Chapter 17 #3
My cat had already made up his mind. He was curled deep inside me, calm and expectant, his attention fixed on Cassian with confidence.
“There’s room,” I added.
Cassian’s hand tightened once on his knee. “Soren.”
“I know you don’t want to have to touch me.” I kept my voice steady because I needed him to know I meant it. “You can sit on the edge. Or not. I just… You don’t have to sit all the way over there.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and I saw his wolf in his eyes, not pushing forward, not demanding, but listening.
Then Cassian nodded, stood, and stepped away to remove his boots.
He left them by the door, then came back and paused at the edge of the nest as if he were waiting for me to change my mind.
I didn’t.
He climbed in with care, keeping his weight to the outer edge and leaving a ridiculous amount of space between us.
The nest dipped under him. His scent deepened immediately, warm wolf and cedar and Cassian.
My cat went so loose and pleased inside me that I wanted to call him a traitor again.
I didn’t because my body had betrayed me just as thoroughly.
My shoulders eased. My breathing changed.
The room felt warmer with him inside the boundary I’d made, and I hated how much sense that made to the animal part of me.
Cassian sat stiffly, one shoulder against the headboard, hands visible, body angled so I had space to move away if I wanted. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.” My voice came out quieter than I intended, and I cleared my throat, then nodded toward the television, and we continued watching.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he said after a moment.
I tensed. An omega being told he was wrong was usually the first step in a whole mess of pain. The correction came first. Then the anger. Then whatever lesson the alpha wanted you to learn. I forced myself to glance up, but he was smiling. Not mocking. Not cruel. Warm.
“I do want to touch you.”
His hand lifted so slowly I could have stopped him if I’d wanted to. Instead, I sat frozen as the back of one finger brushed my cheekbone. The touch was impossibly light, barely more than the whisper of warm skin against mine.
“But only if you want me to.”
Our gaze met.
Something shifted between us. Trust, tentative and fragile, stretching across the space between us like the first thread of a bridge.
I leaned into his hand before I could stop myself.
His smile deepened, so small anyone else might have missed it, and his palm settled against my cheek as though I’d given him something precious instead of simply saying yes without words.
Someone shouted on the screen, and we turned back to the show, to see the otter shifter—Pip—and Aldric in some kind of faceoff.
“See? That was definitely smoke,” Cassian said and pointed at the screen.
“If Aldric turns out to be a bear, I’m never letting you forget this.”
“I know a bear shifter—they’re different.”
I was skeptical. “You know a super rare bear shifter?”
He raised an eyebrow and pointed at me. “I know a super rare omega too.”
“Hmmm.”
“Sheriff Decker is a bear shifter.”
“He is?”
“Yep. So, I’d know if Aldric was a bear, which he’s not, because he’s a dragon.”
The certainty was so absurd that it settled the last of my nerves.
I rested back against the pillows, not touching him but close enough to feel the heat of him along my side, and Cassian pointed out more evidence in a low voice, and I argued with every point because I liked the way he answered, dry and serious and increasingly inventive.
Somewhere near the end of the episode, the ache in my hips eased because I’d stopped holding myself so tightly.
I didn’t realize I’d shifted closer until my shoulder brushed Cassian’s arm.
He went still for a second, then relaxed by careful degrees, and when I didn’t move away, he stayed exactly where he was.
The credits rolled. The next episode began automatically. Neither of us reached for the remote.
I should have been worried about what this meant.
I should have been thinking about winter, the bridge, the bounty and my brother, about Ronan missing somewhere beyond the snow, about the fact that my cat had decided Cassian was safe.
Those things were still there, but for the length of another episode, they stayed quiet.
Cassian’s arm rested along the pillows behind me, not touching, just there. I let my head tip back, tired enough that the television blurred at the edges, and listened to him explain why Aldric’s choosing the smallest bedroom was further proof of dragon behavior.
“Dragons don’t need space when they’ve already claimed the whole house,” he said, as if he was the authority on them.
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if you understand dragons.”
“You don’t understand dragons. Dragons aren’t real.”
“Says you.”
I smiled, my eyes already half-closed. The last thing I remembered before sleep took me was Aldric standing in the kitchen of The Den, kissing Pip, and Cassian beside me in the nest, warm and careful and still, holding himself in place because I’d invited him in and he didn’t cross any boundaries.
Safe.