Page 57

“Lysander told me that,” Cassian explained. “That alphas think with their knots. It’s how he gets Hamish to do things around the house that Hamish doesn’t really want to. Like clean the toilet.”

“Okay, Cass, just to be clear—” Diwa’s hands came apart from his mouth and began conducting the air in front of him, which was the warning sign that a lecture was incoming. “There is no scientific evidence that alphas think with their knots. Zero. None. The knot is erectile tissue, Cassian. It engorges during arousal and facilitates the locking mechanism during intercourse. It does not contain neurons. It does not process information. It is not a secondary brain.

“Yes, there’s a hormonal array — testosterone, vasopressin, oxytocin — that influences cognition and behaviour during rut and during bonding, and yes, those hormones are produced in higher concentrations in alphas than in betas or omegas, but all higher cognitive functions are centralised in the brain. The prefrontal cortex. Not the knot.” Diwa frowned. “Lysander is a very intelligent person and I love him, but if he told you that, he was only being colloquial, and colloquial statements about reproductive anatomy are how you’re kept misinformed.”

Cassian nodded along through most of it. He caught prefrontal cortex and hormonal array and colloquial. The rest of Diwa’s lecture passed him by, the way lectures always did, but one piece stuck.

Talk to him and find out where you both are.

“I’ll talk to him,” Cassian said, mostly to make Diwa stop talking.

“Good. That’s good, Cass. You don’t need to go in with a script or a plan. Just tell him what you told me, that you don’t understand what happened, and you’d like to.”

“Okay.” Cassian pulled the cushion away from his chest and set it back where it belonged. “I can do that.”

Diwa looked back at the bag. He reached into it and lifted out the pistachio gelato, turning the tub to read the label. A wooden spoon had been taped to the side of the tub.

Diwa peeled the spoon free, popped the lid, and held both out to Cassian. “You can bring him some of this. As an opening.”

Cassian laughed. “No, Diwa. That’s mine.”

“Cass, there are four tubs.”

“Yes.” Cassian took the open tub and the spoon from Diwa’s hands and cradled them to him. “Four tubs, for me, from Felix, since Felix loves me even though he’d rather die than say it out loud.”

Diwa looked at the bag where the salted caramel tub sat.

“You can have some, Diwa,” Cassian offered, since Diwa had done his best to help.

Diwa was already reaching for the salted caramel, and his thumb was under the lid by the time Cassian budged over and lined up an episode of Love Island for them to watch.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The pistachio gelato was gone. The salted caramel was gone. The Biscoff spread had been attacked with a dessert spoon and left for dead, and the honeycomb shards had been consumed in their entirety during a devastating scene in which Victor told Lily he needed space, which was rich coming from a man who kept turning up at her workplace with coffee.

Cassian lay in bed at one in the morning with an empty tub balanced on his chest and the freeze-dried raspberries in his fist, eating them one at a time and staring at the ceiling.

He couldn’t go to Ruari. He’d learned this from Twilight, which Diwa had let him watch on the condition that Cassian verbally acknowledge that it was not a documentary. Edward had watched Bella sleep without her permission, and Diwa had paused the film to deliver a lecture about boundaries that lasted longer than the scene itself. The central thesis of which was: you do not turn up at someone’s home uninvited in the middle of the night, even if you are cosmically in love with them. That was how people got restraining orders placed against them.

But his mobile was on the pillow beside him, fully charged.

Cassian pulled up his messages, found Ruari’s name, and started typing. The letters came slowly. He checked each word against the spelling voice in his head that sounded like Colin, patient and flat, sounding out the syllables with him until the shapes matched.

ruari are we broken up

He stared at the message, then hit send. The bubble sat there on the screen, and the delivered receipt appeared.

He kept going.

i have thought about it and i don’t want to be

His thumb hovered over the full stop. Diwa had told him to say what he felt and find out where they both were. Diwa’s method involved an actual conversation, but text was better. Text let Cassian say everything in his head, once he’d had time to line the words up.

reasons

He numbered them, knowing that arguments were more persuasive when they were organised. Colin had been talking about job applications at the time he’d given that piece of advice, but Cassian couldn’t see why the same principle wouldn’t apply to the preservation of a romantic relationship.

1. i like your hands