Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darkness from the west trembles in the light
As the sun rises on a new empire
Shatter, crack, and take back what is right
The golden bonds escape the pyre
Mother blessed unity births power unforeseen
The gods will bow before the strength of three

“Again.”

Nesta swallows down her wince. Swallows down the tingling pain in her cramped fingers. Swallows down the throb that's taken up home in her head, the way it makes everything fuzzy around the edges. Instead, she takes a deep breath, reaching for that well of power within herself. Sometimes, she likes to imagine it as a cat, napping in the sun when it's resting. She imagines that now, imagines stroking her hand along its fur until it begins to purr to life.

“Nesta.”

The cold, clipped tone has Nesta flinching instinctively. “I'm trying, Mama.”

“Clearly, you are not trying hard enough,” her mother scoffs, and even without looking at her, Nesta can imagine the disappointed scowl that's sure to be pinching Elinor Archeron's face. “You are an Archeron witch, or did you forget?”

“My magic is drained,” Nesta defends, squeezing her eyes tighter and trying to focus. “I just need another moment.”

“Drained?” Elinor's laugh is nothing short of mocking. “Your ancestors could do this in their sleep. You are a disgrace to our family name. I don't even know why I bother.”

“I can do it.”

Nesta knows her snapped words mean nothing if she can't prove it. She reaches for that beast inside her again and grabs fur until it roars. Until she can feel her magic slink between her fingers, wreathing its way up her arms. It sings in her veins and floods her lungs so every breath is pure power, writhing like a dancer in time to her pounding heart.

A hard strike across the face has Nesta crashing back down, a pained gasp tumbling past her lips. She cradles her cheek with her hand, blinking up at her mother, but Elinor's rage is potent. A fire practically blazes in those blue eyes, its path of wrath and destruction pinned right on Nesta.

“You stupid girl. Are you trying to burn the whole house down?”

“I'm sorry, Mama,” Nesta whispers before she swallows hard and stands up straight again, holding her chin high. Never cower, never let her see the cracks. “I'll be better next time.”

“You better be,” Elinor sneers, brushing her hands down the skirts of her dress and turning toward the door. It's a clear dismissal, an end to today's lessons. “Do not disappoint me, Nesta.”

Nesta can't help but flinch at the too loud sound of the door closing behind her mother. She presses a hand to her mouth to quiet the shuddering breath she lets out, blinking hard around the stinging heat pressing behind her eyes. When she presses her fingers to the skin of her cheek, she can still feel the lingering soreness from being slapped, but she's hopeful there won't be any bruising.

There certainly won't be a scar.

As if of their own accord, Nesta's fingers absentmindedly slide along the raised skin on her thumb. At least her mother's lessons aren't like the ones with her grandmother.

A knock at the door has Nesta almost jumping out of her skin in surprise, and for a fearful moment, she half wonders if her thoughts somehow summoned her grandmother back from beyond the grave. But then she hears her sister's voice, tentatively calling her name through the wood.

“Go away, Elain,” Nesta calls back, rolling her eyes even though her sister can't see her.

“But I need your help,” Elain protests, a hint of the whine Nesta knows always works on their father bleeding into her tone.

With a huff, Nesta stalks over to the door, yanking it open and not even bothering to hide her annoyance as she demands, “what?”

Elain chews on her lip, fiddling with the skirts of her dress, before admitting, “I lost Feyre.”

“What do you mean you lost Feyre?”

“Well, we were playing hide and seek, and she must have chosen a really good hiding place because I can't find her.”

“For Mother's sake,” Nesta sighs, already stepping out into the hall. “You know, next year, you'll be of a witch's age, and you won't have any more time for baby games.”

“Just because you came of age last year doesn’t mean you have to be so mean.”

Nesta’s steps stutter at Elain’s words, and she turns back around to find her sister still standing by the study door, her arms crossed and her expression less than impressed. Nesta knows that she’s right, but Nesta would also give anything to keep Elain and Feyre from turning thirteen. To let them play hide and seek and run through the gardens forever. To protect them from their mother’s clutches and her cruel lessons.

But Nesta has yet to find a spell for that.

So Nesta lets out a soft breath and offers Elain a small smile of apology. “Where did you already look for Feyre?”

Elain huffs quietly, practically a lamenting sigh, as she continues down the hall and to Nesta’s side. “I checked all the normal places. Under all the beds. Under Papa’s desk. All the closets.”

“Did you check the cellar?” Nesta asks, leading the way toward the main staircase.

“We’re not allowed down there, remember?”

“Exactly. And this is Feyre we’re talking about.”

Elain hums, and that’s answer enough for Nesta. With a shake of her head, she hurries down the main staircase and down the hall that leads to the cellar door. The dark wood looks unassuming, exactly as their mother intended it, but Nesta can feel the magic imbued within it. It seems to hum and whisper to her, seems to jump off the wood and skate across her skin and up her arms. If Nesta squints, she can even make out the protection runes carved beneath the wood stain.

Checking both ways down the hallway to make sure no one is watching, Nesta reaches forward, her fingers curling around the handle of the door. She closes her eyes and sucks in a deep breath, feeling the magic pulsing through her hand before the handle twists and the door opens. She grabs Elain’s wrist and tugs her inside, the door closing behind them with a quiet thud.

