Chapter Twenty
For weeks now, Cassian had been coming through the kitchen door trailing the scent of jasmine petals and a deeply satisfied omega.
He didn’t stop, didn’t so much as glance at either of them, just walked straight down the corridor with his chin up and his shoulders locked.
Hamish stared wide-eyed at Lysander the first time he’d caught wind of that unmistakable post-orgasmic cocktail.
“You’ve got to talk to him,” Hamish said.
Lysander’s eyes narrowed. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the male omega.” Hamish spluttered. “You don’t want him to end up mate-bonded and pregnant, do you?”
“He won’t.” Lysander folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. “They wouldn’t be having sex.”
Hamish’s eyebrows climbed above the rims of his tortoiseshell glasses. “He sure smells like he is.”
“He’s not.” Lysander was confident about this, because Cassian’s relationship to his own body had been narrated at him in excruciating doctrinal detail, and the picture it painted was not of someone who could go from terrified of penetration to engaging in full intercourse in the span of a couple of months.
“There’s a whole spectrum between nothing and everything, Hamish.
Uriel probably let him feel up his biceps.
” He picked up his own mug and took a sip.
“Or maybe Cassian showed him a flash of ankle and that finished Uriel off.”
Hamish’s mouth twitched despite itself. “A flash of ankle.”
“A scandalous amount of shin. Calf, even. You know how reckless our Cass is.”
Hamish reached across the gap between them and hooked two fingers into the hem of Lysander’s tracksuit bottoms, hitching the fabric up past his ankle bone. He studied the exposed skin with grave concentration.
“Devastating,” Hamish breathed out. “It’s enough to make me come in my pants.”
Lysander laughed and led the way to their bedroom.
He made light of it because Hamish needed him to make light of it, but Lysander watched Cassian and Uriel closely.
He noticed the way Cassian’s bedroom door stayed closed for longer stretches now, the YouTube videos cranked to a volume that rattled the thin walls of the cottage.
Animal video compilations, mostly. Cassian had a fixation on golden retrievers being reunited with their owners, and Lysander had heard the same clip of a lamb befriending the marmalade cat so many times that the soundtrack had embedded itself in his neural pathways.
The videos were loud enough that you couldn’t hear anything underneath them unless you were standing right outside the door with your ear to the wood.
Which Lysander had not resorted to.
He’d walked past, though. Several times, at a pace that could be described as extremely unhurried.
He knew how things went because he’d been sixteen once.
His father had worked office cleaning jobs at night, and the moment the flat door closed behind him, Lysander’s evening had begun.
He’d had a revolving cast of boys from the estate and his comprehensive, and all of them had found their way into the bedroom he shared with Stephen, while his twin sat on the sofa with his headphones clamped on, radiating disapproval.
Stephen had never said a word. He’d just turned the volume up on whatever he was watching and waited for the all-clear. In the morning he’d look at Lysander across the breakfast table, his mouth a flat line.
The point being that Lysander had once been Cassian — horny, reckless, convinced that closed doors and loud televisions constituted an impenetrable fortress of privacy — and Colin had been none the wiser because he’d been elbow-deep in toilets every night.
Lysander was under the same roof as Cassian and his alpha right now, Cassian’s mobile playing at full volume. He could actually do something…
Lysander got up, opened the pantry, pulled a bag of plain crisps from the shelf, and grabbed the French onion dip from the fridge.
He tucked the crisps under his arm, popped the lid off the dip, and headed for the corridor.
From inside Cassian’s room, the tinny speakers of his mobile were working overtime.
Lysander stopped outside the door.
The coral reef documentary played on, the narrator describing the mating habits of clownfish. Beneath it, just audible in the gap between sentences, Lysander caught voices engaged in a low, murmured conversation that rose and fell under the narration.
Then the unmistakable sound of an alpha’s moan slipped through, buried beneath David Attenborough’s explanation of symbiotic relationships.
That did it.
Lysander dropped the crisps and dip on the carpet and shoved the door open.
They’d laid out a towel across the centre of the mattress. Uriel was kneeling upright in the middle of the bed, naked, his clothes folded neatly on the desk chair. He was broad and hard-bodied, his cock swollen and dark between his thighs.
