Chapter 15 Fifteen
Cassian's POV
I looked at my hands, at the silver life running just beneath the surface of my skin and deep in the marrow of my bones, and I felt alive for real for once in my life.
Twenty four years. Twenty-four years of being told I was weak. Submissive. Less than. An omega in a culture that deified strength above all else.
But in this moment, as I stood in that dungeon with broken chains at my feet and arguably the same power filling every one of my cells, I knew better.
I had never been weak. I'd been imprisoned.
The Lycan growled, the sound a low rumbling that resonated in the stone floor. He was blocking me and Rhea, broadcasting aggression with his body language.
"Stay back," Theron warned.
But I wasn't looking at him. My gaze was fixed on Rhea, and everything made terrible, beautiful sense.
How I had always felt since even when we were children. The unexplained urge to protect her, be near her. How my tattoos had glowed when she kissed me that evening before her wedding.
She was my mate. My true mate.
And Alaric had known. He’d known that bastard and kept me chained up like a dog all this time.
"How long have you known?" I said, my voice stronger than I’d ever heard it.
"Know what?" Rhea's voice was small, confused.
"That you were my mate." I moved forward, and the Lycan's growl grew louder. I stopped so as not to start a fight. Not yet. "Did you feel it too? Even before this?"
“I did feel something,” Rhea confessed softly. “But I assumed it was just friendship. Familiarity."
"It was more than that." I glanced at my glowing tattoos. “I got these when I was sixteen. The pack healer told him they were purely decorative, meaningless. But I researched them. True alphas have claim bites if they find their mate.”
"You were tested," Theron said. “Many times, from what I’ve heard about you. Every test said omega."
"Because Alaric made damn sure they would." The completely irrational anger I’d been simmering with for days had finally found its target. “When I was a kid, he repressed my alpha side. Bounded my power so I could be obedient, be controlled.”
Guards had come to the entrance of the dungeons, black and flashing power. But Theron waved them back with one hand while never looking away from me.
“That’s a nice story,” he said frostily.
"It's the truth." I met his gaze steadily. “Each time I attempted to go against Alaric, there was this… pull. This overwhelming need to obey. But being in contact with Rhea just now, it disintegrated whatever spell was working on me.”
I could detect the flicker of his belief in Theron's eyes, despite all that he tried to disguise it. He knew what Alaric could do. We both did.
“This doesn’t really change anything,” Theron said. "You still betrayed her. You still knocked her out and dragged her back to her father.”
"I know." I would live to be ashamed of that moment. "But I wasn't in control. Not really. Instead with Alaric’s binding each command felt like my own thoughts, like my own desires. I believed I was opting for duty over love. It didn’t occur to me that he’d completely hijacked my will.”
Rhea moved out Theron's way, ignoring his attempt to shield her. She scooted nearer to me and looked up in my face with her blue eyes.
“If you’re telling the truth,” she said slowly, “if Alaric did in fact bind your power, then you’re another part of the prophecy.
“Four mates to bring together four bloodlines,” I whispered, and the words felt like fate on my tongue. "Theron is one. I'm another. That leaves two more."
The alpha twins flickered into my head. Orin and Kieran. The men she was to marry.
Jealousy shot through me so hard I had to ball my fists in order to contain it. The idea of Rhea with them, cuffed to them made my own newly awakened alpha instincts howl.
Theron pulled Rhea towards one side and spoke in a low voice. But I could feel better now, louder butting into the current within me. I could hear every word.
"You're not actually thinking of listening to him," Theron sneered. "He betrayed you once. What if he does it again?”
Rhea’s answer was so soft I barely caught it. But I saw her face, the war written on it.
And when they came back, Rhea spoke with an authority I’d never heard in her before.
"Cassian stays. Under supervision. If at the end of the day he’s truly one of my mates, then we work it out together.”
Hope surged in my chest. She wasn't casting me out. Wasn’t there to damn me for my sins.
Theron seemed like he wanted to fight back. His jaw was clenched, his silver eyes tumultuous. But he simply nodded stiffly.
"Fine. But he remains in a secured room. And if you make one wrong move — ”
"I understand," I said quickly. “I won’t make you regret it.
