Page 43 of That Defining Moment

“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.

A raw, animal snarl ripped up out of Lysander’s throat, and he threw himself at Uriel. His nails gouged into Uriel’s cheek and dragged down, tearing through skin, leaving three livid welts before his hand had cleared the alpha’s jaw. Uriel’s head jerked back. His fist closed in Lysander’s hair and wrenched, hard enough that Lysander’s neck bent at an angle that sent white sparks across his vision.

Uriel’s free hand came for his throat. Lysander’s teeth clamped down around the meat of it before the fingers could close, his jaw locking with a force he didn’t know he had in him, and the taste of blood flooded his mouth, hot and copper-bright. His own or the alpha’s, it didn’t matter. Uriel let out a bark of pain and his grip tightened until the roots tore.

Uriel’s knee drove up into Lysander’s stomach. The air left him in a single, wrenching gust that took his vision with it. His legs buckled and he doubled over Uriel’s knee. Then Cassian was there, launching himself onto Uriel’s back. His arms locked around the alpha’s neck and his bloody nose mashed into Uriel’s hair while his fist drove into the side of the alpha’s skull, once, twice, a third time.

Uriel reared back. His hand caught Cassian’s arm and swung him like a rag, slamming the omega’s back into the wall hard enough that the plaster cracked behind the point of impact and the framed photograph fell from its hook in the corridor outside, its glass shattering against the floorboards.

Cassian slid down the wall, his body folded at the waist, his bare legs splaying across the carpet.

Lysander, casting around for a weapon, found Cassian’s tablet on the bedside table.

He didn’t think. Uriel had already turned back towards Cassian, his shoulders squared, his whole body angled away from Lysander as though the omega behind him had ceased to register as a threat. Lysander seized the tablet in both hands, jumped, and brought the flat of it down on the back of Uriel’s skull with everything he had.

The tablet’s screen splintered under the force. Uriel’s knees buckled inward, the rest of him following, his body folding forward onto the carpet in a heavy, graceless collapse that shook the floorboards. Lysander kicked him in the ribs before he’d finished falling. His foot connected with solid muscle and bone, and the jolt travelled up his leg and twisted his ankle in a white-hot flare.

Fuck.

He threw the ruined tablet in the general direction of Uriel’s head, and grabbed Cassian’s wrist. Cassian was still on the floor against the wall, his nose bleeding freely down his chin, his eyes unfocused and his breath coming in short, hitching gulps. His legs were bare beneath the rucked-up t-shirt, and Lysander didn’t care. He hauled Cassian upright by the arm and dragged him out the bedroom door, over the broken glass from the photograph frame and down the corridor.

Lysander’s ankle buckled on every other step. There was a grinding wrongness in the joint that sent sparks up his shin, but he kept his grip on Cassian’s wrist and kept moving. His own mobile was where he’d left it, on the kitchen counter. Cassian’s light-blue robe hung on its hook by the back door, the fleece still carrying the faint chemical sweetness of fabric softener from last week’s wash.

Lysander snatched the robe off the hook and threw it around Cassian’s shoulders one-handed, yanking the lapels together across his chest. Cassian’s fingers clutched the fleece closed, smearing blood across the fabric. Then Lysander grabbed his mobile, shoved his way out the front door, and half-dragged, half-carried Cassian down the garden path.

The gate banged shut behind them. Lysander’s ankle screamed with each stride, his weight pitching sideways so that he lurched against Cassian. The two of them staggered down the footpath like drunks holding each other vertical.

He was already dialling. His thumb found the numbers from muscle memory and sheer bloody-mindedness, because his eyes were blurring at the edges and the back of his skull throbbed where Uriel had torn his hair out by the roots. He pressed the mobile to his ear and heard ringing, distant and tinny, as though he were hearing it underwater.

“We need — we need you.” His voice cracked, skidding up in pitch and in volume. “We’ve been attacked. There’s a man in our house. He hit —” The words jammed. Cassian was shaking so hard against his side that Lysander felt it in his own ribs. “He hit us. Please. Please come.”

The operator on the other end of the line asked him for an address. Lysander opened his mouth and the street name wouldn’t surface. He knew it. He’d been living here for months. The jasmine was right there, behind the fence, and the banksia, and the —

People were gathering. A woman in running gear had stopped on the opposite pavement. A man came out of the terrace two doors down, still holding a tea towel. Someone was talking to him, calm and measured, and he couldn’t process a single word of it because the adrenaline had curdled into something thick that sat between his ears and let nothing in.

A hand eased the mobile from his fingers. The woman in running gear brought it up against her own ear and started talking, rattling off the street name and the suburb and a description of injuries that Lysander hadn’t realised were visible.

So he stopped trying. He stopped trying to think or stand without listing sideways, and wrapped both arms around Cassian instead. His robe had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the pale skin beneath, and Lysander tugged it back into place, pulling the fleece tight around the younger omega’s trembling frame.

“You’re never going back there.” He said it into Cassian’s hair, which was matted with blood, dark against the blond. “Do you hear me, Cass? You’re never going back there.”

Cassian’s fists were balled in the front of Lysander’s t-shirt, his knuckles grinding against Lysander’s sternum. He kept his face buried in the crook of Lysander’s neck.