Cassidy #3
My breath catches, the words hitting harder than they should. My throat feels dry, as if something is stuck in it.
“You’ve already told me that,” I whisper.
Silas stills, raising a perfect brow at me. My pulse thuds heavily.
“On my first day,” I add. “You said I’d already earned my place here before he ever saw my face.”
Silas’s eyes darken, and there’s an edge to his gaze that I can’t read.
“You remembered.”
Heat blooms across my cheeks, and I avoid looking his way. “It was hard not to.”
“I wondered if you would,” he says. “If only you’d taken it to heart.”
My fingers curl against my skirt beneath the desk, and the air thickens between us. My scent perfumes the air, and maybe that’s why the absence of his scent hits so hard.
He’s thinking about something, and I wish I had the right to ask. Even if I’m terrified of the answer.
“I’m not going to ask anything else from you,” he says, and the words are so quiet I almost don’t hear them. “Not today.”
Not today.
The implication sinks in slowly.
“Si…”
“That’s a dangerous way to say my name, little moon,” he murmurs huskily.
My breath catches.
I should apologise. I should look away.
I should do literally anything other than sit there staring at him like I want him to explain exactly what he means.
But apparently, my survival instincts have abandoned me entirely.
“I didn’t mean it dangerously,” I whisper.
Silas’s mouth curves faintly.
“No?” he asks. “Then how did you mean it?”
I look down quickly, pulse hammering in my throat. “I don’t know.”
His smile deepens, and he looks younger. Less burdened, less in control.
The thought is so dangerous that I immediately dismiss it. I have enough to handle with Evander—I don’t need to beg for more.
Especially not from someone like him. Someone who could never be mine.
“I should probably prepare for the production meeting,” I say, reaching for the lookbook even though there’s nothing left to do.
Silas lets me escape.
“Probably,” he agrees. “And I should go pretend I care about everyone else’s opinions before Harlan starts insulting people without me.”
My smile returns before I can stop it.
“He’d do that?”
“Without hesitation.”
Silas pauses at the door, one hand resting on the frame, and he looks back at me. “Cassidy.”
I look up, and my heart clenches at the careful look on his face.
“If you hear one thing I say—hear this. You don’t have to earn love by being useful first.”
The words hit somewhere beneath my ribs. I can’t speak. I can’t argue. I can’t protest.
Silas gives me one last faint smile and steps back into the corridor, leaving my office feeling too empty in his wake.
For several seconds, I don’t move.
I sit there with the final lookbook submitted, the morning half gone, and my hands curled uselessly in my lap.
Harlan makes me want to prove myself. Evander makes me feel wanted. Isaac makes me feel safe.
But Silas… Silas makes me feel seen.
And I’m starting to think that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
The moment I step onto the fashion floor, everything screams warning.
Normally, it’s nice and calm when I arrive. Everyone who is here this early is lazily meandering about, preparing for the day.
And yet, right now, despite it being 6:30 a.m.… it’s frantic.
Too many people are bustling around at once. Too many coffees balanced in hands. Too many conversations happening simultaneously, so I can’t pick up anything about what’s going on.
“Move out the way,” a beta snaps, shoving past me with two boxes in his arms.
I step to the side, not sure what’s going on, but this is abnormal. I’ve not seen anything like this in all my time here.
Sure, today is the day we’re meant to be shooting the first part of the campaign for Aurelion, but I’ve seen shoot days before, and it’s never been like this.
I stick to the sides of the room, moving around the bullpen carefully so I don’t brush against anyone.
I debate whether I should check in with Harlan first, or whether I’m better off going to my office and staying out of the way.
Both options feel wrong.
My office is safe, but hiding when something is clearly on fire feels cowardly.
Although, that’s never stopped me before.
I’m still hovering near the edge of the bullpen when I hear enough.
The beta who shoved past me has stopped near one of the layout tables, his boxes dumped at his feet. He’s talking too quickly to one of the senior stylists, hands moving wildly.
“Visaro dropped them last night. A full spread—digital, socials, and a preview of print. They’ve copied everything, down to the same fucking silk anchor.”
My stomach drops so hard I almost sway.
What the fuck?
How is this even possible?
The lookbook only went out on Monday. There is physically no way anyone could leak the designs and then recreate them like this in less than three days.
A stylist rushes past me carrying garment bags over both arms, and one of them brushes my shoulder. I jerk back too quickly, my hip catching the corner of a desk.