Cassian was in his lap. His shorts and underwear were gone and his t-shirt was rucked up around his ribs, his bare thighs bracketing Uriel’s hips while he rocked against the alpha in a slow, grinding rhythm that pressed Uriel’s cock along the cleft of his arse.
His hips rolled forward as he chased his pleasure.
Lysander’s gaze went to Uriel’s hands.
The alpha’s fingers were wrapped around Cassian’s wrists and pulling them behind his back, holding them crossed at the base of his spine.
His grip was tight enough that the skin beneath it had gone white at the edges and flushed dark red where the blood was being forced to reroute, and Cassian’s fingers had started to curl inward from the pressure.
The scars on Cassian’s wrists sat directly beneath Uriel’s thumbs.
“Get away from him.”
Uriel’s head snapped up. Lysander crossed the room in two strides, hooked his arm around Cassian’s waist, and hauled him sideways off Uriel’s lap. He scrabbled with the sheets to cover up Cassian’s lower half.
“Sander, stop, it’s all right, it’s not what you think.
” Cassian scrambled upright, dragging a pillow into his lap with both hands.
His voice had gone high and fast, tumbling over itself.
“It’s the Kindling. It’s a discipline. One of the oldest rites there is.
The flame is raised and offered. It prepares my heart for the bond.
” He clutched the pillow tighter, his knuckles bone-white against the cotton.
“It’s not sex, Sander. It’s not allowed to be sex. He stays outside the whole time.”
Uriel rose from the bed. He dressed with an unhurried calm that made Lysander want to put his fist through the wall. Trousers first, buttoned and belted. Then his shirt, each button fastened from the bottom up while his gaze tracked Lysander across the room.
Lysander shifted closer to the bed, placing himself between Cassian and the alpha.
Uriel had six inches and several stone on him.
His forearms were roped with muscle from years of working the Family of Light’s fields.
The cottage was empty around them. Hamish was off in the city and wouldn’t be home for hours.
Lysander’s mobile was on the kitchen counter, three rooms and a corridor away.
“I’m preparing Cassian for his return to his Evermate,” Uriel said.
He smoothed down the front of his shirt and tucked it into his trousers.
“I’ve been teaching him to be more receptive, so that the bond with Charles can take root properly.
It’s a ministry that I was asked to do by the Lumineer himself.
” His gaze settled on Lysander. “You wouldn’t understand.
It’s not something the uninitiated have language for. ”
“You sick fuck.” Lysander’s voice climbed, cracking against the walls of the cramped bedroom. “There is no fucking way he’s going back to that bastard. Charles beat him and raped him. And you’re standing there talking about receptivity like you’re coaching him for a fucking job interview!”
“You will not speak to me that way. I am an alpha and the eldest son of the Lumineer.” Uriel took one step forward, and the floorboard groaned beneath his weight.
“I have extended you courtesy in this house because Cassian asked it of me. But you are an omega.” His lip curled.
“An unbonded one, at that. One who wallows in his sin so publicly that the whole world used to be able to watch an alpha rutting into him for twenty-five pounds a month.” He let the number sit.
“I know what you are. The Light knows what you are, and has chosen to leave you in the cold and dark where you belong.” His gaze moved past Lysander to Cassian, who was sat back against the headboard with the pillow crushed to his chest. “I will not let you drag Cassian down into that darkness with you.”
Cassian shook his head so hard that his hair whipped across his eyes.
“No, Uriel.” He scrambled off the bed, his bare legs trembling.
“Lysander is good and kind. He’s not been left in the cold and dark.
He’s got an alpha who loves him and a fantastic family, and he’s looked after me better than anyone in the Family ever did, and you don’t get to say those things about him, you don’t get to! ”
His hands closed on Uriel’s shoulders. He tried to haul the alpha away from Lysander by brute, desperate force.
Uriel’s arm swept back. The heel of his palm caught Cassian across the cheekbone and snapped his head sideways.
Cassian’s feet left the carpet and the edge of the bed caught him behind the knees, folding him down onto the mattress in a tangle of bare limbs.
He lay there blinking, one hand cupped over his face, blood already welling from his nose and running in a dark line across his upper lip.