Chapter Four
Lysander was dragged back into consciousness by light that had no business being so aggressive at — he squinted at his mobile — seven forty-three in the morning.
The blackout situation in Hamish’s bedroom was dire.
A single unlined curtain hung across the window, unable to put up even a token resistance against the Melbourne sun.
Hamish’s side of the bed was empty, the sheets pulled up.
The pillow still held the indent of his head, and Lysander pressed his face into it, breathing in the warm alpha scent that clung to the cotton.
Sandalwood and eucalyptus that made him want to burrow into the mattress and stay there indefinitely.
He found Hamish in the kitchen, already dressed in a soft navy jumper with the sleeves pushed up, pouring coffee from a French press into a mug that read I’D RATHER BE brOADCASTING. A second mug sat waiting on the counter, and Hamish pushed it towards Lysander without being asked.
Lysander slumped onto a wooden stool at the island and wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the steam curl against his face.
The kitchen was small and cluttered. Cookbooks were stacked horizontally on a shelf above the kettle, their spines cracked and pages flagged with Post-it notes. A corkboard on the wall held a mess of receipts and random Polaroids.
Lysander’s head drooped over his coffee as he sat in the warmth of this room, with Hamish close by and radiating his alpha scent. The jet lag was pressing him down into the stool and weighing down his eyelids. They were just beginning to slide shut when the yelling started.
“I WELCOME THE BLESSINGS OF THIS LIGHT-FILLED DAY.”
Lysander’s head snapped up so fast he nearly fell off his stool.
“I OPEN MY HEART TO THE DIVINE ABUNDANCE OF THE UNIVERSE.”
The voice was coming from the back garden, carrying clear and bright through the open window, projected at the Melbourne sky with the conviction of someone who fully expected the Universe to talk back to him.
Lysander turned to face Hamish, his eyes gone wide.
Hamish took a sip of his coffee, looking completely unbothered. “He does this every morning.”
“I RELEASE ALL DARKNESS AND MAKE SPACE WITHIN MY BODY FOR THE SACRED GIFTS OF CREATION.”
“Every morning?” Lysander repeated.
Hamish nodded. “Sometimes he does a bit about channelling the earth’s magnetic field through his reproductive organs. Sometimes it’s just: I remain receptive to the divine rod of creation. That one really gets the neighbour’s Jack Russells going.”
The back door swung open, and Cassian swept into the room.
He was completely naked. His skin was flushed pink from the cold, and he moved through the kitchen without a trace of self-consciousness, his cock swinging with each stride.
He stopped at the island, placed both hands flat on the counter, and announced, “I’m hungry. ”
Lysander looked at him flatly over the rim of his coffee mug. “Okay?”
Cassian locked eyes with him, apparently waiting for something more substantial to happen as a result of this announcement.
There it was again. The wide eyes and the expectant pause.
Then that gorgeous body deployed to its best advantage.
Cassian performed vulnerability perfectly and aimed it directly at the nearest alpha.
Lysander recognised the routine because he’d spent the better part of a decade weaponising it himself.
Hamish was already on his feet and reaching for the bread. “Toast, Cass?”
“Yes please, alpha.”
Cassian’s eyes tracked Hamish from the bread bin to the toaster to the cutlery drawer.
“What the fuck were you doing out there?” Lysander asked.
Hamish slotted two slices into the toaster while Cassian chattered away behind him, each sentence running into the next without pause.
“You swear a lot. That’s not how a male omega Calyx should be conducting himself.” Cassian leaned forward on his elbows, chin propped in both hands. “Maybe you should join me in my morning practice. It might make you less cranky.”
“I’m not cranky. I’m jet-lagged.”
Cassian ignored this entirely. “You ground yourself with the earth, right? Press your feet or your palms into the ground and really feel the connection.” His pale eyes were shining.
“Then you declare your availability for the Universe’s offerings.
You open yourself to abundance. You make space for blessings within your heart, and drive all that dark sarcasm and bad attitude out of yourself.
” He beamed at Lysander. “That’s how I met Hamish!
He asked me to show him the ways of our practice at the Family of Light’s compound. ”
The toast popped up. Hamish pulled out a jar of marmalade, the good stuff, made from Seville oranges, and spread it across both slices.
Edge to edge, the knife smoothing it carefully so there were no gaps and no thin spots.
He slid the plate across the counter to Cassian, who looked at it as though Hamish had just served him a dead mouse on a doily.
“What’s that?”
“Marmalade.”
Cassian leaned in closer, examining the orange spread with suspicion. Then he stuck out his tongue and touched just the very tip of it to the surface of the toast. His face scrunched up immediately, his mouth twisting into an expression of pure betrayal.
“No,” Cassian said, pushing the plate away with both hands. “Absolutely not.”
Hamish exhaled slowly through his nose. “It’s marmalade, Cass. Not poison.”
“It’s bitter and weird.”
“Right. What would you like instead, then?”
