Chapter Six
The sounds started at eleven.
Cassian lay very still in the dark of Hamish’s spare room with the duvet pulled up to his chin, listening.
The bedroom wall was thin enough that he could hear the creak of the mattress springs, the rhythmic knock of the headboard against plaster, and beneath all of it, Lysander’s voice — muffled but unmistakable, climbing higher with each breath.
He knew what the sounds meant. He had lain in the dark like this before, in the Bayswater house with its high ceilings and its marble floors, while Charles laboured over him.
Charles had made those sounds too. The grunting and heavy breathing of a man taking his pleasure, the creak of the bedframe under his weight.
But Cassian had been silent beneath all of it.
He had lain with his wrists bound to the posts and his face turned to the wall, quiet as an offering on an altar.
Lysander wasn’t being quiet.
Even through the wall, Cassian could hear him laughing between his moans, and it made Cassian press his face harder into the pillow.
He had never once laughed during sex. He had never understood that you could.
The sounds Lysander was making didn’t belong to the same activity that Cassian had experienced in his marriage to his Evermate.
He wondered if Charles would have been nicer to him if he’d made those sounds.
If he’d moved underneath him the way Lysander was obviously moving, instead of lying there with his eyes closed and his jaw set, waiting for him to finish.
Maybe Charles had wanted something from him that Cassian hadn’t known how to give, and the hurt that had come out of that had been Cassian’s own fault for being too poor a vessel for an alpha who deserved a better reception.
Hamish’s low voice rumbled through the wall, followed by a breathless moan from Lysander that dissolved into helpless giggling.
Cassian reached for his headphones on the bedside table.
They were the big padded ones. Hamish had given them to him on his third night in the cottage when the street noise had kept him awake.
Hamish had placed them over Cassian’s ears himself, adjusting the band so it didn’t pinch, his long fingers gentle against Cassian’s temples.
Such a good alpha. Such a provider. The Universe had placed Hamish in Cassian’s path for a reason, and Cassian would wait patiently for the reason to reveal itself, even if Hamish insisted on sharing his bed with a foul-mouthed omega who swore at breakfast, and told Cassian to do unspeakable things.
He settled the headphones over his ears. The noise from the bedroom cut to a low, muffled hum, and the silence pressed in around him.
His tablet was on the bedside table too, propped against the lamp.
Hamish had been teaching him to use it, sitting beside him on the sofa after dinner with his arm along the back of the cushions, guiding Cassian’s finger across the glass screen.
This is the browser. This is the search bar.
You type what you want to know, and it tells you.
Cassian picked up the tablet and tapped the screen until it lit up. He opened the browser, the way Hamish had shown him, and placed his index finger carefully in the search bar.
L-I-S-A-N-D-I-R.
He squinted at the letters, backspaced, and tried again.
L-Y-S-A-N-D-E-R.
That looked better. He moved on to the surname.
H-U-C-K-S-L-I.
He tapped search.
The results loaded in a cascade of headlines and photographs that made Cassian sit up straighter against his pillows.
There were news articles from papers he didn’t recognise, with names like The Sun and Daily Mail, and all of them seemed to be about a single event that involved Lysander and an alpha who had been obsessed with him.
CORPORATE BY DAY, KINKY BY NIGHT: THE SECRET DOUBLE LIFE OF THE HUXLEY TWINS.
STALKER ATTACKED WRONG TWIN IN ONLYFANS OMEGA HORROR.
Cassian sounded out the words carefully, getting the gist of them even though it took a while.
He tapped the image at the top of one article, and it expanded to fill the screen.
Two young men stood side by side, Lysander and Stephen, the caption said, and they were identical; the same face replicated with such precision that it was as if the Universe had seen Lysander and said, yes, I want two of that.
Cassian had to admit, grudgingly and only to himself, that Lysander was beautiful. The bad attitude and the loose morals were all obviously signs of spiritual contamination, but the packaging itself was alluring and all too easy to fall for. It was a shame about everything else.
He scrolled further, and his finger stopped on a link near the bottom of the page.
TheoTheO — Exclusive Content.
Cassian tapped it.
The page loaded slowly on the cottage’s patchy Wi-Fi, and at first it was just a grid of thumbnail images, small and blurry, most of them showing Lysander in various states of undress. Then Cassian tapped one and a video filled his screen.
