Page 19 of That Defining Moment

“He was telling a funny story. I called him an idiot because he was being funny.”

“You can’t do that.” Cassian shook his head slowly, with the patient gravity of someone explaining a fundamental law of the universe to a child. “An omega who calls his alpha an idiot is an omega who doesn’t understand his place in the Universe. The alpha provides, and the omega receives, and we show our gratitude through softness. Through smallness. Through making ourselves a vessel that he wants to pour himself into.” His expression was perfectly earnest. “I’m trying to help you, Lysander.”

Lysander pushed off from the counter and crossed the kitchen. Cassian flinched when Lysander reached for him, his body going rigid, his chin jerking sideways by reflex. The movement punched a hole clean through Lysander’s irritation and into something older and uglier underneath.

He tucked Cassian under his arm anyway, the way he’d done in the park, and held him there. Cassian stood stiff against his side, his eyes cast up at Lysander, wide and suspicious.

“You’ve seen all the photos of my father with his alpha, Diwa, right?”

Cassian nodded.

“I normally wouldn’t talk about this, Cass. It’s my daddy’s story to tell, not mine. But I think he’d be all right with me borrowing it just this once, so I can help you understand something really important.” He tightened his arm around Cassian’s shoulders. “When my father was very young, an alpha attacked him and got him pregnant with me and my brother. He was fourteen when we were born.”

Cassian’s hand came up and gripped the front of Lysander’s shirt. “What happened to the alpha?”

“Prison. But he wasn’t in there for anywhere near as long as he should have been.” Lysander kept his voice steady. “My daddy raised us on his own, with absolutely no alpha help. He kept our family together, and he never once made himself smaller or softer for anyone through any of it. He was fierce. He filled the role of two parents so well that neither Stephen nor I ever felt a hole in our lives.” He looked down at the top of Cassian’s head. “And when he met Diwa, he didn’t change. Diwa appreciates that my daddy is cranky and tells it like it is, because Diwa’s a good alpha who understands that an omega doesn’t have to disappear into the will of his alpha.”

Cassian was quiet. His grip on Lysander’s shirt hadn’t loosened.

“There are good alphas, Cassian, and there are bad ones. Hamish is one of the good ones. He’s trying to make you strong enough to stand on your own, but you won’t let him.” Lysander’s thumb dug into the bony cap of Cassian’s shoulder. “And that’s okay. The two of us will keep at it. We’ll keep showing you that you don’t need an alpha to arrange your breakfast and run your bath and make every decision for you. I think you already kind of understand that, because you got here to Hamish’s house on your own. You made the decision to leave your husband. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, Cass.” He paused. “I see that. You give me the absolute shits, and I hate the way you are sometimes, but I’ll keep trying to show you how strong you are because you’re worth the bother to me. Okay?”

Cassian shook his head. “I wasn’t strong. I was just scared, so I ran.”

Lysander gave him a squeeze. “You were doing what you had to, just like my daddy did, and that’s why I know you’ll be fine. Because you’re being a fucking badass of an omega without even understanding that you are.”

Cassian’s hand came up and smacked Lysander lightly on the cheek. “Stop swearing, Sander.”

The name landed like a warm detonation. Lysander came in close enough that his mouth was nearly at Cassian’s ear, and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Say it, Cass. Say you’re a fucking badass omega.”

Cassian’s mouth thinned. He shook his head, but his eyes were bright.

“Say it, and I’ll buy you so many turnovers tomorrow that you’ll be sick on the walk home.”

The calculation ran behind those eyes. Turnovers versus potential damnation by the Universe. Cassian’s mouth opened and closed. Then:

“I’m… a fucking badass omega,” he whispered.

Lysander laughed, pulled him close, and kissed his temple. “You really are, Cass.”

Chapter Ten

Cassian had never been inside a cinema before.

He’d seen them, of course, from the outside. The Family’s supply runs into Emerald sometimes took them past the one on the main road, and he’d caught glimpses of the illuminated signs through the van window, the queues of people lined up as though they were waiting for communion. The elders had explained that cinemas were temples to distraction, places where the outside world went to fill itself with noise so it wouldn’t have to sit with the silence of the Universe.

Cinema Nova was not what he’d pictured. It was smaller than a temple and louder than the Family of Light’s dining hall. Lysander had tried to feed him something he’d called popcorn, that Cassian had later renamed to ‘abomination’ after getting a piece stuck between his molars. The seats folded down when you sat on them and sprang back up when you stood, which Cassian had tested four times before Lysander had put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Cass. Sit down. People are looking.”

He stayed close to Lysander. The older omega moved through the crowd with a beer in one hand and his mobile in the other, chatting to Hamish’s sound engineer, Pete. Lysander leaned in close and made a comment about Hamish’s nervous habit of shoving his glasses up his nose, then mimicked the strange jabby movement so accurately that it made Pete throw his head back and laugh so loudly that the couple nearest the bar turned around to look at them.

Cassian had been watching Lysander for weeks now, taking in the mechanics of how a male omega could occupy a room without shrinking into the nearest alpha’s shadow, and it still confounded him. Lysander didn’t melt. He didn’t tip his chin up or let his voice go thin, or make himself a surface that invited touching. He stood with his weight set equally on both feet, took up all the space that his body required, and when Hamish came over to check on him, Lysander kissed him on the mouth and called him a nerd for being nervous about his own film.

He wasn’t being sweet, or soft, but it worked on Hamish anyway.

Hamish found him before the screening started, pulling Cassian aside near the corridor that led to the auditorium.

“There’s going to be a Q&A after the film,” Hamish said. “I know we’ve talked about this already, and you’ve said that you’d like to be involved. But I still wanted to check in that you’re happy to go ahead with this. Nobody’s expecting anything from you tonight. You can sit in the audience and watch, you can wait in the foyer if it gets too much, or you can come up and answer questions with me. All three of those options are fine. But the decision has to be yours, Cass.”

Cassian had been turning this over in his head for three days. He’d asked Lysander what he should do on Wednesday, while they sat on the bench in Edinburgh Gardens watching the children running around, and Lysander had looked at him for a long moment before he’d said, “It’s not my call.”