothing to do with medical ethics or Alpha responsibilities.
“Because no Omega should ever be left like this.”
And then—Cas did something he hadn’t done in nearly a decade of trauma medicine.
He cried.
Not loudly. Not theatrically.
Silently. As he pulled his thermometer from his bag and slid it gently beneath the Omega’s arm. As he soaked a rag in bottled water and brushed it along a too-hot brow. As he whispered nonsense words like prayers, like oaths.
“You’re not alone anymore,” he murmured, stroking damp hair back. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
And when the thermometer beeped—dangerously high—and the Omega whispered a name that might not have been his, Cas whispered something back.
“I’ll stay.”