Chapter 6
CASSIAN
The plane of oak won’t stop catching on the same groove, no matter how I angle the blade. I could swap to the orbital sander. I don’t. I want the drag. I want the grit under my palm, the sting at my wrist, something real to push against.
Around me, the house hums, ducts ticking as the AC settles, distant birds, Eli’s cursed smart fridge doing its once-an-hour throat-clear.
We framed these walls while Meredith was still alive.
She liked the smell of cut pine and lemon oil, said it made her think anything could be built if you just kept going long enough.
She never saw the sheetrock go up, or the roof, she never slept here.
I push the plane again. Shavings curl up like pale ribbons. The bench light throws a tight circle on my hands, scar lines pale against my skin. There’s a bruise along my thumb from using the wrong mallet earlier. Sloppy. No excuse.
Rowan’s boots hit the workshop threshold before he speaks. He never knocks. He doesn’t need to. He’s the kind of Alpha who commands a room no matter who’s in it. I can see why Eli’s attracted to him. Hell, I would be too if I were bi or gay.
“You’re chewing the same board,” he says.
“Board deserves it.”
Silence clings for a few heartbeats. He smells like sandalwood and rain that never quite falls. Calm, until it isn’t.
“She locked her door,” he says finally.
“Good,” I answer. As much as I’d love for this to work out, I know better than to imagine a future. One day at a fucking time, that’s all I can give, all I have.
He exhales. “Don’t shut her out.”
“That your read on me?” I set the plane down, wipe my palm on a rag. “That I’m avoiding?”
“You’re building. Same thing when you’re hiding.”
I stare at the oak. The knot stares back. “Not hiding.”
“What then?”
Want. The word is a hard swallow. It tastes like blood and old, soft things I don’t name.
“I’m not the problem,” I say. “Not the kind of problem you think.”
Rowan’s gaze flicks to my hands. To the scar that came from Blake’s teeth.
Then to my jaw. There’s history there…my knuckles breaking on our kitchen tile, Blake’s face in my grip, Rowan’s arm locking my shoulder until something popped.
Eli shouting. Sirens. Money. Lawyers. Meredith’s laugh stuck in a closet of memory I don’t open after midnight and when I’m alone.
“We’re not doing the Blake talk,” I say.
“Wasn’t planning to,” Rowan says. He studies me like he’s weighing an order and a favor on the same scale. “Just—give her a chance to know us. All of us.”
Us. Not Blake. The three of us who remain. The only promise I keep without a reminder.
But the truth is, Jess is already getting under my skin, under my defenses. They both saw it. How she demanded I use her name instead of anything else.
“Don’t lecture me, Rowan. This Omega hasn’t even been here a day. We all need time to adjust and figure out if this is even going to work.”
Rowan nods once, a seal on a shared thing. “Eli’s starting dinner in an hour.”
“Copy.”
He leaves me with the board, the knot, and everything I don’t say. How Jess’s scent wraps around me whenever I’m near her. How I want to crush her to me and never let go. But she’s a stranger, and she shouldn’t feel like home, like a second chance.
And I worry I’m gonna fuck it up somehow.
I clean up and turn off the light. The corridor outside smells faintly like eucalyptus and clean cotton—her room.
Eli stocked the mini-fridge himself with water, juice, and protein drinks because he believes in future tense verbs.
He’s been refilling it for years. If I could bottle that kind of faith, I’d drink it until the fucking nightmares stopped.
I don’t mean to pass her door. And I don’t expect the door to be open. I don’t expect anything. My body does anyway.
My cock pays no attention to politics, to good choices, to history. It tightens fast, ugly, like I’m twenty and stupid and don’t know how things end.
“Fuck,” I breathe, almost a laugh, almost a warning.
I set my palm flat on the wall beside the frame, not touching the door.
I can feel the tiny thrum through the studs where the lock is wired.
She’s in there. Asleep or not. Breathing.
Keeping that door between us because I told her she could, and she believed me.
Good.
It still hits wrong. Want shouldn’t feel like anger, but there it is—hot and bright in the knuckles. Not at her. At whatever part of me imagines the choke-noise Meredith made when Blake’s hand didn’t lift fast enough.
How I should’ve been with her and Blake that day.
But I’d ignored my gut that said our packmate had a black heart.
We’d gone into the city to pick out an engagement ring and surprise her with our proposal.
Blake said it would be too suspicious if we all went, and that he’d stay behind, said she’d been tired, that he’d make sure she rested.
She trusted him. We all did.
I step back. Two steps. Five. Turn and walk away to my bedroom.
A cold shower is what I need, and I’m already stripping down as I enter my bathroom.
The water stings like winter. I brace one hand on the tile, breathe through my teeth while the spray needles my shoulders. I don’t close my eyes; I don’t need pictures to get hard. Her voice is enough. Thanks. The way she said it earlier, like the word might break open if she pressed too hard.
I work myself quick and mean, like pulling a splinter you can’t see. Release rips out of me with a rough sound I don’t like. It doesn’t help much. The water keeps pounding. The tile doesn’t answer back.
“You’re losing your edge,” I tell the drain, and turn the knobs all the way to cold until gooseflesh runs down my ribs and my head empties a little.
By the time I hit the kitchen, my hair is still damp, and I’ve got black pajama pants on. The place is quiet.
Eli’s knives are lined up on the magnet strip, pans stacked to his standard of control. I take out an onion and half a dozen carrots, a cutting board, and the heavy chef’s knife he babies like a pet.
After washing the carrots, I place them on the cutting board. The rhythm comes back easily: root end on, split, peel, quarter, slice. Chopping carrots doesn’t fix a damn thing, but it’s honest work. They don’t lie about why your eyes sting.