Neither of them say anything as they follow the winding staircase down, Elain keeping her hand firmly in Nesta’s own. Nesta can’t say she minds the contact. The cellar has always made her feel uneasy. It’s the way she always feels like she’s being watched when she’s down here. The way whispers seem to creep along the floor and the walls like fog, Nesta never quite able to hear the words being spoken, but always having the undeniable feeling that they’re saying her name. It’s the way the air is always thick and still, as if whatever ominous presence calls this dark place home is holding its breath, even as it smiles from the shadows with too sharp teeth.

Nesta lets out a quiet breath when they reach the bottom of the stairs, giving Elain’s hand a gentle, comforting squeeze. Or perhaps it’s to help ground herself. She turns her attention to the left, unsurprised to find the door at the very end is cracked open, watery light spilling out around the edges like some sort of eerie beacon.

For a moment, Nesta hesitates, swallowing hard around the churning in her gut, the lump threatening to press into her throat. But then she swears she feels it, a presence beside her and Elain. But it doesn’t bring with it any of the unease the shadows of the cellar do. Instead, it feels almost warm, comforting. Like a mother’s hand curling around her shoulders, it urges her forward, guiding her through the door and into the room.

“You found me!” Feyre exclaims, jumping up from her spot crouched beside the door with a wide smile.

“Feyre, you know you’re not supposed to be in here,” Nesta seethes, already grabbing her youngest sister’s arm to tug her out of the room and back upstairs.

But Feyre yanks herself free, crossing her arms across her chest. “Just because you’re the oldest, that doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.”

Feyre sticks her tongue out, belying her eleven years of age, and Nesta merely rolls her eyes. “I’m serious. Mama would be furious if she knew.”

“We get it, Nesta. You’re Mama’s favorite, always the perfect child. That doesn’t mean the rest of us want to be.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, what you don’t know.”

“Um…” Elain speaks up quietly, breaking up her sisters’ glaring contest. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

Nesta snaps her attention to the center of the room, to the magical object she’s always refused to look directly at for too long. The Cauldron stands on a slightly raised wooden platform, the wide circumference large enough that Nesta is sure it could swallow all three of her and her sisters whole if it wanted to. The black iron it’s made from is dark as night, dark enough to drown any light, any life, even as the legends sing of life being poured from it.

And for the first time since Nesta ever laid eyes on it, the Cauldron truly seems alive.

The liquid inside bubbles and pops, dark smoke rising and curling from its depths. The smoke spills over the edge of the platform, slithering down the platform and across the floor to them. Nesta swears it looks almost star flecked as it creeps closer to Feyre, threatening to curl around her ankles. Feyre jumps away from the smoke, hiding behind Nesta and curling her hands tight enough around Nesta’s arm that her nails bite into the skin.

“What’s it doing?” Feyre demands, her voice barely above a hushed whisper.

“I don’t know,” Nesta mutters, her own voice quiet, as if the Cauldron might hear them if they’re too loud. “But we need to get out of here.”

Nesta turns on her heel to do just that, keeping Feyre with her, but her feet stutter before she can even take a single step. Elain’s eyes have completely glazed over, the honey brown color of them foggy, and her gaze is focused solely on the Cauldron. Her expression is entirely blank in a way that has alarm bells ringing in Nesta’s head, has every hair on the back of her neck standing on end.

“Elain…” Nesta starts cautiously, watching with wide eyes as her sister starts to walk closer to the Cauldron. “Elain, what are you doing?”

Whether her sister can hear her or not, Nesta isn’t sure. Elain continues walking until she’s stood right at the foot of the wooden platform, smoke dancing and curling up her calves like flames, sparking against her skin like daylight. Like a puppet on strings, Elain’s hand slowly raises from her side, her outstretched hand reaching forward.

“Elain, don’t!”

Nesta’s free hand curls around Elain’s wrists at the same moment Elain’s fingers curl around the lip of the Cauldron. Nesta’s chest heaves, her entire body tensing up in anticipation, but nothing happens. There’s no explosion, no blinding light. The ground doesn’t shake and rumble beneath their feet. There’s just that choking stillness.

“Darkness from the west trembles in the light,” Elain speaks, her voice somehow sounding far away, like it’s not her own.

“Elain?” Nesta whispers, giving her sister’s wrist a tentative squeeze.

“As the sun rises on a new empire—”

“What’s wrong with her? Why is she saying that?” Feyre asks over Elain’s still speaking voice.

“I don’t know,” Nesta hisses, turning over her shoulder to glare at Feyre.

“The golden bonds escape the pyre—”

“Elain,” Nesta tries again, tugging on her sister’s hand more forcefully. “Stop that.”

“—unity births power unforeseen.” Nesta drops Feyre's hand and steps forward, physically prying Elain’s fingers off the Cauldron. “The gods will bow before the strength of three.”

With a soft gasp, Elain stumbles back, Nesta curling an arm around her waist to try and hold her steady. Elain blinks a few times, and it’s stark relief that floods through Nesta as she takes in the bright brown color, pink flooding back into her sister's cheeks and face.

