Page 69 of That Defining Moment
“The people who love you properly,” Colin said, “don’t want you smaller. They want more of you. More of your opinions, more of your quarrels, more of the bits that are inconvenient and loud and difficult to manage. If someone’s asking you to believe them without question, if they’re trying to disappear what you want and what you need so that they can have their way: that’s not love. That’s not what you need.”
Tala yawned against Colin’s collarbone, her fist uncurling.
“Colin,” Cassian said, testing the new rule in his head. “You let Diwa overrule you about the baby monitor. You said you didn’t want it, and he put it in anyway.” He pointed at the wall panel. “And you just let him. He made your opinion disappear.”
Colin’s mouth twitched into a sly curve. “Second rule, then. For the little things, where really your alpha’s just being an overprotective daddy who can’t help himself, it’s best to let it go. An alpha needs a low-stakes win once in a while, Cassian. Functional relationships are all about knowing when to give and when to take.”
Cassian’s eyes went very wide.
“So when Hamish nags me about wearing shoes —”
“You let him have the shoes,” Colin confirmed.
Cassian stood perfectly still in the amber glow of the nursery, his gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance where a new and thrilling strategic landscape was assembling itself. He would wear the shoes. He would wear them conspicuously, right in front of Hamish, making sure the alpha clocked it. And then, once Hamish was warm and pleased about the shoe wearing, Cassian would suggest that tonight they watch the crime documentaries on YouTube instead of Hamish’s boring programmes about people who talked a lot to other people.
He was heading for the door before Colin could say another word, Tala forgotten, the stairs already creaking beneath him as he went to find his test audience of alphas.
Chapter Thirty-Two
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Podcast interview — professional enquiry
sander
yeah sure why not. sounds like it could be a laugh
im in london most weeks. theres a coffee place on duke of york square that does a good flat white if you want to meet there. whenever works, not fussed
ill shout
d
✦ ✧ ✦
Cassian had been awake since five.
Lysander knew this because the floorboards in the Ledbury Road house transmitted sound with the fidelity of a concert hall, and Cassian’s morning routine, which had evolved from screaming declarations at the Melbourne sky to a slightly quieter but no less committed programme of stretching, padding to the bathroom, padding back, opening and closing his suitcase six times, and then sitting on the edge of his bed waiting for the house to wake up, carried through the joists with punishing clarity.
By six fifteen, Lysander heard the stairs creak. By six twenty, a cupboard door opened and closed in the kitchen below. Then another. Then a third, opened with more force.
Lysander pressed his face into Hamish’s shoulder and willed himself back to sleep.
“He’s up,” Hamish murmured into the pillow without opening his eyes.
By the time Lysander made it downstairs, Cassian had laid waste to the kitchen. Every cupboard at his eye level stood open. A box of granola sat beside a rejected bowl of cornflakes, a half-eaten banana that had been abandoned after two bites, and a jar of Diwa’s homemade calamansi marmalade that Cassian had opened, sniffed, and evidently found inadequate as it had been shoved right to the end of the island.
He was in one of Hamish’s flannels and a pair of Lysander’s joggers, holding a box of muesli at arm’s length.
“This has got bits in it,” Cassian complained.
Lysander filled the kettle. “It’s muesli, Cass. Muesli is made entirely of bits.”
“My muesli doesn’t have bits. Hamish gets me the one from Coles with the little clusters, and it doesn’t have bits of—” he shook the box and peered into it, “—tree in it.”
“Those are almonds.”