Pain sparks sharply, and I know I’m going to bruise, but I can’t focus on that now.
Sound fades, a whooshing sound taking over. It feels like too big a coincidence, but Frankie works for Visaro.
The same Frankie I spent a lot of time with on Saturday night. We never once talked about Aurelion or the campaign or anything technical.
And yet…
My mouth is dry, and the scent of stress all around me suddenly feels too sharp.
Someone swears behind me, and my lungs stop working properly.
This is an awful, huge mess.
“Harlan is going to murder someone for this,” someone mutters, and my entire body goes cold.
Because Harlan stayed late Friday fixing my work. Silas spent Monday helping me finalise it.
And now, somehow, parts of that work are on Visaro’s feed before our shoot has even begun.
This is my fault.
It must be.
What if I sent it to the wrong person? What if I missed something in the distribution list?
What if, somehow, something I did gave Frankie exactly what he needed?
The room blurs slightly at the edges, and I clutch the table to hold me upright.
As everyone continues rushing around me, I force myself to think.
This isn’t my fault, but I should be out here helping figure something out.
I turn quickly, keeping my head down as I move towards the corridor, but I only make it three steps before Harlan’s voice slices across the floor.
“Cassidy.”
I freeze. Every conversation around me seems to quiet all at once.
Or maybe that’s just my body making everything disappear except him.
Slowly, I turn, ignoring the instinct to put my hands up in submission.
Harlan stands at the far end of the bullpen, dressed immaculately despite it being barely morning.
His expression is severe enough to make my stomach twist, one hand braced around his phone, the other holding a tablet so tightly I’m surprised the screen hasn’t cracked.
His eyes lock on mine.
“Into my office,” he demands.
Every gaze in the room feels like it lands on me at once, and heat floods my scent glands so quickly it practically burns.
I nod because my voice won’t work, then cross the floor toward him on legs that don’t feel entirely attached to my body.
The closer I get, the more aware I am of the chaos around us. Assistants whispering. Stylists stripping boards apart. Someone on the phone saying, “No, we cannot shoot it as planned now.”
My chest tightens.
We can’t shoot it as planned.
The thing we built all week—the thing Harlan stayed late for, the thing Silas praised, the thing that finally made me feel like maybe I had contributed something real—has been ruined.
Harlan turns before I reach him, walking into his office and leaving the door open behind him.
I follow, not knowing anything else I can do.
The moment I step inside, something in me settles. I close the door, and the scent neutraliser in his office is thick and perfect. My shoulders loosen almost immediately.
It blankets everything, removing all the scents that can add to my overwhelm. The silence in his office cuts through some of the noise in my head.
Even the familiar mess is comforting in a way that has no right to be.
I stand just inside the room, hands clasped tightly in front of me.
“I can check the distribution list,” I blurt before he can speak. “I can check every email we’ve sent, and the file permissions, and who downloaded the final lookbook. I don’t know how it happened, but I can—”
“Breathe.”
The command is quiet.
Not barked, which is his usual reaction, but calm and almost… well, almost pleading.
Air rushes into my lungs in a shaky pull, and humiliation follows immediately behind it. I can feel my scent glands warming.
Harlan’s jaw tightens. “Do it again.”
I do it again.
He watches me and nods for me to do it again and again. By the seventh breath, I’m doing it on my own without his prompts, and by the fifteenth, I’m doing it without being aware of it.
Harlan nods, then sets the tablet down on his desk with careful precision.
“Calling you in here is not an accusation,” he says carefully. “It’s because you’re part of my team, and I want to brief you properly.”
I stare at him in confusion. My brain refuses to process the words.
He doesn’t blame me? I know I did nothing, but that doesn’t stop it feeling like my fault.
“What?”
“I called you in here because you worked on the lookbook, and I need your eyes on what they’ve taken.” His mouth flattens. “Not because I think you handed Visaro a campaign package.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
“But I might have—”
“You did not.”
“You don’t know that.”
His eyes flash, and he strides closer, stopping not even an inch away from me.
“Look at me,” he barks, and I have no choice but to obey.
I look up before I can stop myself, wanting his approval more than I should, and he knows it.
My scent perfumes around us, and his eyes darken, the pupils dilating as he inhales.
“I will not waste our time trying to convince you that you are innocent,” he says softly.
I shiver, my scent glands tingling under the weight of his gaze.