Page 9

The fridge light caught the edge of a yoghurt pot. Mango-flavoured. Cassian could see three more behind it.

This fridge had come as a shock to him when he’d opened it on his first visit to London. The sheer volume of choice had locked him in place. Every option demanded a decision and every decision felt like the wrong one.

“What drink can I have?” Cassian had asked Colin when the older omega had found him staring into the fridge.

“Whichever one you want, Cass.”

When Cassian continued to just stare into the fridge, the older omega had reached in and taken out two cans, one lemon and one elderflower, holding them up. He closed the fridge door behind him so the shelves disappeared.

Two options. That was better.

It had still taken him a while to decide, but Cassian had pointed at the elderflower. Colin had opened it for him, and they sat at the kitchen island and talked.

Now Cassian reached in and took one of the slim bottles of donor milk from the shelf where Colin kept them lined up in order.

He slotted the bottle into the warmer, then swayed with Tala on the spot, his bare feet cold on the kitchen tiles. Her wailing dropped to a furious grizzle.

“I agree. Eighty-three is too many seconds.”

The display ticked down. Cassian dipped his nose to the top of Tala’s head and breathed her in until the machine beeped the end of the cycle. He tested a drop on the inside of his wrist, and it was perfect. Then he tipped the bottle to Tala’s mouth, and she latched on, her eyes closing as she drank.

“There you go, Tala,” Cassian murmured, shifting his weight so her head sat in the crook of his elbow. “There you go. That’s better, isn’t it?”

Tala’s feeding had slowed to the rhythmic pull-and-swallow that meant she was properly locked on, and in the silence of the kitchen, he talked to her.

Colin said babies needed to hear voices, that it helped their brains grow, and Cassian figured his voice was as good as anyone’s even if most of the things he said wouldn’t make it into a parenting book.

“You’ve got such a good setup, Tala,” he said, adjusting the angle of the bottle as she drank. “You’ve got your daddy Colin, who is the best person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met quite a lot of people now. Dozens of them. You’ve got Diwa, who will do everything he can to make sure you have the life you deserve. He bought a bin that opens without you having to touch it. Because bins give him the squick. You’ll love that when you’ve got hands that work.”

Tala’s fingers curled on his collarbone.

“And you’ve got two big brothers who love you to bits. I’m fairly sure they’ll end up scaring away every single man who ever looks at you, sorry to say.” The bottle was half empty now. He tilted it higher and watched her eyelids droop.

“You don’t need an Evermate, Tala,” he told her. “Not with a family like yours.”

Tala had gone boneless in his arms, her mouth still working in lazy pulls, and Cassian shifted her higher on his chest.

The nightmare had left his mind half in the compound. He’d learned, giving his testimony to the Royal Commission, that saying things out loud shrank them in his head. So he told her. She was milk-drunk and wouldn’t remember any of it, anyway.

He’d been given his Evermate on his twenty-first birthday, in the Lumineer’s study.

“Calyx.” The Lumineer had looked directly at him. “The Universe has written a name in your heart. You have carried it since birth. Today, I speak it aloud so that you may hear what you have always known.”

Cassian had been so certain. His hands had been shaking in his lap, his pulse so loud in his ears that he’d barely been able to hear the rest of the address. He didn’t need to. He already knew the name. He’d felt the Universe’s pull every time Uriel walked into a room, his head turning without permission.

Uriel was the Lumineer’s son, and would succeed him eventually, when the Lumineer reached his apex and ascended to his higher form.

The Lumineer opened his hands.

“Your Evermate is Charles Townsend.”

Cassian had stayed very still. He didn’t know who Charles Townsend was, but the Universe could not be wrong. He’d been tested, and found wanting. He’d been busy desiring the wrong man when the Universe had apparently been pointing him towards Charles Townsend, whose hand gripped Cassian’s shoulder.

“There he is,” Charles Townsend said from high above Cassian’s head. “My Calyx.”

The Lumineer smiled at him, and Cassian smiled in return, because smiling was what a Vessel did when the Universe spoke, and his face knew how to do it even when the rest of him had gone somewhere very far away. He kept smiling all the way down the hill to the house Charles owned in Bayswater, on the Melbourne side of the Dandenongs, and through his first night with Charles, even as the alpha had slipped silk cords around his wrists and clambered on top of him.

Tala’s mouth slipped off the bottle. She was asleep, her face slack on his chest, one fist still hooked in his T-shirt.