“What are you making?” a soft voice asks.
I don’t startle. I don’t do that; instead, I just look up.
Jess is at the doorway, bare feet on tile, hair damp and dark where it clings to her neck. The house robe is white cotton, the belt tied haphazardly as if she didn’t expect to leave the room, but changed her mind.
Her scent’s cleaner now—shampoo, warm skin, that soft Omega note underneath.
No heat spike. The suppressant Nexus stuck her with is still doing its job.
Doesn’t mean I’m not one bad decision from losing my damn mind.
“Roast with carrots and onions,” I manage, trying to sound normal.
“Can I help?” she asks, leaning on the counter.
“Onions need chopping.” I shrug. “They’ll make you cry if you look at them wrong.”
Her mouth tips. “I’m good at not crying.”
My eyes drop to her throat, and I wonder if she’d want a claiming bite there...ever. I put the blade down carefully, spine to the board. “We’ll see.”
I slide the onion toward her and pass the spare knife, handle first. Our fingers touch. It’s nothing—skin to skin for a heartbeat—but my pulse trips like I sprinted stairs.
She doesn’t look at our hands; rather, she lines up the onion instead. Sets the tip and starts careful, clean cuts.
“You cook?” I ask.
“Learned to,” she says. “Cheaper than takeout.”
“Cheaper than bad takeout,” I correct. “Bad takeout charges you twice, once in the wallet and later in the john.”
That wins a real smile. Not big. It hits anyway.
We work for a minute in companionable silence, broken by the thock of the knife through onion and the carrots. I take out the Insta Pot and add beef stock. Next, I grab a couple of garlic cloves, smash them, peel them, and mince them.
“Did you build the doors here?” she asks after a beat.
“Most of them.”
“The hinges, too. The… fit.”
“House shifts as it settles,” I say. “You make allowances.”
She hums, a small sound, thoughtful. “You always fix things?”
“When they break.”
“And when they don’t?”
“Preventative maintenance.”
“On people, too?”
“People aren’t cabinets,” I say. It comes out a little flat. “They’re worse.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, quick as a bird. There’s a flash of wry there. “That’s comforting.”
“Didn’t say I wouldn’t try,” I answer, and only realize how much I mean it once it’s already out.
Her hazel eyes sting from the onions now. Mine too, a little. She blinks fast and laughs, half-coughing. I push the fan button above the stove to pull the air, then slide a glass of water toward her. Our knuckles graze again.
“Thanks,” she says, quietly. The word lands differently this time…less like a test, more like she’s trying it on to see if it fits in this kitchen.
The back door opens. Eli’s scent hits first—bergamot and clean linen, gentle pressure smoothing down hackles nobody can see.
With one glance, he takes in the scene: the robe, my bare shoulders, the cutting board crowded with onions, and his mouth curves like a man who just walked into a story he didn’t expect but likes better than the one he planned.
“Ah,” he says lightly. “Two chefs. My lucky day.”
Eli washes his hands. “Jess, do you want to help me boss Cass around about seasoning?”
“I don’t—” she starts, then looks at me, then back at Eli. “Um…I’d rather observe. Maybe be an official taste tester when the food’s done.”
“Awesome,” Eli says, soft approval. “We’re making comfort food? Roast.”
“Yes, I figured simple for the first meal, and I didn’t know how long you were going to be with Rowan,” I mutter, reaching for the salt.
“Worth the price,” Eli returns smoothly, bumping my hip with his as he reaches around me for the pepper mill. “Move, menace.”
Jess’s laugh is startled and bright. My shoulders loosen by degrees; I didn’t notice they were tight.
Eli brushes past her with a folded dish towel, and the question in his eyes isn’t for me. “First question, celery or celery salt?”
“What do you usually do?”
“Whatever won’t kill you,” Eli says with a grin, but he’s watching me, not her. Waiting.
The question isn’t really about celery. It’s about whether we’re making room, whether this is temporary or something we’re building toward.
She drums her fingers once against the counter—uncertain, waiting.
“It’s your house too,” I say before my brain edits it. It isn’t—not yet. But the sentence feels like a fixed hinge, solid in the frame. “Just don’t touch Eli’s herb garden out front, I swear he reads bedtime stories to it every night.”
Something unreadable crosses her face, and she looks down, tucks a damp strand behind her ear before I can tell what it is.
She looks up. “Celery salt? Though I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“Experimenting is the mark of a great chef.” Eli lines up spices.
Eli talks easily while we work—about timing, about the oven that runs hot, about the dumb little herb garden he keeps murdering and replanting on the back deck.
Jess listens, color back in her cheeks, shoulders lowering another inch. The kitchen fills with good smells and ordinary noise. The kind you lean into.
The scent of damp hair and clean skin curls up and under, and my self-control holds because it has to. Eli doesn’t look at me. He knows the smell of my restraint.
“Half an hour,” he says, sliding the timer down with one finger. “Then baste.”
Jess nods like she’s agreeing to something bigger.
I wipe my hands on a towel and step back, heat prickling my neck. Rowan’s words from earlier return from the workshop—give her a chance to know us—and I realize I’m not shutting her out. I’m trying not to crack the door too wide.
I’m not sure which is harder.
Eli glances at me over her head and says, mild as tea, “Hey, Cass? After we eat, I want to talk through tomorrow’s Nexus check-in.”
“I’ll be there,” I say.
Jess goes still for a fraction. Then she breathes out, steady. “Me too.”
“Yeah,” Eli says, warmth tucked into the syllable like a promise. “You too. Shouldn’t take longer than half an hour before we have to do the online call.”
The timer ticks down, steady as a heart.