“He’s been like that all morning,” Simon muses, opening his arms to me.
I crawl into them and settle against him, letting myself do nothing but feel. Our bond feels so different from what I feel with my affinity. I feel Cassian’s feelings somewhere deeper, in a more essential part of my being. Through our bond, Cassian has somehow spun our souls together.
“You make him so very happy,” my sweet beta tells me, squeezing me tight to his side.
But it’s not just Cassian I feel. I’m not mated to Simon—and never can be—but through Cassian’s mating bond with the beta, I feel him too. He’s more distant than Cassian, more like an impression or an echo, but his joy is no less potent, sweeter, somehow, than Cassian’s.
“You too?”
“Me too, kit-kat. I’m over the fucking moon.”
I nuzzle into him.
I'm not a stranger to feeling what others are feeling. If anything, my affinity has prepared me for being bonded, but just like with my affinity, I don't know how to shut out the bond. I don't know how to clear my head to find my own feelings beneath Cassian and Simon's joy. I'm newly mated to the first alpha I ever loved, but my feelings are far more complicated than my alpha and beta's bright and buoyant happiness.
I want to feel the untethered, unrestrained elation they do, but I can't shake the feeling of dread. Too many horrors have buried it deep within me. It’s in every cell of my body, in my flesh and in my bones.
More than my alphas, more even than my honor guard, this dread has been my constant companion since my designation first revealed. It's a shadow that lurks in every happy memory, a pinch in my gut that never seems to go away completely, even in my most joyous moments. It's a gnawing, vicious thing, an insidious whisper in my thoughts that, at any moment, I could lose everything.
My magic.
My freedom.
My life.
My men.
For all that the bite on my neck has brought me happiness beyond measure, I can’t shake the ever-present undercurrent of dread.
They will retaliate. My father and Andrew Radcliffe.
I know my father won't hesitate to hurt me. He already has in the worst ways possible, strapping me down to a hospital bed, pumping my veins full of poison. Stealing away my magic and my memories. He’s a man who doesn't take disobedience lightly, a man easily slighted. He will find a way to punish me, of that I'm certain. But it's Cassian who I'm worried about. Cassian has insulted my father, and that is something Redwood Rose will not soon forget.
My anxiety roils in my belly, and I curl in on myself, hiding my face in Simon's shoulder. If anything were to happen to Cassian, saints, the toll it would take on the beta who holds me so sweetly...
It’s not just my father we should fear. My father is a man of influence and connections, but a man of prudence as well. He does his dark deeds in secret, in clandestine medical facilities and through conversations held behind closed doors. Appearances mean everything to my father, and he'll go to great lengths to maintain them.
Rad has no such compunctions. He gets what he wants, and he never gets caught, faces no repercussions for his crimes. While he once hid the murder of Heather Lindstrom behind golden-boy smiles, he has grown bolder, encouraged by the terror that reigns in the world around us. He believes, like many others do, that he’s untouchable. I know now that isn’t true, but when struck, Andrew Radcliffe strikes back harder. Eventually, his retaliatory blow will result in the death of me or one of my men.
Grief seizes my heart, banding around it like creeping briars.
Rad could kill mymate.
Simon startles and touches my shoulder just as Cassian bursts into the room, eyes wild.
“What’s wrong? What’s hurt you?” he demands, looking me over to make sure I’m unharmed. But of course I’m not harmed. I’m behind the gates of the Leclerc estate, protected by layers and layers of the most powerful wards imaginable.
Our bond. Saints, I’m still not used to it. Cassian felt my pain and came running to my side, and Simon felt it too, down the length of the bonds we share with the worried alpha.
He crosses to the nest and drops down beside me instantly, pulling me into his arms, sandwiching me between his body and Simon’s. “You’re safe, Junes. I’ve got you.”
“They’re going to retaliate. Rad and my father.”
Cassian buries my head in his neck where his scent is strongest, and I breathe him in, letting summer sunshine and salty sea air anchor me in the ocean of my grief.
“I... I’ve been thinking about that. I’m buying out your mating contracts. All four of them. I hate that this is our best option. Saints know I loathe the very idea of it.”
“You’re paying him for the privilege of mating me. You’re... you’re buying me.” Rationally, I know that Cassian buying out my mating contracts is as different from Rad bidding on one of them as night and day, but something about it still stings. When the ink has dried on my mating contracts, when Cassian has transferred the money from his account to my father’s, I’ll belong to Cassian, sold from one alpha to another.