“What happened?” Elain asks, her words slightly slurred together.

Before Nesta can answer her, Elain’s eyes flutter closed, Nesta practically crashing to the cold, hard stone floor in her effort to catch Elain’s deadweight. She wraps her arms tightly around Elain, tugging so her sister’s head is cradled in her lap. Her heart starts to pound when she lifts her hand to Elain’s cheek, the skin cool and clammy beneath her touch. She snaps her attention back to Feyre, her youngest sister standing with wide eyes and her arms curled around herself.

“We need to get Mama.”

“Think harder, Nesta.”

It takes everything within Nesta to swallow down her sigh. She already knows what making such a sound will earn her, but it’s easier said than done. They’ve been at this for what feels like hours now.

“I told you, Mama. I can’t be sure,” Nesta explains, keeping her eyes downcast and away from where her mother is pacing across the room. “I was more focused on making sure Elain was okay.”

“Honestly, Nesta,” Elinor sighs, and though Nesta keeps her attention firmly on her own lap, she can perfectly imagine her mother’s expression. “Your sister gives a prophecy in the Cauldron’s presence, and you couldn’t bother to remember it?”

“There was…” Nesta squeezes her eyes shut, trying to focus. “There was something about unity. Blessed unity and it creating unforseen power… something about an empire, I think?”

“An empire? What about an empire?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Dammit, Nesta. Focus.”

The slap sings hard across Nesta’s cheek, the metallic taste of blood spilling in her mouth from how hard she bites her tongue to keep in her cry of surprise. Her fingers curl into fists in her lap, nails biting into her skin to ground herself, and Nesta takes a shaking breath in and out of her nose. She can tell that her mother’s patience is wearing beyond thin, that soon her mother will tire of this back and forth. And she knows that if she doesn’t do this, Elinor will turn her methods on Feyre next.

So taking another, more calming breath, Nesta imagines herself back in that room, in that cellar with her sisters. She imagines the Cauldron before her, bubbling and smoking. She imagines Elain’s face and the faraway look in her eyes. She imagines seeing Elain’s mouth move, the words spilling forth.

“The gods will bow before the strength of three,” Nesta recites back, just as Elain had.

She waits for her mother's clipping words, perhaps another slap over only remembering the single, final line, but there's only silence echoing in the room. Tentatively, Nesta raises her head, intent on meeting her mother's steely blue gaze head on, but Elinor's focus is far away, her attention snagged out the window. Nesta turns her own attention outside, curiosity piqued, but whatever her mother is staring at, whatever she sees laid out before her, it's only in her mind. Finally, she turns back to Nesta, the smallest hint of a smirk tugging at her painted lips.

“Perhaps you won't be a disappointment to the Archeron name after all.”

Chapter Text

Nesta

The Moonstone Palace looms tall before them, the white stone somehow glinting and sparkling like it was truly made from pieces of the silent giant above, even despite the heavy gray clouds shrouding the moon. Moonflower vines creep along the walls and the spires, purple bleeding from the centers and through the blooming white petals. Despite the sweet scent floating toward them on the breeze, Nesta can’t help but shudder.

No matter how beautiful it looks on the outside, Nesta has never particularly cared for the palace that the vampires call home. The blacked out windows and heavy curtains make it seem as if there may be someone watching at all times, an unseen gaze grating across her skin, and the whole building just screams of the wealth the vampires have acquired through their near immortal years. It doesn’t help that they always only visit this place in the dead of night either.

“I better not hear a word out of any of you tonight,” Elinor reminds her daughters, lifting up her skirts enough to lead the way up the front steps.

“Yes, Mama,” Nesta agrees quietly, speaking for both her sisters as well, and following their mother up the steps.

“I mean it,” Elinor clips, pausing just in front of the door and turning over her shoulder to glare. But those icy, blue eyes aren't pinned on Nesta. It’s Feyre on the other end of their mother’s ire.

Even with the distance between them, Nesta can see the way her youngest sister’s jaw clenches, the way her fingers twitch in the skirts of her own dress. Despite their mother's efforts to beat that defiance out of her youngest daughter, it's clear it still thrums just beneath Feyre's skin. But it's faint and dimmed. The black gossamer fabric twisting down Feyre’s arms hides the bruises Nesta knows have bloomed across her upper arm, remnants from the most recent lesson with their mother.

“I’ll be on my best behavior, Mama,” Feyre confirms, dropping her gaze away from Elinor. “I promise.”

“You better be,” Elinor says, turning back around and raising her hands toward the large, arching front doors with a flourish. “You all have no idea how important tonight will be. The future I am building for us all.”

With a flick of Elinor’s wrist, magic sparking across her fingertips in the dark, the large doors slide open, the old wrought iron hinges creaking. There’s a near echoing boom as the doors settle, and they all step inside, into the large room that makes up the front entrance. Towering pillars line each of the walls, stretching higher and higher toward the domed ceiling above. The heavy curtains that live there have been pulled aside, allowing milky pale light to filter through the stained glass and paint patterns across the marble floors.

