Chapter 7 Seven

Chapter 7 Seven

Chapter Seven

Cassian's POV

The hallway felt too narrow for what was building inside me.

I moved down the stairs with my claws already half out, each step deliberate and quiet. The kind of quiet that came before something irreversible. Kael pressed against my skin like a second heartbeat, furious and electric, ready to tear the world apart.

Paige stood in my foyer.

She had kicked through the side window by the door. Glass crunched under her heels like she owned the floor. She was beautiful in the same cold, calculated way a blade was beautiful. Dark hair, June's same hazel eyes but emptied of everything soft. She wore BloodMoon's colors across her shoulders and Adrian's fresh mark sat vivid and raised on her throat like a brand she was proud of.

It made my stomach turn.

She looked up at me and smiled. Slow. Satisfied.

"There he is." Her voice was honey over gravel. "The great Shadow Alpha, playing rescue dog for damaged goods."

I said nothing. I came off the last step and stopped six feet away, arms loose at my sides. My wolf read her posture, read the two BloodMoon soldiers flanking the broken window behind her. Both male. Both nervous. Good. They should be.

"You're bleeding on my floor," I said quietly.

She glanced at the thin cut on her wrist from the glass and shrugged. "Send me a bill."

"I'll send your alpha your teeth."

The smile flickered. Just for a second. Then it came back stronger because women like Paige hated showing the flinch more than they hated the threat itself.

"June isn't yours," she said, lifting her chin. "She never completed a bond. She's unclaimed. BloodMoon law says unclaimed omegas from our pack return to pack territory." She tilted her head. "Adrian wants her home."

The word home in her mouth, applied to June, made something ugly rise in my chest.

"Adrian wants her back because she ran," I said. "Because she survived what he did to her. Because her existing is an embarrassment to him." I took one step forward. "And you're here because you're afraid she'll eventually stop surviving quietly and start talking loudly."

Color moved up her throat. Her composure cracked at the edges.

"She's weak," Paige snapped. "She always has been. She latched onto you because you pulled her from a ditch. That's not a mate bond. That's a stray following whoever feeds it."

Behind me, from the top of the stairs, I heard June's breath. She had not stayed in the room. Of course she hadn't. I felt her there the way I felt weather changing, that pressure in the air, the specific weight of her heartbeat against mine.

I did not turn around. I kept my eyes on Paige.

"You came here to take her back," I said. "Or you came here to watch her break in front of you one more time. Either way, you're leaving empty."

"You can't keep her. Not legally. Not under inter-pack—"

"She is my mate."

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. Everything rippled outward. The two soldiers at the window shifted their weight. Paige's jaw tightened.

"That's not possible," she said, but something behind her eyes moved. Fear, maybe. Or the calculation of someone whose entire story just got complicated.

"I don't need you to believe it." I tilted my head. "Your alpha will feel it when I complete the bond. When his claim on her snaps for good, he'll feel it like a fist through his chest." I let that settle. "I'm looking forward to it."

Paige stepped forward, her composure re-assembled into something sharper and uglier. "She told you lies. Whatever she whispered in your bed about what Adrian did, whatever victim story she—"

"I saw the scars."

The foyer went very quiet.

Paige's mouth closed. For the first time since she walked through my window, she had nothing to say.

"I don't need her words," I continued. "Bone doesn't lie. Healed breaks don't lie. The way a person flinches at a raised hand doesn't lie." I let my voice go flat and final. "You knew. You watched it happen and you stepped into the space she left. So do not stand in my house and talk about lies."

She swallowed. Her chin stayed up but her shoulders had changed.

Behind me, June made a sound. Small. Tight. Like she was holding something enormous inside her chest with both hands.

"June." I spoke without turning. "You don't have to come down."

A pause. Then her bare feet were on the stairs. She came down slowly, stopping two steps from the bottom, which put her above Paige's eye level. Her hair was loose, her shirt hanging off one shoulder, and she looked exactly like what she was. Someone who had been through a war and was still standing.

The sisters looked at each other.

Paige's expression shifted through several things too fast to name.

"Come home," she said finally, and something in her voice had changed. It was quieter. Almost human. "Adrian will forgive the—"

"I'm not asking for forgiveness." June's voice was steady. Steadier than I expected. "I didn't do anything that needs forgiving."

Silence.

"He'll come for you himself," Paige said softly. A warning now, not a taunt. "You know what he's like when he decides something."

"I know exactly what he's like." June met her sister's eyes. "And now he'll learn what Cassian is like."

I felt the bond between us pull tight and warm, like a cord that had been fraying for days finally finding its true tension.

I turned to the soldiers by the window. One look. They stepped back through the broken frame without a word.

Paige lingered for one more breath, her eyes moving between me and June, reading something she clearly hadn't expected to find. Then she walked out through the front door, unhurried, head high, heels crunching over her own mess.

The door clicked shut.

June exhaled slowly from the stairs. I crossed to her and stood at the bottom step, our faces nearly level, and I put both hands on her waist.

"You didn't stay in the room," I said.

"No."

"I told you to."

"I know." Her hands came up to my chest, fingers curling into my shirt. "She needed to see me standing up. Not hiding." Her eyes searched mine. "Was that wrong?"

I pulled her off the step and into my arms, her feet leaving the ground, and held her the way I should have held her the moment I found her in the forest.

"No," I said into her hair. "That was exactly right."