Silas #2
“He doesn’t literally watch her in the bathroom,” Isaac says dryly. He’s amused, now. “Please try and use the singular brain cell your parents left you with for some good.”
Despite himself, Evander huffs a laugh. The tension between the two of them loosens slightly.
Not enough to get us back onto the real reason we’re here, but enough that I’m no longer worried Isaac’s about to get thrown through the fucking wall.
“And you’re not wrong, Silas. Currently, Cassie is only aware of her bond to Evander,” Isaac continues, eyes flicking towards me briefly before settling on the table. “I figured about Harlan, but you did a great job of keeping yours a secret.”
“You didn’t know?” Evander asks with a frown.
“Nope,” Isaac says flatly, glaring at me now. “Thanks for outing me before I’d actually figured out what the fuck I was doing with that information. Should I be grateful you’ve kept it from her?”
Interesting.
He didn’t keep it secret for Evander’s sake. He hid it because he’s fucking scared.
“Obviously, I’m not going to add more to her plate,” I drawl. “She is the priority, and she cannot handle more idiotic men right now.”
I’m not yet sure what the beta is frightened of.
Loss?
Rejection?
Being chosen second?
What wound is Isaac carrying that’s tangled him up badly enough to deny Cassie someone who genuinely makes her happy?
“So, you really are scent matched, then?” Evander asks quietly now.
Isaac’s cheeks flush, and he nods once. There it is.
The quiet devastation of a man finally being forced to admit that he wants her.
He’s just as fucked for her as the rest of us. Well—as the rest of them.
Their obsession could never rival mine.
He’s been hoping nobody noticed while he worked on getting her to trust him first.
Smart.
Cassie already relaxes around him more easily than the rest of us.
He’s trying to make sure she trusts him before the rest of us fuck it up.
I can respect that, even if it pisses me off. Cassie deserves someone who genuinely cares about her.
She needs it.
Harlan and I are reluctant to pursue her for our own reasons, and whilst I’m getting Harlan to see the bigger picture, it’s leaving our girl alone.
Isaac doesn’t get the luxury of being selfish when she needs him.
“Oh, don’t be a grouch, Zac,” Evander says automatically, nudging him lightly beneath the table. “I knew it the moment you got back from delivering the first bouquet of flowers to her.”
Isaac stills completely.
Slowly, he turns his head towards Evander. “You knew?”
He sounds betrayed. Angry, even.
Did he really think anybody looking at him around Cassie wouldn’t notice?
Cassie blushes every single time he texts her, and I don’t need to guess when he’s been by her office. She’s radiant, much more chirpy, and relaxed.
Even now, when she barely has enough energy to hold herself together, she still wants him near.
Evander frowns immediately, finally realising he’s stepped wrong. “Well, yeah. You smelled like her for the rest of the day. I caught you sniffing yourself.”
Isaac looks away sharply.
Something uncomfortable twists low in my chest at the expression that flashes across his face before he smooths it away.
Isaac has spent all this time trying to quietly carry this alone, only to realise the person he trusted most saw it immediately and left him to struggle through it by himself anyway.
“And you said nothing… because?” Isaac asks finally, voice carefully neutral.
“Because I’m not an idiot,” Evander says defensively. “And because I knew you’d deny it.”
“That’s not the point,” Isaac snaps.
The room stills.
Even Evander looks surprised. Isaac’s finally angry enough to stop swallowing his feelings for everyone else’s sake.
“You let me sit there listening to you talk about claiming her whilst knowing how much I was struggling,” Isaac continues tightly. “You knew I was bonded to her, too, and you still acted like I was helping you win her over all for yourself.”
Oh. Maybe we are similar.
Isaac’s terrified that wanting Cassie means losing Evander. Judging by the expression on the alpha’s face, the idiot’s only just realised it, too.
“Zac—”
“No, seriously, Ev, what exactly was the long-term plan there?” Isaac laughs once, humourless. “Were you hoping I’d never acknowledge it? That I’d just quietly step aside and leave her all to you?”
Evander looks genuinely horrified now.
Good.
Maybe the idiot’s finally thinking with the right head.
“That’s not—”
“Of course, it wasn’t,” Isaac mutters, rubbing at his face again. “Because none of us were actually thinking, were we?”
Silence settles heavily across the room, but this time, it’s not because of pheromones.
It’s because, for once, we all agree. Cassie comes first.
For the first time since this meeting started, somebody’s finally said the real problem out loud.
