Chapter Seven
Don’t punch him. Don’t punch him. Don’t punch him.
Lysander kept his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his jaw clenched so tight that his back teeth ached.
He pulled Hamish’s shirt tighter around himself as he turned away from the noise and foot traffic of Lygon Street and cut towards the park a couple of blocks east, walking fast enough that Cassian had to jog every few steps to keep up.
He could hear the bare slap of Cassian’s feet on the footpath behind him. Of course Cassian was following him. The boy had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming and the social awareness of a brick.
“That must have hurt,” Cassian said, falling into step beside him. “The alphas in those videos looked very big. Is that normal, Lysander? Or did you deliberately pick dysfunctional ones?” He paused, as though giving the question genuine academic consideration. “My husband’s was nothing like that.”
Lysander’s fingernails dug crescents into his palms inside his pockets.
“Because it’s supposed to be quite painful,” Cassian continued, “for those omegas who allow themselves to be penetrated by someone who is not their Evermate. The body knows, you see. It closes itself off to anyone who hasn’t been ordained by the Universe, and the pain is a warning that you’re receiving the wrong divine rod unto you. ”
“Cassian.” Lysander stopped walking. “Shut up.”
Cassian blinked at him.
“Sex is fucking awesome.” Lysander turned to face him fully, and Cassian took a step back from him.
“It feels amazing. I can’t get enough of Hamish’s big thick cock, and I wish he didn’t have to go to work today so I could be riding him right now, because the only problem I have with being penetrated by Hamish is that it has to stop occasionally so that everyone involved can eat and sleep. ”
Cassian’s cheeks flushed a vivid, furious pink. “Hamish is a wonderful alpha,” he said, his voice climbing half an octave. “He shouldn’t be reduced to just his—” He glanced left and right, as though the footpath might be bugged, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Cock.”
Lysander laughed. He couldn’t help it. The whisper, the scandalised flush, the way Cassian had mouthed the word as if it might bite him, it punched through his anger so fast that his laughter just spilled out of him, ringing off the terraces on both sides of the street.
Cassian’s flush deepened. His chin lifted, his lower lip pushed forward, and Lysander had to press his knuckles against his mouth to keep from losing it. Cassian turned away with a sharp, offended jerk of his head, his arms folded across his chest, and didn’t say another word.
They walked in silence for a while, which was novel. Lysander’s anger had burned down to embers, while Cassian was radiating betrayal beside him like a small, blond space heater. He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the footpath, and let the morning air cool the heat in his face.
When he glanced sideways, Cassian was no longer beside him.
Lysander kept walking. His relief at being left alone was immediate, manifesting as a loosening across his shoulders. He made it two blocks before the silence started to curdle.
This was an omega who was shaky about the fundamentals of crossing a busy city street.
Cassian would absolutely let the next alpha who smiled at him bundle him into a car, because in Cassian’s world, alphas were providers, and the Universe sent them for a reason.
Saying no to a gift from the Universe was how you ended up spiritually contaminated, so of course he’d take anything offered him…
Lysander turned around and walked back the way he’d come at a fast clip, Hamish’s too-big trainers slapping against his heels. The irritation was still there, hot and tight in his chest, but it had company now: a low, sick anxiety that felt a lot like responsibility.
He found Cassian two blocks back, standing in front of a park bench.
He was addressing its occupants, an elderly Indian couple sitting side by side on the bench, with a Maltese dog wedged between them.
All three of them gazed up at Cassian with identical expressions of polite bewilderment.
The woman had her handbag clutched to her chest. The man was nodding slowly, the way people nod when they have committed to politeness whilst waiting for an opportunity to escape.
Cassian’s voice carried across the grass, bright and clear. “—and the Light flows through all living things, but especially through creatures who are low to the ground, because they’re closer to the earth’s magnetic core, which is why dogs are the purest vessels of the Universe’s love.”
The Maltese licked its own nose.
“What about snakes?” the man asked. “They’re very close to the ground.”
Cassian blinked three times in rapid succession, his whole face cycling through confusion and then a dawning, slightly panicked uncertainty, as though someone had just pointed out a load-bearing flaw in his theology.
“Oh,” Cassian said. “I suppose they’d be even closer. I… I can look back into the doctrine and come back tomorrow to let you know if there are any declarations on snakes.”
The man exchanged a glance with his wife, who tightened her grip on her handbag and the dog.
Cassian, apparently satisfied that the snake question was tabled, pivoted without pause. “How long have you two been together?”
“Forty-eight years,” the man said.
Cassian sank onto the bench beside the woman, who shifted her Maltese onto her lap to make room, and stared at the couple as though they’d just told him they’d walked on the moon.
“Forty-eight years,” he repeated. “Did you feel it right away? When you met? That he was yours and you were his, and everything that came before was just waiting?”
“Well,” the woman began, “it was a bit more complicated than—”
“Because that’s how it’s supposed to work.
” Cassian’s voice had gone soft and fervent, his pale eyes shining.
“The Universe writes two names on the same breath, and then you spend your life finding each other, and when you do, you just know. You don’t have to be told.
You don’t need elders or ceremonies or contracts.
You just feel it.” He pressed both hands over his heart.
“Forty-eight years. That’s the Light in its purest form manifesting your love. ”
Lysander stepped in. “Right, Cass, I think you’ve taken up enough of their morning.”
He hooked a hand around Cassian’s upper arm and steered him gently but firmly off the bench, nodding an apology to the couple as he went. The woman mouthed take care of him at Lysander over Cassian’s shoulder.
Cassian came away without resistance, but his face crumpled the moment they were out of earshot. His chin wobbled, his eyes went glassy, and his mouth stretched into a wide, bright smile that completely went against the tears pooling along his lower lashes.
Lysander didn’t think about it. He tucked Cassian under his arm the way his daddy used to when he or Stevie got upset like this, falling apart inside the performance of being fine. Cassian was slight enough to fit neatly against his side, his shoulder bony beneath the flannel.
“I was given my Evermate,” Cassian said, still smiling that terrible smile, his lashes wet.
“Everyone said it was the greatest blessing a Calyx could receive. But he didn’t feel like one.
” The smile held. “He scared me. And it hurt when he penetrated me, every time, and it’s not supposed to hurt with your Evermate.
The doctrine says so. You’re supposed to open for them like a flower, and it’s supposed to feel like coming home.
” His throat moved as he swallowed. “It didn’t feel like I was coming home.
I don’t understand. Should I have moved around like you did? ”
Cassian’s right hand drifted to his left wrist and rubbed at the scar that circled it, his thumb tracing the ridge of tissue. Lysander’s gaze dropped to the movement, then to the matching scar on Cassian’s other wrist. He didn’t ask.
Cassian stayed tucked under his arm as they walked, his bare feet soundless on the footpath. Lysander kept his eyes forward and his jaw tight and allowed the shape of what Cassian had just told him to settle into the space where his anger used to be.
“Hey,” Lysander said. His voice came out rough.
“Want to try something that’s even better than the muesli Hamish got you?
” He pulled out his mobile and tilted the screen so Cassian could see it.
“I saw something about a café near here that’s supposed to sell the best apple turnovers in Melbourne. Reckon we should investigate.”
Cassian peered at the screen, his lashes still clumped and damp, the manic smile easing just a bit.
“What’s a turnover?” he asked.