Page 38 of That Defining Moment

Uriel wanted him to go back to Charles.

The alpha who should have been his Evermate, the man whose name had burned in his chest every night he’d spent bound to the Bayswater bed, that alpha was not offering to take Cassian away from the hurt. He was offering to help ease Cassian back into it.

He was volunteering to prepare him and teach him how to please Charles, as though the problem had always been Cassian’s technique and not Charles’s fists.

The ceiling fan turned overhead in slow, clicking revolutions, and Cassian tracked the shadow of its blades across the plaster while the thought completed its circuit. If Uriel was willing to do that, to coach Cassian’s body into receiving the man who’d left bruises all over him, then Uriel hadn’t really come to Melbourne out of love for him. He’d come on an errand.

And yet…

Uriel was the Lumineer’s son, which meant that everything he did was done with his face tilted towards the sky, because that was how the Lumineer had raised him: chin up, heart open, every action offered to the Light as an act of praise towards its glory. The Fourth Principle taught that the illuminated could speak in the language of shadow when they moved through the territories of the unilluminated. Uriel had told Hamish and Lysander what they’d needed to hear. He had navigated the darkness so that the Light could reach Cassian in an act of ministry.

Cassian should listen to Uriel. The doctrine was clear, and the doctrine had been his compass since before he could speak.

He pressed his face into the pillow and breathed through the cotton until his lungs ached.

The problem was that he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to listen to Uriel, and he didn’t want to return to Charles. For the first time in his life the two desires were not in competition with doctrine but simply there, sitting on the surface of his consciousness and refusing to be smoothed over.

✦ ✧ ✦

Lysander was sitting at the kitchen island with his mobile propped against the fruit bowl, dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday. He didn’t look up from the screen when Cassian came in from the garden.

Cassian stood in the doorway in his blue robe and waited.

Pancakes didn’t materialise, and Lysander’s attention didn’t shift from the screen. Instead, the older omega pointed at the pantry without a word.

Cassian got the muesli down from the shelf and poured himself a bowl. He added his usual Greek yoghurt and honey slurry, and carried it to the island, settling onto the stool opposite Lysander with his bare feet hooked around the legs.

His mouth was tight at the corners, and the thumb scrolling his mobile had a jittery, compulsive quality that Cassian recognised from the nights when Lysander stayed up too late talking to his family in London. Stephen was weeks away from his due date, and Colin was on bed rest with a pregnancy that had everyone on edge.

He could ask Lysander what he thought about Uriel. Whether Uriel was still worth the ache. Whether the things Uriel had said at the café meant what Cassian thought they meant, or whether there was another way to read them that Cassian couldn’t see on his own.

Lysander’s thumb stopped moving. He stared at whatever was on his screen, and the muscle in his jaw tightened.

Cassian put a spoonful of muesli in his mouth and chewed quietly. He ate his breakfast, and he didn’t ask.

✦ ✧ ✦

He kept meeting Uriel because the alternative was to stop, and stopping meant accepting that the name he’d carried since he was fourteen had been written into him by his own wanting and not by the Universe at all.

Cassian wasn’t ready to accept that yet.

They met at cafés, because cafés were safe and busy with other people. He chose the places Lysander had taken him to before, and he texted Lysander each time, the way he’d promised. The messages were scrupulously detailed. Im at brown sugar with uriel. He has ordered a long black and I have ordered a flat white because im a coffee person now. he is wearing a green jumper.

Lysander’s replies were always brief and always the same. Good lad. Keep me posted.

Uriel talked a lot about the Light. He managed to weave The Universal Principles into everything. The First Principle when Cassian mentioned missing the compound’s garden. The Seventh when Cassian talked about the library. The Third whenever Cassian said anything at all about Lysander or Hamish.

“The omega contaminates you with his worldliness, Cassian. Every café he takes you to, every choice he forces you to make for yourself, is a step further from the Light’s plan for your life.”

Cassian stirred his flat white and watched the foam spiral into nothing. “Lysander doesn’t force me to do anything. He just won’t do things for me that I can do myself.”

“Because he doesn’t understand the role of a Calyx. Your purpose is to receive, not to act. The vessel doesn’t fill itself.”

“I’m not a vessel, Uriel. I’m a person who’s learned that he likes coffee.”

Uriel’s mouth thinned, and his hand found Cassian’s across the table. Cassian’s fingers curled into Uriel’s palm instinctively.

This was the part that worked against him. The doctrine slid off Cassian’s mind now. He could hear the words without believing them, recognising the shape of a teaching and picking out the flaws within it. But Uriel’s hand on his was something he was yet to build a defence against.