None of us know how to love Cassie without hurting someone else in the process.
Evander’s expression softens slowly. “Zac…”
Isaac snorts softly before Evander can continue. “I know I’m chatting shit. I know you’d have eventually called me out if I didn’t share first. It’s fine.”
Evander stares him down, and Isaac looks away first.
“Then again, Zac, I could say the same to you,” Evander comments, and I can’t tell if he’s being serious. “You’ve been helping me win her over, and what, have you been secretly laughing with her behind my back?”
Isaac snorts. “Sure. We had a great laugh at you whilst eating the expensive chocolates you bought her on day four.”
Evander cracks a reluctant smile, and I frown, trying to understand the shift in their dynamic. But without another comment to Isaac, Evander turns to Harlan.
“Since we’re airing secrets and all that, I suppose it’s time I got to air my grievance with you,” he says.
“Try it,” Harlan hisses, sounding more like a cat than an alpha. “I don’t think you have the guts to take me on, Whitmore.”
Evander growls, sharp dominance flooding the room until the two of them disappear into competing pheromones like idiots.
Cassie’s exhausted enough that even her scent perfumes stress through the walls from her office, and these two are still treating this like some territorial pissing contest.
I look at Isaac, and he nods once.
There’s no debate here. Isaac understands the current status quo and accepts his place in it.
More importantly, he understands that if the three alphas in this room lose control of themselves, Cassie will be the one forced to absorb the fallout.
He’ll be who I deal with, and the second they realise we’re not indulging their bullshit, they’ll behave.
It’s easy to manipulate the foolish.
“When did you last speak with her?” I ask.
Isaac rubs the back of his neck and sighs. “Last night. Not for long, unfortunately, because she was working. It’s obvious that she’s drowning and barely taking care of herself.”
The words settle heavily into the room. Not because any of us disagree.
But because every single one of us has already come to that conclusion after interacting with her.
“I noticed,” I say, the words coming out rougher than intended.
But noticing hasn’t done fucking anything, and my plan of organising this little tête-à-tête has been a complete waste of fucking time.
“And you two?”
“I saw her this morning,” Evander says, his voice softening the second he speaks about her. “She was exhausted, and I tried to get her to take a break so I could get some breakfast into her, but—”
“She refused,” Harlan finishes, his tone clipped.
He’s irritated. Let’s hope it’s directed at himself for letting this drag on so long and not at Cassie.
“I’ve got no fucking idea what she’s doing, but this workload she has is not from me.”
The defensive edge to his voice tells me everything I need to know.
“Good thing, too, because I promised her I’d… talk to you about it,” Evander says.
Isaac groans softly, and all three of us look towards him. His eyes are fixed firmly on his babysitting project.
“What have we talked about when it comes to Cassie’s boundaries?” he asks calmly.
Evander has the decency to look somewhat ashamed, although he’s quick to recover.
“She needs someone to help her. I can’t do her work for her, but I can deal with the asshole who forced it on her. I was helping.”
No, he wasn’t. I have no doubt the idiot cocked up yet another interaction with our mate by trying to save her before she realised she even needed saving.
“By promising her you’d confront another alpha without her consent?” Isaac asks, voice dry but steady.
Harlan snarls at the beta, and I’m surprised he’s on Evander’s side.
“What else is he meant to do? Have you been around her for longer than two minutes? Any single thing you say, she acts like you’re attacking her.”
We all feel the weight of that accusation, and I wish he was wrong. Unfortunately, even before Cassie arrived at Opus and immediately started being mistreated, someone—or many someones—have done a great deal of damage to her confidence.
My perfect little moon genuinely thinks people only keep her around when she’s useful. That she doesn’t matter the same as everyone else, and that she’s indestructible.
And she is—but only because we’d destroy ourselves before letting her do the same.
Cassie gives and gives until there’s barely anything left of her, then still acts grateful for whatever scraps people hand back.
Evander nods. “Literally. No matter what I do or offer, she sees it like… like I’m telling her she’s not good enough.”
The frustration in his voice is real, but the confusion in his scent is worse. He genuinely doesn’t understand how someone can be offered care and hear criticism instead.
I do.
She’s so used to carrying everything that any attempt to lighten the load feels like criticism instead.
We’ve got to stop making it worse every time we try to help her.
“Maybe that’s got a little something to do with the way you approach things,” Isaac says, raising a brow.
Harlan laughs once under his breath, and I wish I could kick him now. Cassie’s pain is not a laughing fucking matter.