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CASSIAN CALYX: He didn’t shrink.

That’s the simplest way I can put it. Every omega I’d ever known, including me, we made ourselves smaller around alphas. It was trained into us from the day we presented.

Lysander didn’t do that. He swore. He argued. He told Hamish exactly what he thought, right to his face, and Hamish didn’t punish him for it. Hamish laughed. He loved Lysander more, not less, for being loud and difficult and completely impossible. I watched that happen every single day in that little house in Melbourne, and my whole understanding of what I was allowed to be started coming apart.

[Pause.]

He taught me that my body belonged to me. He said, “Your body isn’t a gateway for alphas, Cass. It’s yours. It’s just yours.” And I didn’t believe him at first. I couldn’t.

But he kept saying it, and he’d just live it, right in front of me, every day. He’d walk around the house in Hamish’s T-shirt with his shoulders back and his chin up, and the way he existed in his own skin was so different from anything I’d been taught that eventually I couldn’t pretend that he was telling me impossible things.

My life changed when Lysander came to be with Hamish in Melbourne. I don’t think I’d be sitting here without him.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: I’d like to move now to Uriel Thompson. Can you tell us about your contact with him during this period?

CASSIAN CALYX: I didn’t listen to Lysander.

[Pause.]

Everything Lysander showed me, everything he tried to teach me about what I deserved and what my body was for. I heard all of it. I understood some of it. Then Uriel came to Melbourne and found me, and I fell for everything he said to me.

I still believed Uriel was the Evermate who had been written into my heart.

The Lumineer chose Charles for me. But I never stopped believing that the Lumineer had made an error. So either the Light was wrong about Charles, or I was wrong about Uriel, and I couldn’t survive either of those being true.

When Uriel turned up in Melbourne, it felt like the correction I’d been waiting for. The Universe had realised its mistake and sent him to me. He was gentle. He asked me questions about my life outside the compound, and he listened to the answers like they mattered. He told me I was still sacred, still the most precious vessel the Family had ever been blessed with, and that what Charles had done to me was a violation of the Light, not a fulfilment of it.

I wanted so badly for that to be true.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Were you aware of Lysander’s concerns about Uriel during this time?

CASSIAN CALYX: Not in words. Lysander never said anything bad about Uriel. When I brought him to dinner, Lysander said he was very polite. Then he gave me rules: I had to text him and Hamish whenever I was with Uriel, and Uriel could only come to the cottage when one of them was there too. He said it wasn’t because they didn’t trust me. I know now that he was frightened for me, and that he kept it off his face, because if he’d told me Uriel was dangerous, I would have stopped telling him anything. I couldn’t have heard it anyway. Uriel’s voice was louder in my head than Lysander’s, since Uriel spoke in the language I’d been raised on, and it was the only one I really trusted.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Can you describe how your relationship with Uriel Thompson progressed?

CASSIAN CALYX: He started coming to Hamish’s cottage most days. He said the Universe had brought him to Melbourne for one reason, and that was to return me to the Light.

We…started Kindling.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: Can you describe what the Kindling involved, in practical terms?

CASSIAN CALYX: You don’t put anything in.

[Pause.]

I know that sounds like I’m not answering the question. But that’s the distinction they teach you, and it mattered to me at the time, since it meant it wasn’t sex. Sex was for your Evermate. Kindling is preparation for me to be able to properly receive my alpha. The omega sits in the alpha’s lap, and you move against each other, and his…it stays on the outside between you, but not in.

I was supposed to raise the flame inside myself. The alpha held me in position and I moved until the flame was high enough, and then I offered it up. The offering to the Light was the point. Not the pleasure. The doctrine was very clear about that. The pleasure was a side effect of opening yourself spiritually, and if you focused on it too much, you were doing it wrong.

Uriel held my wrists behind my back during the Kindling. He said it was part of the discipline, to stop my hands from interfering, because my hands would instinctively reach for things that weren’t allowed yet.

COUNSEL ASSISTING: You mentioned that Lysander became aware of what was happening between you and Uriel. Can you tell us about that?

CASSIAN CALYX: He walked in on us.

I’d been playing a documentary about coral reefs on my mobile. Loudly. Since I didn’t want Lysander to hear the sounds of what we were doing.

Lysander opened the door, and Uriel was on the bed with me in his lap. Uriel’s hands were around my wrists. My shorts were off. His clothes were off. We were…Kindling.