Page 13 of That Defining Moment

Lysander’s hand had stopped moving on his mug.

“But all that seed you’ve allowed those alphas to pump into you — it can be drawn back out. There are cleansings we can do.” Cassian leaned forward on his elbows, his voice dropping to the warm, confiding register he used when sharing something sacred. “I could show you how. You’d need a trusted alpha to help with the process, but it can be done.” He offered Lysander a kind smile, the sort of smile the elders had given him when they were talking him through this process before his own cleansings. “I’d be glad to help. You don’t have to stay like this.”

Lysander stared at him for a long time.

Then he set his mug down on the counter with a careful click, slid off his stool, and smiled. It was a tight, controlled smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m going for a walk,” Lysander said.

He picked up Hamish’s spare keys from the hook by the door, shoved his feet into a pair of trainers that were too big for him, and walked out without looking back.

Cassian watched the door close. He sat at the counter for a moment, his spoon resting in his bowl of muesli. Then he pulled Hamish’s flannel off the back of the kitchen chair and retrieved a pair of trousers from his bedroom, before following Lysander out of the house.

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.