Elinor strides forward with practiced ease, down the long halls covered with thick rugs and dotted with the occasional lush plants. Almost every single one is some sort of variation of a night blooming flower, thriving and green despite the shadows that shroud the whole palace. Various open doorways lead to other sitting rooms, dining rooms, and work areas, gossamer curtains swaying in an almost phantom, magical breeze dividing them from the main hall, but they all seem empty as they pass by.

The hall finally opens at the end into a massive dining hall, a large dark oak table taking up the majority of the space at the center of the room. And sitting around the table, already gathered, are the various leaders and their immediate circles. Nesta supposes she shouldn’t be too surprised that their family is the last to arrive for this meeting. She swears her mother feeds off the way all the chatter in the room dies as they step inside, the way every set of eyes turns to them.

With her shoulders back and head held high, Elinor continues forward to the remaining open chair around the table, but as Nesta follows behind, settling at her mother’s shoulder, she eyes the others in attendance, everyone in attendance for this meeting.

The Vanserra coven sits immediately to the right. It seems strange to see Eris Vanserra sitting front and center, the exact details of what happened to Beron Vanserra one of the coven’s best kept secrets. Still, the eldest seems to have stepped into the new leadership role quite seamlessly. He has an almost bored expression on his face, but Nesta doesn’t miss the way his amber eyes dart toward the dark shadowed corners of the room.

Two of Eris’s brothers stand at either of his shoulders, his second and third. Nesta recognizes the youngest of the Vanserras, Lucien. Even with his long, red hair hanging around his face, the scars around his eye are stark in the low light of the room, the result of a spell gone wrong that also killed two of the other Vanserra boys.

The vampires have claimed the seats directly across from Nesta and her family, Rhysand lounging casually in a high backed chair as though it’s a throne. His violet eyes flit around to everyone gathered, straying just a moment too long on the Archerons. Nesta almost thinks she imagines it, the shift in his eyes, dancing across his expression, before his attention turns to picking a piece of lint off his sleeve.

His second and third sit either side of him, the two vampire women completely different. The one sitting on his right has short, black hair, cut in a harsh bob right beneath her chin. Her gaze practically dares anyone to try and say a word to her, not an ounce of shame on her face as she drinks from a goblet filled to the brim with blood. The other woman, sitting on Rhysand’s left, has long, blonde hair running down her shoulders and back, brown eyes bright but no less threatening.

And to the left, taking up the final end of the table, are the wolves. The alpha of their pack, Cassian, sits at the center of their group, the dark curls of his hair pulled away from his face and piled atop his head in a bun. His arms are crossed over his chest, drawing emphasis to the width of his shoulders, the bulge of his arms, the span of his hands that come with being the quite literal top dog.

A man stands just to Cassian’s left, shaggy brown hair falling forward into a pair of brown eyes, and to Cassian’s right sits a woman, dark hair braided down over her shoulder. Surprisingly, her gaze is already pinned on Nesta. Nesta's spine straightens as the woman's eyes sweep up and down over her frame, and she can do nothing but watch as the woman leans over, clearly talking about her as she speaks quietly to Cassian.

Whatever is said, it has the alpha's eyes snapping to Nesta too, the hazel of them burning golden beneath the candlelight. For a moment, the breath hitches in Nesta's throat, having that attention solely on her. She wonders if he can hear it, the way her heartbeat starts to thud a bit quicker, wonders if he can see the way her pulse flutters in her neck, with those keen wolf senses. But Nesta refuses to back down. She raises her chin that little bit higher, daring to look down her nose at him.

“Elinor,” Rhysand breaks the silence, drawing the attention back to him.

“Rhysand,” Elinor offers back, her tone cold and face neutral.

“We all know why this meeting was called. The Cauldron is missing.”

“It was stolen,” Elinor corrects, her blue eyes narrowing across the table.

“Right from under your nose, it seems,” Eris sneers, earning a snicker from one of his brothers.

Elinor’s attention snaps to her right, and Nesta shifts uneasily as magic starts to spark at her mother’s fingertips. “If you’re going to accuse me of something, then do it.”

The atmosphere in the room turns tense and stifling, as though all of the air has been sucked out. It claws at the back of Nesta’s throat, scraping across her skin. Everyone around the tables seems to be holding their breath, seems to be bracing for the worst. Nesta swears she sees the vampires’ lips part, a hint of fangs peeking through. Swears she sees claws beginning to extend from the wolves’ fingers. It has her instinctively and protectively moving closer to her sisters.

“I’m merely commenting on the fact that the Cauldron was under your family’s protection, and yet you didn’t know it was even gone until the next morning,” Eris offers idly, arching a single, red eyebrow.

“I’ve warned you all for months about the threat Hybern poses, that their King’s strength is in spellwork, and now, suddenly, you’re all surprised? Questioning it?”

“No one is questioning or accusing anyone,” Rhysand cuts in, ever the placating host. “But Elinor, we all remember the Archeron’s reticence to the Accords, your family’s hesitance to sign the Treaty.”

