243

243
Cassian POV
I didn’t linger in Strowhowl after the council hearing. There was no point. My business wasn’t here it was waiting for me back home.
After everything we’d witnessed, after everything we’d nearly lost, I wasn’t about to waste another breath. The universe had handed us something rare: survival. A second chance. And I knew damn well mercy like that doesn’t show up twice.
Someone was waiting for me. A fierce, sharp-tongued woman who pushed every one of my buttons and still managed to make my chaotic world make sense. Indira.
She’d torn into my life like a storm, and I’d spent too long pretending I didn’t want to get swept up in it. No more excuses. No more distance under the guise of doing what was “right.” I was done holding back.
Dravina was smiling again. For the first time in years, her eyes carried light instead of shadow. If she could forgive me, maybe I could start forgiving myself, too.
So we packed up. Maelor, Merritt, and I hit the road back to Firestone, my pulse quickening with every mile closer to home to her. That was all I could think about.
Indira had never been subtle. She’d been everywhere since she arrived cutting into my space, testing me with every smirk, tossing her sharp words like challenges. I’d tried to resist, tried to act unaffected. But resisting her was like trying to fight gravity.
And I was tired of pretending I didn’t want to fall.
She wanted me. She never hid it. But the terrifying part? She could leave whenever she chose. She wasn’t tied here. She had every reason to walk away and that thought gutted me more than I cared to admit.
Fang stirred in my mind, his voice sharp with amusement. What if she chooses to leave?
I stayed silent.
He eased back, smirking in the way only he could. You’ve been a real bastard, Cassian. You better hope she doesn’t.
And he wasn’t wrong.
I had plenty to make up for. But first? I had to get home.
We rolled into Firestone under the cover of night, everyone running on fumes. Too tired to talk, too drained to do anything except collapse and breathe relief that we’d made it back alive.
The second I stepped into the pack house, I didn’t stop for pleasantries. I went straight to my wing the apartment I once shared with Dravina.
The emptiness hit like a blow to the chest. Everything sat exactly as we’d left it, but the air felt hollow, lifeless. Like a ghost of something that used to matter.
I stripped down and stepped into the shower. Scalding water poured over me, but it couldn’t wash away the weight pressing on my shoulders every regret, every misstep, every unsaid word that gnawed at me in the silence.
I braced my palms against the tile, eyes shut tight. Don’t fuck this up.
This was supposed to be a new beginning, a clean slate. But the voice in the back of my mind whispered the truth I didn’t want to face.
What if she doesn’t want you anymore?
She was free now. She had choices. And what if I wasn’t one of them?
I told myself I’d wait until morning, give her space, do the smart thing. But patience wasn’t in me.
I threw on a clean shirt and shorts, then headed down the hall. Her scent hit me before I reached her door warm, sweet, undeniably hers. It pulled me in, unstoppable.
I froze outside, hand hovering over the wood but refusing to move.
What the hell was wrong with me? I’d faced traitors, bloodshed, death itself yet here I was, standing like some awkward teenager too nervous to knock on a girl’s door.
That’s what she did to me.
That wicked mouth of hers sharp, unfiltered, always ready to cut me down and somehow still make me want to chase her. She was chaos in silk, and she had me unraveling.
A low laugh escaped as I remembered one of her smart-ass remarks.
I was just about to knock when the door swung open.
And there she was.
Wrapped in one of those silky robes she wielded like a weapon this one sheer, teasing, with lace peeking through, clinging to every curve as if it had been designed to dismantle me.
She owned a whole arsenal of these damn things. And this one? This one short-circuited my brain.
She didn’t look surprised. Not even close.
Instead, she arched a brow, tilted her head, and let her voice glide out smooth, knowing, lethal.
“Took you long enough.”