Page 71 of That Defining Moment

Cassian’s smile spread slowly. “Yeah?”

“Yup.” Lysander stood and held out his hand. “Just you and me, Cass.”

Portobello Road was a ten-minute walk from Ledbury Road, and Lysander kept his arm around Cassian’s shoulders for every step of it. Cassian had gone quiet, processing rather than sulking, his gaze tracking the shopfronts and the early-morning delivery vans.

The café Lysander chose was called Proving Ground, and it was all polished concrete and brushed steel, with floor-to-ceiling glass across the frontage. Its menu was chalked onto a slab of black slate that hung from the ceiling on industrial cable.

Behind the counter, an alpha was laying out Chelsea buns on a wire rack.

He was enormous, towering above Lysander and absolutely packed with functional muscle. His dark hair was cropped short and he had a face assembled from features individually too strong: heavy brow, wide jaw, an off-centre nose. Somehow they worked together into an aggressively handsome whole. His forearms, visible beneath rolled sleeves dusted with flour, were thick enough that the veins stood out like cabling.

Cassian pressed into Lysander’s side so hard that his hip bone dug into Lysander’s thigh.

Hamish had talked him through this on the long calls from Melbourne, describing the methods he’d been using to guide Cassian through encounters with unfamiliar alphas. The flinch was involuntary, a full-body recoil hardwired by years of doctrine that cast every alpha as either a divine instrument or a threat, with nothing in between. The trick wasn’t to force Cassian past it, but to give him something concrete to do with his hands and his voice, so that the part of his brain running the old programme got overridden by the part that was learning to function in the real world.

Lysander dug into his back pocket, pulled out a fold of notes, and pressed them into Cassian’s palm.

“Right,” he said, keeping his voice light. “I want one of those mushroom and cheese croissants, and a latte. Get yourself whatever you like.” He squeezed Cassian’s shoulder once and let go. “You can order.”

Cassian looked down at the money in his hand. His fingers closed around it, and he stood there for a moment, his weight shifting between his feet, before he lifted his chin and stepped up to be served.

The alpha glanced up from the Chelsea buns. His nostrils flared in a quick, involuntary twitch that registered the scent of two male omegas in his space, and his gaze moved from Cassian to Lysander. He didn’t stare or posture, or do anything remotely threatening. But Cassian’s voice had already dropped into that low, tight register.

“Can I have a mushroom and cheese croissant, please,” Cassian said carefully. “And a latte.” His gaze slid sideways to the wire rack, where the Chelsea buns sat in a glistening row, their spirals glossy with sugar syrup. “And can I please have — what’s that?”

The alpha followed his gaze. “Chelsea bun,” he said. His voice was low and rough. “It’s got cinnamon, currants, and lemon zest. Glazed.”

“Yes,” Cassian said. “That, please.”

The alpha turned and began assembling their order. Lysander noticed the man’s limp when he crossed to the coffee machine, a hitch in his right leg that he didn’t bother disguising, his weight favouring the left with each step.

He set the espresso portafilter into the group head, tamped it, and twisted it into place. Then he leaned back towards the pass and bellowed, “Raf — front!” in a voice that carried clean through the café and rattled the chalk menu on its cables.

Cassian’s whole body flinched sideways into Lysander. His shoulder drove into Lysander’s arm, his hand finding his wrist and gripping it with fingertips that went immediately white.

The alpha caught the flinch. His mouth pressed shut, and he dropped his gaze.

“Sorry,” he muttered, already turning back to the machine. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

He hunched his shoulders forward as he worked, curling himself inward in a way that was clearly intended to make six-foot-something of packed muscle seem less imposing. It didn’t work. The man was roughly twice Cassian’s width, and no amount of shoulder-rounding was going to change the fundamental geometry of the situation. But the effort was there, and Lysander was grateful for it.

A young beta emerged from the back, took one look at the alpha’s face, and slid behind the counter without a word.

The alpha set their order in front of Cassian: the mushroom and cheese croissant wrapped in paper, the Chelsea bun on a small plate, and Lysander’s latte in a ceramic cup that was slightly too large for the saucer beneath it. “Eight sixty,” he said, directing it at a point slightly to Cassian’s left rather than at Cassian himself.

Cassian reached into the fold of notes Lysander had given him and pulled out a fifty-pound note, laying it flat with both hands as though presenting a sacred document.

The alpha studied the note.

“Cass.” Lysander leaned in. “What’s a better note to use? Something closer to the price.”

Cassian’s brow furrowed. He retrieved the fifty carefully, smoothing it back into the fold, and thumbed through the remaining notes. His teeth caught his bottom lip as he selected a ten-pound note and slid it across the counter.

The alpha took it, opened the register, and counted out a small pile of coins, spacing them apart so each one was visible.

“Count the change, Cass,” Lysander said.

Cassian gathered the coins into his palm and held them close to his face, turning each one between his thumb and forefinger.