The Lycan's Broken Moon

Dungeon

Cassian POV

The dungeon torch on the wall gutters like it's tired of watching me pace.

You could have said something. I throw the thought at Ezra the way I used to throw punches at my brothers when we were pups. hard, fast, no warning. An hour ago. When those chains went around my wrists. You went quiet. You never go quiet.

I was listening, Ezra says. He sounds like gravel settling after a landslide, low and unbothered. You were busy being angry. Didn't want to get in the way.

That's new for you.

Everything's new lately.

I stop pacing. The chain between my wrists clinks, a small, humiliating sound for a man who is supposed to be a king. Fight me on it, then. If you have got something to say, say it. Or we can do this the old way.

He laughs, and I feel it more than hear it, a rumble low in my sternum. You want to spar with your own wolf in a cell with four feet of headroom. That's the shape your rage takes tonight.

Better than pacing.

Fine. A pause, and I feel him settle deeper instead of rising to meet me, which is somehow worse than if he'd snapped back. I went quiet because I wanted you to have the hour, Cassian. Not me. You.

The hour.

With her.

I know exactly who he means before he finishes the sentence. Something in my chest reacts before my mind catches up. a lurch, unwilling, like missing a stair in the dark. Don't.

I have barely said anything.

You don't have to. I know where this goes.

Do you. Not a question. Because I don't think you do. I don't think you understand what she is yet. I have been trying to figure out how to tell you without you doing exactly what you're doing right now. Which is building a wall out of another woman's name before I've even finished a sentence.

Don't say it.

She's your second chance, Cassian.

The torchlight seems to bend. I don't move, don't breathe, and Ezra, patient in a way he is almost never patient. He lets the silence sit there and do its damage on its own.

No, I say, finally, and my voice comes out rougher than I want it to. No. That bond doesn't happen twice. It happened once. It's done. It ended in a field with her blood on my hands and it does not get a second try, Ezra, it doesn't-

I am not arguing philosophy with you. I am telling you what I feel. His voice hardens, just slightly. just enough that I remember he is not asking permission to have felt it. I have had this itch under my skin since we met. Like a limb reporting in from somewhere I can't see. It got worse the second she stepped off that gangplank in chains looking like she hadn't eaten a full meal in a month. I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure. I am still not entirely sure. That's the strange part.

Explain that.

Her wolf. He seems to choose the words carefully, turning them over first. I can barely sense it. A thread, not a presence. Whatever's in her is keeping itself small on purpose. Hiding its scent, hiding its signature, like it doesn't want to be found even by me, even now. That's why she doesn't feel the bond the way you had expected a mate to feel it. It's not that it isn't there. It's that her wolf won't let it surface.

Why would it hide from its own mate bond?

I don't know. But I had guessed it's the same reason a woman flinches when someone raises a hand near her. even someone who never meant to hit her. He lets that sit for a second, and I hate how much it makes sense. Something taught that wolves that are seen are dangerous.

I think of Grace. I make myself think of Grace, on purpose. the way you press a bruise to remind yourself it's still there. Her laugh, the second before the arrow, the specific color the grass turned. I hold onto her because if I let go for even a moment I know what will rush into the space instead. And I am not ready, I am not anywhere close to ready, to let something else in.

Her wolf must be beautiful, Ezra says. And there's a warmth in his voice I recognize and despise, because I remember having it myself once. if it can hide that well, that completely, it has to be-

Stop.

Cassian-

I said stop. It comes out sharper than I mean. Sharp enough that even Ezra goes still. and for a second the only sound in the cell is the torch spitting against the wet stone.

"Cassian?"

Her voice. Close, closer than I expected, coming from the cell adjoining mine. It was through a gap in the stone the guards clearly didn't think anyone could hear through. I go rigid.

"I'm sorry," Seraphina says, and there is a wobble in it. She's trying to smooth flat and not quite managing. "About the chains. About all of it. If I hadn't…. if you hadn't been trying to help me, none of this-"

Grace's face, the grass, the arrow. I hold onto it with both hands.

"I am fine," I say, and it comes out cold. Colder than I mean it to, but not cold enough that I can call it an accident either. "They can't hurt me. Don't waste your apology."

Silence on the other side of the wall. I can feel Ezra recoil in disgust before he even says anything.

That's it? That's what you give her?

I gave her the truth.

You gave her a door slammed in her face and called it honesty. His voice is low and furious now, a register I rarely hear from him. She just said sorry to a king for existing near him and you handed her frost. She is not your enemy, Cassian. She's not even the reason Grace is dead. You know that. Some buried part of you knows that, and you are punishing her for it anyway. Because it's easier than being afraid of what she might actually be to you.

I don't answer him. I don't have an answer.

"Seraphina." Her name feels strange in my mouth, too soft for the room we are in. "Why does your family treat you like this? Like you are something to be discarded?"