Page 10 of That Defining Moment

“I know.” Cassian nodded. “I need to be led. I’ve always known that about myself; it’s part of what a Calyx is. Charles has fifty-one years of light gathered in him, and I receive the benefit of all of it. Would it be better if I’d been given to someone as young and unfinished as me? Two lost people, holding hands in the dark? The Universe was kinder to me than that.”

Hamish let the answer settle before he asked his next question. “How long did you know Charles before you married him, Cassian?”

“He’s my Evermate.” Cassian clasped his hands. “His name was burned into my heart from the moment I was born. The elders only confirmed what the Universe had already written. You’re asking me how long I knew him, but I’ve known him my whole life. I just had to wait until he found me.”

“Mr Townsend made a significant donation to the Family of Light’s charitable foundation following your marriage.”

“Because I pleased him,” Cassian said, without hesitation. “And because he admires our work.”

In the shed, Lysander sat very still. He had spent years putting price tags on his own body, and he knew a sale when he saw one.

The film moved on and Lysander watched all of it, but his thoughts kept circling back to the boy in white linen, and how perfectly happy he’d appeared. He ran the interview back in his mind looking for the seam, the tell, the half-second where the performance slipped, and couldn’t find one.

“His husband never shows up,” Lysander said. “In the footage.”

“No. Townsend doesn’t live there, but he owns the land the compound is on.” Hamish paused the projector, and Cassian froze mid-smile on the wall, ten feet tall and luminous. “One hundred acres in the Dandenongs, held in the name of one of his companies. The Family of Light have been worshipping on a poultry magnate’s land for years, and they thanked him for it with their only Calyx.” Hamish shook his head. “None of it’s an act for Cassian, Sander. He believes every word he said in front of the camera that day about the way that he grew up, and his marriage.”

Lysander looked up at the smiling face of Cassian on-screen.

“And the terrifying thing is,” Hamish continued, “I keep thinking about what Townsend must have done to him. Because Cassian didn’t stop believing in the Family of Light. He just ran, and you don’t run from the safety of the only world you’ve ever known unless what’s inside it has gone pretty fucking bad.”

Chapter Six

The sounds started at eleven.

Cassian lay very still in the dark of Hamish’s spare room with the duvet pulled up to his chin, listening. The bedroom wall was thin enough that he could hear the creak of the mattress springs, the rhythmic knock of the headboard against plaster, and beneath all of it, Lysander’s voice — muffled but unmistakable, climbing higher with each breath.

He knew what the sounds meant. He had lain in the dark like this before, in the Bayswater house with its high ceilings and its marble floors, while Charles laboured over him. Charles had made those sounds too. The grunting and heavy breathing of a man taking his pleasure, the creak of the bedframe under his weight. But Cassian had been silent beneath all of it. He had lain with his wrists bound to the posts and his face turned to the wall, quiet as an offering on an altar.

Lysander wasn’t being quiet.

Even through the wall, Cassian could hear him laughing between his moans, and it made Cassian press his face harder into the pillow. He had never once laughed during sex. He had never understood that you could. The sounds Lysander was making didn’t belong to the same activity that Cassian had experienced in his marriage to his Evermate.

He wondered if Charles would have been nicer to him if he’d made those sounds. If he’d moved underneath him the way Lysander was obviously moving, instead of lying there with his eyes closed and his jaw set, waiting for him to finish. Maybe Charles had wanted something from him that Cassian hadn’t known how to give, and the hurt that had come out of that had been Cassian’s own fault for being too poor a vessel for an alpha who deserved a better reception.

Hamish’s low voice rumbled through the wall, followed by a breathless moan from Lysander that dissolved into helpless giggling.

Cassian reached for his headphones on the bedside table. They were the big padded ones. Hamish had given them to him on his third night in the cottage when the street noise had kept him awake. Hamish had placed them over Cassian’s ears himself, adjusting the band so it didn’t pinch, his long fingers gentle against Cassian’s temples.

Such a good alpha. Such a provider. The Universe had placed Hamish in Cassian’s path for a reason, and Cassian would wait patiently for the reason to reveal itself, even if Hamish insisted on sharing his bed with a foul-mouthed omega who swore at breakfast, and told Cassian to do unspeakable things.

He settled the headphones over his ears. The noise from the bedroom cut to a low, muffled hum, and the silence pressed in around him.

His tablet was on the bedside table too, propped against the lamp. Hamish had been teaching him to use it, sitting beside him on the sofa after dinner with his arm along the back of the cushions, guiding Cassian’s finger across the glass screen. This is the browser. This is the search bar. You type what you want to know, and it tells you.

Cassian picked up the tablet and tapped the screen until it lit up. He opened the browser, the way Hamish had shown him, and placed his index finger carefully in the search bar.

L-I-S-A-N-D-I-R.

He squinted at the letters, backspaced, and tried again.

L-Y-S-A-N-D-E-R.

That looked better. He moved on to the surname.

H-U-C-K-S-L-I.

He tapped search.