Page 39 of That Defining Moment

So Cassian leaned in the way he’d watched Lysander lean into Hamish. He let his whole body tip forward, his shoulder pressing against Uriel’s arm.

“I don’t want to go back to Charles,” Cassian said during a break in Uriel’s sermonising. “But I’d go anywhere with you, Uriel. You know that.”

Uriel’s thumb moved across his knuckles. “Charles has repented, Cassian. The Light has cleansed him, and he’s ready to be received by his Calyx once more.”

“I don’t care about Charles’s repentance.” Cassian shifted closer on the bench seat, pressing his thigh against Uriel’s under the table. “I want to talk about us. I want us to think about what might happen if we go to the Lumineer and tell him you’re my Evermate.”

“That isn’t how it works, and you know that.”

“We can make it work differently together, Uriel,” Cassian insisted. “You’re going to be the next Lumineer. You can change the doctrine.”

Uriel gave a tight shake of his head. “I can’t change the doctrine, Cassian. The doctrine is the word of the Universe. It doesn’t bend for wanting.”

“It bent for Charles’s money.”

Uriel’s hand clenched around his. “That’s a serious accusation, Cassian.”

“One that we both know is true.”

Uriel pulled his hand away. The absence of his warmth left Cassian’s fingers cold on the tabletop.

“The Universe tests us by imposing suffering on us, Cassian. Charles was your test. Your task was to find the Light within the difficulty, to open yourself fully to the path that was laid before you, and to trust that the pain would lead to purification.”

“I’ve heard every one of the Principles,” Cassian said. “And none of the Principles explain why Charles hit me, Uriel. I’ve looked. I’ve thought about every single one of them in my head, and there isn’t a Principle that says an Evermate should put his fist in your face because you started crying when he tried to push your legs apart on your first night together.”

Cassian could see the gears turning behind Uriel’s eyes. “You should have been better prepared…” he admitted.

“Your father gave me to a man who hurt me,” Cassian said. “And you’re sitting here telling me that the Universe meant for it to happen. Do you actually believe that, Uriel? Because I need to know.”

“Yes,” Uriel said with little hesitation. “I believe the Universe’s plan is perfect, even when we can’t see its shape in its entirety.”

Cassian nodded. He’d expected the answer, but that didn’t lessen the shock of hearing it said out loud.

He kept talking to Uriel anyway.

They were at Soleil again, sitting in the back corner, when Cassian finally ran out of patience with him. Uriel was explaining the Ninth Principle’s position on contamination due to sustained contact with the unilluminated.

“—and the soul that lingers too long in shadow begins to mistake the dark for comfort, and the comfort for—”

Cassian kissed him.

He didn’t plan it. One moment he was sitting beside Uriel with his hands around his coffee cup, listening to him discuss the insidiousness of corruption, and the next he’d twisted round on the seat, put one hand on the side of Uriel’s face, and pressed his mouth against the alpha’s.

It was wholly different from their kiss at Cinema Nova. That had been Uriel’s doing, a brief brush of their lips that lasted two seconds and left Cassian vibrating for days. This little act of daring was Cassian’s, and he copied how he’d seen Lysander kissing Hamish: his tongue sliding against Uriel’s lower lip before pushing past it and dipping in to take his first taste of the alpha.

Uriel grunted against his mouth. Cassian’s hand slid from Uriel’s jaw into the short hair at his nape, his fingers digging in, and for three glorious seconds the alpha kissed him back. Uriel’s scent thickened around him until Cassian could taste it on his tongue alongside the coffee, and his body opened towards it, his slick dampening his underwear in a sudden, embarrassing rush.

Then Uriel’s hands came up and gripped Cassian’s shoulders, pushing him away.

Cassian’s hand still tingled where it had held the side of Uriel’s face. The alpha’s chest was rising and falling too fast, his pupils blown so wide that only a thin ring of pale blue remained around the black, and a patch of colour had climbed up his neck above the collar of his shirt.

“Did Hamish teach you that?” Uriel’s voice came out rough. “Or the omega?”

Cassian wiped his mouth with his hand and looked at Uriel directly. “No,” he said. “I learned it from Charles.”

Cassian got to his feet, pushed through the café door and into the flat white glare of Lygon Street. He got halfway down the block before his hands started shaking.

He rounded the corner onto a quieter street lined with parked cars and terrace houses, their iron lacework casting complicated shadows across the footpath, and lifted his right hand, only to have Uriel’s scent hit him at full force.