Elinor scoffs at the vampire’s words, but it takes all of Nesta’s willpower to swallow down her wince. She still remembers overhearing her mother’s and grandmother’s words when she was a girl. Her grandmother's sharp, cutting words toward the vampires and wolves, at the idea of having any sort of Accords with them. The agreement from both matriarchs that working with the other factions was beneath the purity and power of the Archeron line. The criticism that the Accords makes their family weaker, not stronger.

“You’re right that Hybern is a threat,” Rhysand continues, his violet eyes dancing around to the others at the table before cutting back to Elinor. “But if we want to stand any chance against their King, if we want to find and return the Cauldron, it has to be together.”

“So what? You called a meeting just to scrutinize and ensure my dedication to the Accords?” Elinor asks, her tone derisive and mocking. “Was your spy not able to glean enough information? Where is your Shadowsinger hiding, anyways?”

“He’s not relevant right now,” Rhysand fires back, his own tone beginning to dip with annoyance.

“Honestly, Elinor. Your mocking questions aren’t helping your case here,” Eris adds, the frown tugging down his lips betraying the bored tone of his voice.

Elinor rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’d be more than happy to prove my family’s commitment if that’s what you’re after.”

“How?” Cassian speaks up to ask, his first words all night.

Nesta swears she sees the flicker of a smirk twitch up her mother’s lips, but as soon as she sees it, it vanishes like a trick of the candlelight. Elinor settles back in her chair, stretching her arms out either side of her.

“My daughters,” she answers the alpha’s question simply. “What better way to demonstrate than to offer a blessed union with each of them.”

“You can’t be serious,” Eris comments, something like surprised laughter coloring his voice.

“You all know how powerful my daughters are. You can’t deny that such unions would strengthen your own factions and strengthen the Accords.”

“You’d really force your daughters into marriages? Just like that?” Cassian asks.

“Force? My daughters would be more than happy to further solidify this alliance between us all. In fact, I’ll even let them choose.” Elinor turns over her shoulder, meeting Nesta’s gaze, but Nesta is all too familiar with that look, the fake smile and cold, burning eyes. “Nesta. You’re the eldest.”

Nesta’s entire chest feels tight, dark claws sinking into her lungs until she has to force air in and out. How long had their mother been planning this? Was this what she meant when she explained how important the night would be? No wonder she’d taken the time earlier to make sure all her daughters were in their best dresses, to ensure that Feyre swallowed down her defiance and kept her mouth shut. And now here they all stood, perfect little future wives on full display.

But what happens if she denies her mother’s suggestion, if she says no? Would the other factions oust the Archerons from the Accords? Loath as she is to admit it, Nesta knows that Rhysand is right. The only way they can defeat the King of Hybern and his magic and troops is as a unified front. Her family, her sisters, will only be vulnerable without the Accords. And the Mother only knows what Hybern would do if he got his hands on three of them.

This is the only solution. No question of if, but merely a question of who.

Nesta feels Elain practically shaking like a leaf beside her. Perhaps, she can have it so Elain ends up with the Vanserras. Ever since the accident and Beron’s death, there have been less stories of cruelty being whispered, and going from one coven to another, being around other witches, might be easier for her sister.

Nesta chances an accessing glance toward Feyre, but she finds her youngest sister already in some sort of glaring match with Rhysand. It seems the turn in conversation has solidly piqued the vampire leader’s interest and even more so, drawn his interest toward the youngest Archeron. But Feyre looks to be seconds away from slipping a shoe off her foot and throwing it at Rhysand’s head. It’s clear Nesta’s sister can hold her own, but that just leaves…

The wolves.

Swallowing hard, Nesta turns her full attention toward Cassian, refusing to balk as she meets his hazel gaze head on. “It would be an honor to join your pack.”

Cassian

Cassian sighs, pacing once more across the length of the room and digging his fingers up and through his hair. He still can’t quite wrap his mind around the events of the night, everything that’s happened. Every attempt to sort through it all feels like moving through a thick forest on a new moon’s night, like trying to navigate around trunks and brambles in shadowy darkness.

Ever since he’d heard the news of the Cauldron being stolen, he’s had his suspicions, his theories. Hell, there had always been something that hadn’t sat right with him, something that made his inner wolf’s hackles rise, even if he wasn’t confident whether it was merely witches or the Archerons specifically that stoked his wariness. And he’d known the Accords meeting was going to be a disaster, but he’d never expected this outcome, couldn’t have predicted how the meeting ended.

Marriage.

Of course, Rhys had all but jumped at the suggestion. Even Eris had agreed; although, he’d decided it would be his brother rather than the witch himself that would marry the middle Archeron daughter. Cassian still isn’t sure what Elinor Archeron gets out of this. Why she would suggest this or why her daughters would agree. He especially doesn’t understand why the eldest daughter would choose him and his wolves.

Cassian sighs again, pausing his pacing and settling his hands against the table, leaning heavily against his palms. “That had to be the stupidest decision that counsel has ever come to.”

“Hybern is a threat,” Baz reminds him, leaning casually back in his chair, feet propped up on the table. “A very real threat. And now their King has the Cauldron.”

“And this is the answer?”