He dropped the tablet.
It landed face-up on the duvet, still playing, and Cassian scrambled backwards against the headboard with his knees drawn up.
On the screen, Lysander was on his back with an alpha between his legs.
Cassian could see everything: the alpha’s cock sliding into Lysander with each thrust, the wet shine of slick on both their bodies, and the obscene stretch of Lysander’s hole around the girth of it.
Disgusted as he was, Cassian couldn’t stop looking at Lysander’s face.
Lysander’s eyes had rolled back, his lips parted, his expression one of pure bliss.
His back was arched off the bed and his hands explored his alpha’s body, raking down his back and even reaching down between his legs to rub at the alpha’s balls as he pounded into him.
Lysander’s hips were moving, rolling up to meet every thrust as though he couldn’t get enough, his body was reaching for more of the alpha.
He was gasping, writhing, making sounds that were wet and ragged and utterly unself-conscious, while he kept his legs wrapped around the alpha’s waist so tightly that the muscles in his thighs were shaking.
Cassian had never done any of that. He had never moved like that.
With Charles, Cassian had lain on his back with his wrists tied to the bedframe and his body still as a held breath, because Charles preferred him quiet and compliant, a vessel positioned and waiting.
Charles used to bind his hands with a silk cord that left marks around his wrists, and Cassian had stared at the ceiling while it happened, receiving his Evermate’s blessing in sombre silence.
On the screen, Lysander threw his head back and cried out. His body convulsed, and his fingers dug into the alpha’s back hard enough to leave red lines on the alpha’s skin.
Cassian had never left marks on Charles.
Charles had left marks on Cassian, on the insides of his thighs where the skin was thinnest and the bruises took longest to fade. But those were blessings, not damage. That was what a Calyx was for. His Evermate knew best, and the hurt was the offering, and the offering was love.
Cassian reached out and turned the tablet face-down on the duvet.
He lay in the dark with the headphones on and his hands resting on the flat of his stomach, feeling his own heartbeat pulse against his ears. Through the padding, the faintest murmur of Lysander’s voice still carried from the next room, and Cassian closed his eyes against it.
? ? ?
Breakfast was different the next morning.
Hamish had acquired new muesli. The box sat on the counter like a peace offering, its label promising dried apple pieces and pepitas.
He held the box up to the kitchen window and squinted at the picture of the muesli to try and pick out any signs of raisins, because they were sneaky, disguised little horrors that hid among decent ingredients and ruined everything they touched.
No raisins. Hamish had found one without them.
Cassian clutched the box to his bare chest and looked at Hamish, who was leaning against the counter with his coffee. The tops of his ears were already going pink, as though he could sense what was coming.
“The Universe placed you in my path for a reason,” Cassian told him.
The pink spread from Hamish’s ears to his cheeks. “It’s just muesli, Cass.”
“Nothing is just anything. You are a channel for the Light’s abundance, alpha.” Cassian pressed the box against his heart and closed his eyes. “I receive this offering with gratitude and an open vessel.”
“Please stop calling yourself a vessel, Cass.”
“You are the brightest alpha I have ever been gifted.” Cassian opened his eyes and beamed at Hamish. “The Light pours through you, and you blind me with its profundity.”
Hamish’s face had gone entirely red. He lifted his mug to his mouth and kept it there, as if he were hiding behind it.
From the doorway, Lysander’s voice cut through the moment. “Cass, he didn’t hunt down a mastodon for you and bring you its testicles. He walked to the Coles five minutes away and bought this with the eggs.”
Cassian turned. Lysander was leaning against the kitchen doorframe wearing one of Hamish’s t-shirts, his hair sticking up on one side, looking rumpled and smug.
“I don’t know what a mastodon is,” Cassian said.
“Big furry elephant. Extinct. Doesn’t matter.” Lysander crossed the kitchen and poured himself coffee, his bare feet quiet on the tiles. “My point is that Hamish going to the supermarket doesn’t require a spiritual orgasm from you every single time.”
Cassian tipped his head to one side. “I don’t know what an orgasm is.”
Lysander’s mouth opened, and Hamish moved faster than Cassian had ever seen an alpha move. He crossed the kitchen in two strides, snatched a piece of toast from the rack, and stuffed it directly into Lysander’s mouth. Lysander’s eyes went wide over the crust, his jaw forced open around it.