They took me from the dungeons down some hallways I didn't know. The mansion was a vast, cavernous edifice, old and impressive in a way that put Alaric’s fortress to shame.
It was a comfortable room they led me to. A real bed, a window lined with bars, a cramped bathroom. It was still a prison, but most definitely an upgrade from the dungeons.
“There will be guards outside at all times,” Marcus said. I had learned he was Theron’s second. An elderly warrior with keen eyes that didn’t miss a thing. "Don't test our hospitality."
"I won't," I promised.
After they departed and locked the door behind them, I lay back on my bed with tears rolling down my cheeks as I gazed at my hands.
The light had dimmed, but I could still feel the force thrumming under my skin. Waiting. Ready.
For 24 years, I’d been half a person. Bound and controlled and diminished.
But now I was whole. And I would never allow anyone to cage me again.
My brain spun with what that could mean. The words of the prophecy had been for four mates. Theron was one, obviously. I was another.
That left two more.
The alpha twins made sense. They possessed the contract, that political alignment. And assuming the prophecy was truth, if Rhea truly was meant to bring together four bloodlines, Orin and Kieran seemed to add up.
The very thought made my blood seethe with possessive anger. But I made myself think rationally.
We would all have to, at least theoretically, figure out how to coexist, if we were in fact her mates homogeneously. To share her.
The very idea was foreign. Alphas didn't share. We took — we dominated — we owned.
But Rhea wasn't a possession. She was a person. Someone who was entitled to choices, agency, respect.
I would fight for her and give whatever it took to earn me a place in her life. Even if it did mean learning to share with three other alphas.
Night fell slowly. I looked out of the barred window as the sun dipped behind a mountain, turning the sky orange and purple.
I should have been planning. Contemplating ways to win Theron’s trust, and ways I could protect Rhea from whatever it was that Alaric had in store.
Instead, what came to mind was that kiss. The night before her wedding, when she’d begged me to take her away.
For that single instant, I had experienced freedom. We know what it felt like to pick love over duty.
Then I'd betrayed that choice. Betrayed her. Betrayed myself.
But here I had an opportunity to get it right. To be the man she deserved, the mate she required.
I wouldn't waste it.
Hours later, well after the house had fallen silent, I heard my door open.
Sitting up right away, I thought it was a guard. But instead Rhea slid quietly inside, shutting the door behind her.
My heart stopped.
She was dressed in a plain frock, with her hair hanging loose on her shoulders. She looked ethereal in the moonlight that filtered through the window. Beautiful. Mine.
“I am not supposed to be here,” she murmured. "Theron would be furious."
"Then why are you?" I rose to my feet, carefully not wanting to spook her.
Rhea came nearer, and the little space between us was agony. "I need to know the truth. Alaric made you betray me, really? Or did you decide to resurrect me?"
The question cut deep. Because a part of me would always be asking the same question. How much of that had been the binding of Alaric, and how much had been my own cowardice?
I took her hand, and was thankful she didnøÄôt pull it away. "I felt like I had chosen duty over desire. But he bound my will, Rhea. While he gave each order, I felt like he was speaking from inside me. Just like my thoughts and wants.”
Tears welled in her eyes. "I wanted to hate you."
"You should hate me." My voice came out rough. “I despise myself for what I’ve done.”
Rhea looked at my face, and I wondered what she was seeing. The boy she'd grown up with? The traitor who'd betrayed her? Or something else entirely?
She inched closer, and I could smell her. Wildflowers and moonlight and some special touch that is Rhea’s.
"The mate bond," she whispered. "I can feel it now. With you. With Theron. It's overwhelming."
“I have felt it for years,” I confessed. “I just didn’t know what it was. Did not know why I could not stay away from you and why every other woman felt wrong.”
Rhea’s hand caressed my face and I moved into her touch as if starved and she had offered me bread.
"Cassian," she breathed.
Before I could respond, before I could pour my heart out to her in a way that I hadn’t been able to do for years, the door was flung open.
Theron was standing there, his silver eyes burning in anger that seemed to make the air snap with power.
“Back away from her,” he growled. "Now.”