“We all know the prophecy. ‘The gods will bow before the strength of three,’” Emerie offers from her own seat. “Having one of the Archeron sisters forever linked to the Pack might just be our best defense against whatever is coming.”

“And she’s the eldest too,” Baz adds. “We all know the eldest wolves tend to be the strongest. Perhaps it’s the same with witches.”

Cassian wants to laugh, shaking his head with a quiet huff. “A witch in our Pack…”

The notion feels absurd. Just speaking the words aloud has Cassian feeling like he’s stepped into another reality, an upside down world. He’s heard the demeaning whispers, seen the scornful looks, through the years. Since he rose through the ranks and took over as alpha, and even before then too. The comments, the pretentious expressions, they colored his childhood just as much as they trail and haunt him now.

It’s clear how everyone else views the wolves. They don’t have the money and wealth that comes from centuries of living like the vampires. They don’t have the power that comes from the magic pulsing through the witches veins like a raging, stormy sea. They have the strength everyone seems to want when conflicts arise, but nothing more. They’re the bastards of the factions. They’re expendable. Nothing but grunts and brutes.

“This really is a terrible idea,” Cassian mutters, pushing up to his full height again and rubbing a hand along his jaw.

“At least it’s the hot sister that wants to marry you,” Emerie comments, her brown eyes practically glinting in amusement as she smirks at him.

Cassian knows she’s just trying to lighten the mood, the remark drawing an easy laugh out of Baz, but Cassian still rolls his eyes and shakes his head. His second had made a similar observation at the meeting when the Archerons had first arrived, and though Cassian will never admit it aloud, he couldn’t deny it then and he can’t deny it now.

Witch or not, Nesta Archeron is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen.

Her face was all high cheekbones and cutting lines. She had her hair pulled up into an intricate braid style at the meeting, but the strands had still glinted like burnished gold under the candlelight, and Cassian had certainly been curious how it might look tumbling down along her back. How it might look threaded between his fingers. She’d held her shoulders back and her head high, a haughty witch certainly, but a warrior in her own right too, armor firmly in place and daring anyone to go toe to toe with her.

And her eyes. They’d been a stormy blue-gray, a fire burning within them as she met his gaze head on, as she refused to back down or look away. Something had sparked within Cassian then. Something had sat up and demanded attention, whispering and goading in the back of his mind.

“Perhaps, you should marry her instead then,” Cassian says, clearing his mind of the memory and offering Emerie a teasing smirk of his own.

“I’m sure Cresseida will appreciate us getting another wife,” Emerie drawls dryly with a roll of her eyes.

Baz chuckles quietly. “And a witch too.”

Emerie hums, shrugging her shoulders, but then her face turns serious again. “Rhysand and his vampires and the Vanserras have already agreed.”

“That doesn’t mean we automatically have to agree too,” Baz points out, turning his attention fully back to Cassian. “It’s ultimately your decision what we do.”

Cassian knows that they’re right. He knows that he could reject this proposition if he wants. But he also knows the prophecy, knows the stories that the Archeron witches are descended from the Mother herself. If Hybern and the threat their King poses is on the horizon, then how can Cassian deny giving the Pack the best fighting chance? He swore to always put them first, to always protect them.

Even if that means putting his own feelings aside.

Even if that means letting a witch into the ranks.

“Well, then… I guess I’m getting married.”

Chapter Text

Cassian

Cassian straightens out the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling his shoulders back. The formal attire feels tight and constrictive against his skin, and the urge to tug at the fabric more gnaws at the back of his mind, has his fingers flexing and twitching. He’s always hated this sort of pomp and circumstance, always felt this sort of frivolity was better suited to Rhys and his vampires.

He’d give anything to shed the black shirt and jacket, to escape this too small building and the pressures squeezing in around him. He’d give anything to escape back to the woods that surround the pack village. To tip his head back and take a deep breath of the sweet, earthy scent. To feel the wind whispering between the trees and across his skin. To feel that peace he’s only ever found in that space.

But that’s simply not possible. He’s the alpha. He has to think of his pack, has to shoulder these expectations for them, for the war he knows is coming to their door.

With a soft sigh, Cassian steps over to the mirror leaning against the wall in the small room. His hair is still a bit damp, but at least it falls in neat, soft curls around his face and down to his shoulders. Adjusting the collar of his shirt one last time, he can almost say that he looks respectable. He supposes that’s good enough for a wedding.

Especially a wedding he didn’t particularly choose.

Turning on his heel, Cassian pulls open the wooden door to the room he’s been sequestered in, stepping out into the hall beyond. If he pricks his ears, he can just make out the sounds of feminine voices bouncing off the stone walls, hushed but urgent in their tone. He follows the voices three doors down, but he barely raises his fist to knock before it’s yanked open and he’s met with a pair of blue eyes brimming with open defiance and stubborn disapproval, a nose smattered with freckles and scrunched in disdain. Rhys’s soon to be wife, Feyre.

“It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” Feyre informs him, her tone daring him to disagree as much as her expression begs for an excuse to take a swing.

“Good thing we wolves don’t believe in such superstitions,” Cassian offers simply with a shrug.

