Chapter 9
1206 Words
Cassian POV
I know I’m being a d**k to her, this woman with the dark, wild hair and fiery eyes. I know my bad attitude is the reason she’s refusing to help me.
But I’ve been locked in this dog cage for the past four days. Anyone would be a d**k after four days of this. I don’t feel like I owe her any particular kindness. It’s not like she’s been nice to me, right?
If she lets me out, I’ll be nice.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
She folds her arms across her ample chest and says nothing.
“Oh, what, I told you my name but you’re too special to tell me yours?”
She sighs.
“Lyra,” she says. “My name is Lyra.”
“There, was that so hard?”
She scowls at me, and immediately I sort of wish I could take that back. I really am being a d**k about this.
“Just let me out,” I tell her. “Then I won’t bother you anymore.”
“If I leave you in there, you also won’t bother me anymore,” she points out. “What are you doing in there anyway? How did you get yourself into that thing?”
“I didn’t get myself into it,” I say, annoyed. “My alpha put me in here.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an ass who’s threatened by me. Not that you have any reason to believe me, I guess.”
“No,” she says, her arms unknotting. “I know something about asshole alphas, actually.”
“Is that why you don’t have a pack?”
“That has something to do with it,” she says wryly. “Why is your alpha threatened by you?”
“He knows I’m a better fighter than he is,” I say, grinning despite my circumstances. “And smarter than he is, too.”
“Smart enough to land yourself in a cage?”
“Touche,” I say. “So are you going to let me out?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t trust you.”
“I can help you.”
“I told you, I don’t need any help.”
“I think you probably do,” I tell her. “I mean—what I said before, about women not being able to survive on their own—that was a jackass comment. I get that. I didn’t mean it. But anyone on their own would have trouble. And you’ve wandered into a safe house that belongs to my pack, so it’s clear you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. Tell me what you’re trying to do, where you’re trying to be, and maybe I can help you get there.”
She hesitates.
“I doubt you know where to find what I’m looking for.”
“I might,” I tell her. “This is my city. I know it pretty well. Try me.”
“I know the city too,” she says. “But the Moon Casters make themselves hard to track down.”
“You’re looking for Moon Casters?”
“I’m hunting them,” she says.
“By yourself? You’ll be killed.”
“I’m pretty good.”
“You’re not good enough to take on a whole coven,” I tell her. “Nobody’s that good.”
“That’s my problem,” she says, her voice harsh. “I’m not asking you to help me fight them. I’m just asking you to help me find them. Can you do it or not?”
The answer to that question is no. I have no idea where any Moon Caster covens are. I’ve hunted them in my day, of course, but they stay on the move, and the only ones I’ve ever successfully killed have been away from the larger group.
I’m a good Moon Caster hunter. I’m probably the best there is. But you don’t go looking for the coven. That’s crazy.
But Lyra is watching me, waiting for an answer, and I know that if she starts up the stairs for a third time, there won’t be anything I can do to bring her back.
“Sure,” I tell her. “I know where there’s a coven.”
A blatant lie.
But she believes me. I can see it in the way her face relaxes.
“You’ll take me to them?”
“You aren’t going to ask me to fight them?”
I have to make this believable. If I over promise here, she’s going to get suspicious.
She rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, I definitely see what you mean about needing you for protection,” she says. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to fight the big bad Moon Casters.”
“I’m not afraid of Moon Casters,” I tell her. “I’ve killed nine of them in my time. How many have you killed?”
She doesn’t answer, which confirms my suspicions—she hasn’t killed any.
“It’s just a bad plan,” I tell her. “This is what my alpha’s problem was. He’d come up with all kinds of crazy bullshit and expect people to follow it blindly, even when his ideas were objectively stupid.”
“You’re saying I’m stupid.”
“I’m saying your idea to attack a full coven of Moon Casters is stupid,” I say. “But it’s like you said, isn’t it? That’s not my problem. You just want me to help you find them. Right?”
“Right,” she says.
“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll take you to them, then. After that, you can do whatever you want.”
“How do I get you out?” she asks. “Can you pick locks?”
“Never have before.”
“Grab that nail on the floor over there.”
I point it out.
“That ought to work.”
She fetches the nail and I talk her through the process of opening the padlock on my cage. Finally, the door swings wide, letting me out. I scramble for freedom and rise to my feet, stretching my body out fully for the first time in four days.
She averts her eyes, and I remember that I’m naked. My clothes are in a heap in the corner. I grab them and pull them on.
“When will your pack be back?” she asks. “Or are they coming back at all?”
“Probably not for three days,” I told her. “That’s when they were supposed to let me out of the cage. But I’m not planning to go back to them. Not after this. I always knew my alpha was a jackass, but I never knew he had this in him. I can’t be loyal to him anymore.”
She nods as if that doesn’t require any further explanation.
“We have time to wait out the storm, then,” she says. “Let’s go upstairs so we can keep an eye on it. We’ll leave as soon as it lets up.”
- Writer
