The Lycan's Broken Moon

The bond

Cassian POV

A long pause. "Because I am not what they wanted.”

When she speaks again her voice has gone very flat and very careful. The voice of someone who learned a long time ago not to let hurt show in the volume.

“I was supposed to be strong. Pack-strong, alpha-blood strong. When my wolf didn't show for years, my mother stopped introducing me at gatherings. My father stopped introducing me at all. And when Aurora finally did wake up, she wasn't what anyone was hoping for either, so." A breath. "So it's just easier for everyone if I disappear."

Something moves in my chest that I don't have a name for. Something that wants to put my fist through the wall between us and pull her through the hole. I want, absurdly, helplessly, to hold her. Not comfort her with words, which I have never been good at. but to physically put my arms around her. like that could undo a family's decision that she was disposable.

There it is, Ezra says, quiet now, no longer needling. That's the bond, Cassian. That's what I have been trying to tell you.

I don't get the chance to answer him, because the door at the end of the corridor slams open. Two guards come in with torches. And the particular loose-shouldered swagger. Clearly of men who have been given permission to enjoy their work.

"Lilith wants you both taught a lesson," the taller one says, grinning. "Seems you have been getting too comfortable for prisoners."

"Please." Seraphina's voice through the wall, urgent now, no longer flat. "Please don't hurt him. He didn't do anything, it isn't his fault, please-"

She is chained in a cell, likely half-starved. She has no reason on this earth to spend her one plea on me instead of herself, and she spends it on me anyway.

Warmth goes through me like sunlight finding a crack in a shuttered room.

The guards laugh at her, and the shorter one turns from my cell toward hers. keys already in hand, threat already in his shoulders. And something in me simply stops asking permission. The chains around my wrists are iron, forged for a nobody, and I am not a nobody.

I feel the King's strength come up through my spine like a tide finally allowed back in. the iron gives with a shriek of metal before either guard has finished turning the key. I am through the wall gap and between them and her. Even before the torchlight even finishes flickering. my hand is around the shorter guard's throat, lifting him half off his feet.

"Touch her," I say, very quietly, which is somehow worse than shouting, "and I will end you before you finish the thought."

The taller guard's face goes through fury, then confusion. Then something closer to fear as he watches what I just did to solid iron chains. He is reaching for his blade when the door bangs open again and a third man comes skidding in. robes half-fastened, face bloodless.

"Stop!" the Gamma says, voice cracking. "Stop, you fools, the Lycan King's Beta has arrived at the gates and he is demanding to see the prisoner by name...." his eyes land on me and something in his expression rearranges itself entirely. fear sliding into something closer to horror. "By your name."

The guards go still. I watch it happen in real time. the way their faces change. the way the man I am still holding by the throat stops struggling and starts, instead, to shake. They know. Whatever they thought I was ten seconds ago, they know now.

I set the guard down. Slowly. Seraphina is staring at me through the broken gap in the stone. confusion and something like awe fighting for space on her face.

"Cassian," she says. "Where are they taking you? What's happening?"

I want to explain everything. I want to tell her what I am. why the guards are shaking. why Ezra has gone quiet and satisfied inside my skull like a man watching a long game finally turn his way. I don't have time, and she doesn't need the whole weight of it dropped on her in a dungeon corridor at swordpoint.

"It's fine," I say instead, and I make my voice gentle this time, deliberately, the opposite of what I gave her minutes ago. "I will come back for you. I promise."

I let the Gamma lead me out. At the door, I stop, and I look back at the two guards, at the way they won't meet my eyes now.

"If I come back," I say, low enough that it doesn't carry to her. "and she has so much as a bruise on her that wasn't there when I left this room, I will not simply kill you. I will erase this pack from the map. Every den, every bloodline, every name. Do you understand me."

Neither of them answers. They don't have to. I already know they believe me.