Feyre doesn’t even bother tamping down the expression that stretches across her face, the unimpressed look she settles him with. She tries to close the door firmly in his face, but Cassian is faster, sliding his foot between it and the doorjamb. Feyre glares down at his foot as if it personally offended her before lifting her eyes again and turning that anger back at him. Rhys will certainly have his hands full, Cassian knows that for sure.

“Do you mind?” Feyre drawls, closing the door on his foot again for extra good measure.

“It’s fine, Feyre,” Nesta’s voice reaches him from further in the room.

Feyre turns her head over her shoulder, having some sort of silent conversation with her older sister. Although Cassian is only privy to half of it, to the various eyebrow raises and wide eyed looks from the youngest Archeron, it’s not hard for him to guess what’s being said. Eventually, Feyre let out a quiet huff, finally opening the door fully.

Cassian steps properly into the room, and getting his first sight of Nesta has him forgetting why he’s even here. Has him forgetting how to breathe for a moment. The black fabric of her dress plunges deeply down her chest, drawing emphasis to the tantalizing line of skin on display. It clings to her every curve where it falls in graceful layers down her legs, and lace stretches down her arms in a subtle design that almost looks like flames.

But it’s Nesta’s hair that Cassian really can’t look away from. Every time that he’s seen the Archerons, Nesta has always worn her hair in an intricate updo, braided back without a single strand out of place. And yet right now, her hair is down, cascading in soft waves around her shoulders and down her back. The golden brown of those strands seems to burn, and Cassian’s fingers twitch with the sudden urge to be buried amongst them, to discover if they’re as soft as they look.

“We’ll be alright,” Nesta continues to her sisters, but something burns in those stormy blue eyes of hers that has Cassian suspecting she’s speaking about more than just leaving him alone with his soon to be wife.

Feyre steps closer to her eldest sister, dropping her voice but not low enough for Cassian’s wolf ears. “If you change your mind…”

“It will be alright,” Nesta repeats firmly, taking Feyre’s hands in hers and giving them a squeeze.

Feyre sighs softly, clearly unconvinced, but she doesn’t argue anymore. She accepts the hand that Elain holds out, allowing her older sister to lead her around Cassian and toward the door. Cassian doesn’t miss the look that both sisters offer him, the promise, or more aptly the threat, clear in both their expressions.

The door closes behind them with a soft snick, and then it’s just Cassian and Nesta. Despite it being just the two of them, despite the fact they’ll be husband and wife within the hour, she still holds her spine straight as steel. She keeps her chin raised, somehow looking down her nose at him even though Cassian has a whole head on her. And yet she holds him captivated, keeps him pinned in place as her eyes sweep over his frame.

“Who knew you could actually clean up so well,” Nesta comments, raising her gaze back to his own.

“I even bathed and everything,” Cassian offers back. He doesn’t bother biting back the smirk that tugs up his lips, making a big show of sketching into a dramatic bow. “Just for you, princess.”

Nesta rolls her eyes at the gesture, the reaction sparking a flame in Cassian’s chest. “Cute.”

“I thought you’d appreciate that, looking down from your little witchy, Archeron throne.”

“Fuck you,” Nesta snaps, stepping forward until they’re toe to toe, until she has to tilt her chin higher to hold eye contact with him.

Her lips curl back in a snarl, a fire of her own beginning to blaze through her eyes like a churning sea. He can see her magic beginning to creep into the corners, wisps of silver swirling like tendrils of smoke. Can see the way her pulse has started to jump like a raging beat just beneath her skin. It has that fire flickering in Cassian’s own veins roaring higher still, rising to meet her.

Witches, including the Archerons, are always so prim, so proper. So boring and pretentious. Cassian wonders how far he can push her now, how much he can tug on those fraying edges on display now until she’s fully unraveling before him.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Cassian drawls easily. “It’s me that will be fucking you soon. Wife.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Nesta seethes, jamming a finger into the center of his chest. “I know this marriage is a sham. You know this marriage is a sham. We’re both doing this out of duty and nothing more, so there’s no use pretending otherwise.”

“Don’t worry. There's no pretending here. I know exactly how you witches feel about wolves.”

“Is that so?”

“And I can assure you,” Cassian continues, leaning in until he and Nesta are practically nose to nose. “The feeling is mutual.”

Nesta shifts her hand until her palm is pressed firmly to his chest, shoving him hard. She has more strength than Cassian expects, the gesture taking him by surprise enough that he stumbles back a step. The shock quickly wears off at the victorious gleam that flares in Nesta’s eyes, but before he can say or do anything else, she turns on her heel, stalking toward the door and yanking it open.

Cassian sighs softly, following behind her. Unsurprisingly, Nesta doesn’t bother holding the door for him, Cassian needing to catch it before it closes on his face. He slips out and into the hall with ease, long legs catching up to Nesta and her own strides quickly. When he reaches her, he holds out his arm in offering, delighting in the eye roll and scowl it earns him.

“You can’t be serious,” Nesta comments dryly, her steps never faltering.

“Sham or no sham, don’t you think it’s important to present a united front, Nes?”

Nesta’s steps stutter to a stop then, annoyance raging across her expression as she whirls around on him. “Don’t call me that.”

