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Felix took a mouthful of mille-feuille, leaned sideways, then spat it into his napkin, and dragged the linen across his tongue.
“These pastries are shit,” he declared.
“They’re from Ladurée, Felix.”
“I don’t care if they’re from the hands of Christ himself.” Felix dropped the pastry back into the box. “That cream tastes like wallpaper paste. What happened to the ones from your hot baker?”
Cassian gripped the edge of the table. “I went somewhere else.”
Felix set his napkin down and looked at him.
Cassian pulled the box towards himself, selected a croissant, and bit into it. The pastry yielded without shattering, collapsing into a doughy chew where Ruari’s would have exploded into a shower of bronze flakes. The butter was there, technically, but the flavour landed flat on his tongue and stayed there.
He chewed and took another bite. The alternative was admitting that the best pastry he had ever eaten came from a shop on Portobello Road that he couldn’t walk into any more.
“Yum!” Cassian said, with enough enthusiasm to make up for Felix’s reaction.
Ivar took a croissant from the box and tore it in half. He chewed methodically.
“The inside has a good gummy texture,” Ivar said. “In Skalavik, we have a bread called klabbröd that is prized for exactly this quality. The ideal klabbröd should resist the teeth like cold hákarl before yielding.”
“What’s hákarl?” Cassian asked.
“Fermented shark. Buried in gravel for four months and then hung in a drying shed until the ammonia reaches acceptable levels.”
“Acceptable to whom?” Felix asked.
“To those of a solid Viking constitution.” Ivar ate more croissant. “This is very similar. Minus the ammonia.”
Cassian couldn’t tell whether Ivar was helping, but the croissant was disappearing into him at a steady rate.
Felix brushed a crumb from his sleeve. “So the baker is no more?”
“The baker is fine,” Cassian said. “He’s sorting himself out. He’s been doing that for the last few weeks, and I’ve been doing the same, separately.”
He pulled Fallon onto his lap and sank his hands into her coat.
“The point is that I’ve only ever known one alpha. Properly known, I mean. Before Ruari there was Charles, and I didn’t choose Charles. Then Ruari arrived and he was the opposite of Charles in every single way, and I chose him immediately. He was warm and loud, fed me good things, and he didn’t tie me up.”
He scratched behind Fallon’s ears. “But that’s not choosing. That’s just running in the other direction. If the only alphas I’ve ever known are a man who hurt me and a man who didn’t, then picking the one who didn’t isn’t a real choice.”
Felix and Ivar exchanged a glance across the table that contained an entire silent conversation Cassian couldn’t quite read but suspected ended with reluctant agreement.
“There is logic to that,” Ivar conceded.
“Twisted logic,” Felix added, reaching for a macaron from his own spread.
Cassian beamed at them both.
“So I’ve decided to make myself a dating profile!” Cassian took his mobile from his pocket and handed it to Felix, screen-first. “I tried to get Diwa to help me, but he said no. Apparently we don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Felix took the mobile by one corner. “Cassian, we don’t have that kind of relationship either.”
“Last week, we listened to Ivar tell us about the time he topped Toby and how he didn’t like the responsibility.” Cassian folded his arms. “He said that he preferred having things done to him, and you asked three follow-up questions. It’s my turn to be listened to now.”
Ivar’s shoulder lifted into a shrug. “Again, very logical.”
“I spent hours on it, and I ran the whole thing through Grammarly, which Lysander let me put on his credit card, so the spelling is all correct. There shouldn’t be a single mistake, so you don’t need to check that. Just check what I’m saying.”
