Page 86 of That Defining Moment

“Did you get what you needed from Dane today, love?” Colin asked mildly.

“Yes,” Lysander said. He pressed his head back into his father’s knee, let the word sit for a moment, and then turned it over. “No.”

“Which is it, Sander?”

Lysander drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “I got everything I needed out of the recording. It was brilliant, Daddy. Properly brilliant. People are going to fucking hate him when they hear how cocky he sounds, talking about filming me during my heat like he was describing a smart property investment.”

Colin’s fingers kept their slow, steady path through his hair. “But?” he prompted.

“But he wouldn’t apologise.” Lysander’s thumbnail found a loose thread on the knee of his boxers and worried at it. “He was charming as anything when he told me he wasn’t sorry for a single thing he’d done. He said it was the best business decision either of us ever made.”

Colin was quiet for long enough that Lysander tipped his face up to check he was still awake. His father’s face was half-lit by the amber nightlight, his gaze fixed on the far wall.

“Do you need him to apologise?” Colin asked. “Will that improve your current lot in life in any way at all?”

Lysander stared at the carpet between his feet as he thought about it.

“No,” he said, and the truth of it rearranged everything that had been churning in his chest since he’d walked out of that recording booth.

Dane’s apology wouldn’t undo the video. It wouldn’t unfilm his first heat, or subtract a single one of the twenty alphas from that room, or give him back the years he’d spent confusing revenue for love. An apology from Dane Nordgren would be worth exactly as much as everything else the man had ever promised him.

And a hit podcast with Dane’s name on it, his voice threaded through the pivotal debut episode and his charm pulling in the downloads, would keep him tethered to the man who’d used him for the rest of his professional life.

He thought about the solo cut sitting on Diwa’s hard drive. Meredith had said the podcast worked without Dane, even if it wouldn’t be an instant number one on the charts.

He didn’t want Dane to be a part of his story anymore, not even as a footnote that explained where Lysander Huxley came from. Because in the great scheme of things Dane wasn’t important.

His father was Colin Huxley, who’d gone into the care system at three. Stephen had been his constant companion from the moment they came into existence. They, the alphas they’d chosen to bring into their lives, and the children they’d made: those were the only people inextricably linked to his story. And Cassian, of course, who was probably asleep downstairs with the television still on.

Dane Nordgren mattered only as much as Lysander let him.

“I’m going to bin the recording with Dane,” Lysander said. “I’m going to do it on my own.”

Colin’s hand stilled on his head, then resumed its slow passes. “Good boy,” he said.

Tala’s bottle slipped free of her mouth with a wet pop, and she turned her face into Colin’s robe, her fist uncurling on the cashmere. Colin shifted her higher on his chest.

“I’m going to tell my own story,” Lysander said. “The whole thing. From the beginning.” He dropped his head back on Colin’s knee. “But Daddy…you know you’re a big part of that, right?”

Colin’s fingers stilled in his hair. The rocking chair creaked once and settled.

“I know,” Colin said, and his voice was very quiet.

“Do you trust me?” Lysander turned to look up at him. “Would you? To tell it properly?”

Colin didn’t answer straight away. The chair took up its slow rhythm again, and his gaze moved between his two children as he considered what he was willing to give away about himself.

“I do,” he said. “I trust you’ll tell it well. For all of us.”

Lysander got to his feet. He leaned down and pressed his lips to Tala’s head first, breathing in the powdery, biscuity warmth of her, then kissed his father’s temple where the skin was thin and cool.

Colin’s hand found his wrist and squeezed once before letting go.

Lysander took the stairs two at a time, his feet silent on the carpet, past the shut door of the bedroom where Hamish was, past the guest room where Cassian’s television murmured through the gap beneath the door, and down to the narrow door beside the utility cupboard that led to Diwa’s basement.

The studio lights came on when he flicked the switch at the top of the stairs. Lysander dropped into the chair before the monitors. The leather was cold through the thin cotton of his boxers, and he pulled his knees up, tucking his feet beneath him.

He opened a new session. The waveform stretched clean and flat across the screen, waiting for him.