Page 37 of That Defining Moment

“So none of it was true.” His voice came out thin. “You don’t really want to leave the Family of Light?”

“Why would I?” Uriel reached over and covered Cassian’s hand with his own, his thumb settling over Cassian’s knuckles with a pressure that was warm and certain. “The Family of Light is the culmination of my destiny, Cassian. My father’s mantle will pass to me, and I will carry his work forward into the next generation of the illuminated.” His grip tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough that Cassian could feel the bones of his fingers pressing together. “But you’re a part of that future too. You’ve always been a part of it. You’re a Calyx — the youngest ever named. The Light doesn’t let go of its chosen, and neither do I.”

Cassian pulled his hand free. The movement required more effort than it should have, because every instinct in his body was screaming at him to leave it there, to let the warmth of his alpha’s hand smooth over the hurting thing that had just broken open inside him.

He turned the mobile face-up. The half-finished message to Lysander was still on the screen. Coffee makes my brain go fast and my knee go bouncy. The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence, waiting for him to finish.

“Cassian.” Uriel’s voice had gone soft again. “Come back to us. Come back with me. You trust me to take care of you, don’t you?”

Cassian nodded. He picked up the avocado toast and took an enormous bite, because his mouth couldn’t betray him if it was full, and the disgusting green paste had finally found its purpose.

“You belong to me, don’t you, Cassian?”

The avocado sat glued to the roof of his mouth. Cassian chewed and thought about Lysander, who had laughed so hard he’d nearly choked on his coffee when Cassian had once commented that Lysander belonged to Hamish.

Lysander had corrected him in terms so blunt that Cassian had blushed: No, I don’t fucking belong to Hamish, thank you very much, Cassian. Hamish doesn’t own me, and I don’t own him, and if you ever catch me behaving like a man’s property you have my full permission to throw something at my head. Then Hamish had come up behind Lysander and pressed a kiss into his hair and said, It’s enough that he tolerates me, and the two of them had smiled at each other in a way that made the word belonging seem entirely beside the point.

“Don’t you, Cassian?” Uriel prompted again.

Cassian kept his eyes on his plate. “Yes, alpha.”

Uriel’s hand settled over his again, covering it completely. “And because I belong to the Family of Light, doesn’t it make sense to you that you also belong with the Family?”

Cassian bit into the toast and chewed with excruciating thoroughness, grinding the sourdough to paste between his molars while the silence stretched taut. He could feel Uriel’s gaze on the side of his face, and the café noise thinned around them until there was nothing left but the scrape of his own jaw working and the steady pressure of Uriel’s thumb against his knuckles.

He chewed, and chewed, and chewed.

“I need an answer, Cassian.” The warmth had left Uriel’s voice.

Cassian swallowed. The avocado went down like wet cement. “I want to be with you, alpha,” he whispered. His fingers curled beneath Uriel’s hand. “But I can’t go back to Charles. You have to promise me that, alpha. You have to promise.”

Uriel’s expression settled into a configuration that Cassian had seen on the Lumineer’s face a hundred times as he prepared to deliver a difficult teaching.

“The Lumineer has been in talks with Charles,” Uriel said.

Cassian’s breath stopped.

“Charles has repented, Cassian. He’s come before the Light and acknowledged that he didn’t treat you as well as he could have.” Uriel’s thumb traced a slow circle over his knuckles. “But he sensed that your heart wasn’t with him, and that knowledge caused him great pain. The pain of an alpha whose omega has turned away from the bond.”

The café kept moving around them. The woman with the pram was paying her bill one-handed. A barista was grinding beans with a sound like gravel pouring, and a man near the window was laughing into his mobile. All of it carried on as though the ground beneath Cassian’s chair hadn’t just opened up.

“Cassian.” Uriel leaned closer. His scent thickened between them, and Cassian hated how much his body still reached for it. “I have good news for you. Charles is willing to forgive you. He understands that you were confused and frightened, and he’s prepared to welcome you home with an open heart.” His grip on Cassian’s hand tightened. “The Lumineer has asked me to work with you. To help you prepare your heart to receive your Evermate, so that the bond can take root properly this time.”

The words arrived and Cassian heard every one of them, but their meaning took longer to come together.

The Lumineer has asked me to work with you.

Not: I left everything for you, or I came to find you because the Universe wrote your name in my heart.

The Lumineer had sent Uriel. The Lumineer, who did not make mistakes, had dispatched his son across the city with a set of instructions to return a wayward vessel to the man who’d paid for the compound’s new meditation hall.

“You’re my Evermate, Uriel,” Cassian said. He held Uriel’s gaze, searching his eyes for any sign he believed it too.

Uriel’s expression softened. “Eat your breakfast, Cassian,” he said gently. “You need your strength.”

Chapter Eighteen

Cassian lay in the dark and picked at the shape of his own thinking, the way you’d work at a knot in a piece of string, testing each loop to see which one would give first.