Cassian’s face cleared instantly, the revulsion replaced by wide eyes and a slow blink that bordered on simpering. “I’ll take whatever you’ll give me, alpha.”
Lysander snorted into his coffee, and was halfway to saying Oh, I bet when Hamish’s gaze landed on him.
Lysander closed his mouth. Hamish held the look for one more second, turned and extracted a box of muesli from the pantry.
He grabbed the Greek yoghurt from the fridge, mixed in three times the amount of honey that any reasonable person would consider acceptable, then shook muesli over the top of it all.
He slid the bowl across the counter. Cassian eyed it, then looked up at Hamish with those devastating eyes.
“Does that have raisins?”
Hamish’s hands clenched into fists on the counter. “Yes?”
Cassian’s face fell.
With a sigh that came from somewhere deep in his soul, Hamish pulled the bowl back across the counter, picked up a spoon, and began the absolutely ridiculous task of picking out raisins.
There were so many raisins. An unreasonable number of them, Lysander noted. Who had authorised this ratio? This was supposed to be a health food, not a raisin delivery system masquerading as breakfast. Hamish fished them out one by one with the spoon.
Cassian watched him work, that soft smile returning to his face. The little pile of rejected raisins on the counter beside the chopping board grew steadily, and so did the hot, tight knot of irritation in Lysander.
Finally, Hamish handed the raisin-free bowl back to Cassian.
Cassian picked up the spoon, scooped up a generous mound of honey-drenched muesli, and took a bite. His eyes closed as a pleased hum rose from the back of his throat, the sort of sound that Lysander himself usually reserved for very different contexts.
“Thank you,” Cassian said, looking directly at Hamish. “You’re a very good alpha.”
It was fortunate that Cassian chose that moment to drift towards the living room with his bowl, because Lysander was three seconds from hurling the marmalade toast into his perfect face. He glared at Hamish across the island. Hamish did not meet his eyes.
From the living room came Cassian’s voice. “Alpha? I can’t figure out the telly again.”
Hamish set down his coffee mug, pushed off from the counter, and trudged into the living room with his shoulders bowed in.
The telly came on at a volume that rattled the windows, then dropped to something more reasonable. A moment later Hamish reappeared in the doorway, retrieved his coffee, and took a long sip.
Lysander fixed him with a flat stare. “What the fuck was that about?”
“Don’t make a big deal of it, Sander.”
“The little shit was playing you.” Lysander set down his mug, folded his hands under his chin, and pitched his voice high and breathy, saccharine enough to rot teeth.
“I’ll take whatever you’ll give me, alpha.
” He snorted. “You handpicked the raisins out of your packaged muesli just because he made pretty sad eyes at you, Hamish. He’s conditioned you into that in less than a month!
Dog trainers would kill for those results. ”
“If I don’t sort his breakfast, he doesn’t eat.
” Hamish set his mug down. “That’s not a figure of speech.
He’ll sit there until lunchtime with an empty stomach and not say a word about it, because asking twice isn’t something he knows how to do.
Or, and this is the option that scares me, he’ll wander out the front door, still in the nude, and find somebody else to arrange it for him. ”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He got from a compound in the Dandenongs to my doorstep with no money, no mobile, and no idea what a Myki card was. Luckily, the man he asked for a lift was a decent bloke, and he got to my house safe. He absolutely would strike out on his own without thinking about what could happen to him.” Hamish leaned back against the counter.
“He was raised to believe that omegas, male omegas especially, exist to be cherished and spoiled by the alphas around them. He has no instinct that any of it is a problem.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“He needs my help.” Hamish shrugged. “He could do with yours too, honestly. Maybe if he sees how a normal omega operates —”
“I’m hardly normal.”
“No, you’re extraordinary.” Hamish’s mouth curved. “Genuinely. And you’re handling all this far better than I thought you would. I expected at least one mug thrown at my head by now.”
“Don’t.” Lysander pointed at him. “I know when you’re trying to butter me up. I could have done with a warning about him, Hamish. Any warning during any one of our calls in the time he’s been staying with you. Just a simple: by the way, a naked cult survivor has taken over my spare room.”
“And what exactly would that have sounded like from your end?” Hamish spread his hands.
“Think it through. Hi Sander, quick update: I’ve taken in a survivor from the high control group I was filming.
He does his morning rituals starkers in my back garden, he can’t cross a road on his own because he’s never once left the compound unaccompanied, and until three weeks ago he was married off to a millionaire who kept him like a pet.
Would you have kept taking my calls if I’d told you that with thousands of miles between us? ”
In the living room, Cassian was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his muesli in his lap, watching a meerkat running across the screen with rapt attention.
Lysander had spent the past twelve hours calling Cassian annoying, manipulative, and a creepy little weirdo. All of those labels were still perfectly accurate, but none of them had accounted for the possibility that the boy had earned every last one of his oddities the hard way.
“Tell me about him.” Lysander pulled his coffee closer, and settled in for a long conversation.