Cassian watches in real time the moment Nesta realizes what she’s said, what she’s given him. Her scowl twists tighter, eyes narrowing as if daring him. The smile that tugs across Cassian’s lips is slow, all teeth. The nickname curls around his tongue, grinds between his teeth, poised and ready. He swears he can see the fire churning just beneath her skin in the pink that starts to spark across her cheeks. His gaze traces that color down her neck, curious to see if it spills across her chest too.

Before he can find the answer, Nesta continues storming down the hall toward the large double doors at the end. She turns back to look at him expectantly, but for once, Cassian can’t quite get his feet to move. Their fate is waiting on the other side of that door. Once they step through to what’s waiting beyond, there will be truly no turning back. No taking back the words spoken. No going back on the vows that will tether them together forever.

It’s certainly not the Mother blessed match he had hoped for one day. Not the type of love that Enalius had in the stories his mother told him as a child. Not a mate that would wrap that sacred golden thread as tightly around his heart as he hoped to secure their own.

“Cassian,” Nesta hisses and draws him back to the present, her tone dripping with exasperation.

“No need to get your panties into a twist, sweetheart,” Cassian mumbles, finally striding forward to meet her.

Cassian takes a moment to roll his shoulders one last time, clearing his throat and offering Nesta one final bland smile. It earns him another narrowed eyes look from her, one that Cassian is beginning to suspect means she intends to cut him down where he stands. His wolf wants to see her try.

He pulls open one of the double doors, stepping inside the large room beyond. All of the factions have kept their guest lists to just their respective inner circles, but it’s still a decent size group awaiting on the other side. And with Nesta being the eldest, it means their wedding is to be the first. He can spy Elain and Feyre sitting in the front row with the Archeron matriarch, unmarried still at least for the next few hours.

Despite being sequestered to the front row, the distance doesn’t seem to deter Rhys, the vampire male openly smiling with his canines on full display toward his soon-to-be wife. The distance doesn’t seem to stop Feyre either, nor her mother a mere two seats away, the youngest Archeron glaring over her shoulder right back.

Lucien Vanserra also seems set on staring at his future wife; although, Elain is intent on not meeting his gaze. Cassian still doesn’t quite understand how Eris got away with pawning this alliance off on his youngest brother rather than shouldering it himself. Then again, despite how inconspicuous the Vanserra Coven’s leader thinks he’s being, Cassian doesn’t miss the sidelong glances Eris makes toward the male sitting to Rhys’s left as he walks past.

Cassian’s steps take him to the front of the room and to the priestess standing there. She’s young, copper hair tumbling in long strands around her robes. She offers Cassian a small, friendly smile, but he can’t muster up the will to reciprocate the gesture. He’s sure this is the first of three very solemn weddings this poor priestess will officiate. Thankfully, the awkward air doesn’t last long, as the double doors to the room open again, and everyone turns their attention to the female now stepping inside.

This is it.

Nesta

Nesta stares out the carriage window, eyeing the gray stone of the temple. It almost feels odd how unassuming it looks, just an ordinary temple with no idea what just took place behind the large oak door. She had almost expected wrathful, stormy clouds to roll in today, for lightning to crack across the sky as surely as Nesta’s world has felt cracked apart. Had expected thunder to clap as though the Mother herself protested as the priestess wrapped the black rope around their joined hands.

It takes everything within Nesta to swallow down her shudder as she remembers that moment they were truly bound together forever. She had hated it. Hated how large his hand was compared to hers. Hated the slide of callouses against her skin and the shiver it had sent up her spine. Hated the warmth of it as his fingers curled around her own.

The carriage jolting forward tugs Nesta out of her thoughts. She turns toward the other side of the carriage, finding Cassian already watching her. He’s already discarded his jacket, unlaced the fastens at the collar of his shirt so that a sliver of golden skin is on full display, the barest hint of dark swirling ink twisting along his collarbones.

Despite the darkness around them and in the carriage, his hazel eyes still seem to glint as he stares at her. Nesta isn’t sure if it’s part of him being a werewolf or just how the male in question is, but she swears he can see right through her. Swears that any mask or wall she’s carefully curated and mastered through her years is now a useless defense. It doesn’t stop her from straightening her spine, from raising her chin.

“Is it a long journey?” Nesta asks, forcefully shoving down the urge to twiddle with the cool, metal weight now on her left hand.

“The village the pack calls home isn’t far.”

“And yet you didn’t want to stay for the celebration?”

A large banquet had been prepared for all the guests in attendance, and yet, Cassian had rounded up his wolves and announced they were returning to the pack. Nesta supposes she should be grateful he at least allowed them to stay to watch both her sisters have their own ceremonies, but the command had still taken her by surprise.

His second and third hadn’t even argued. They merely went on ahead, shifting and going on foot the preferred mode of transportation for wolves apparently. A carriage had been readied for Nesta, her new husband opting to join her for the journey rather than shifting himself, and then they were off.

“Why would we stay?” Cassian fires back, offering one of those slow cocksure smirks that Nesta is beginning to hate. “So you could have ample time and distraction to slip something into my drink?”

“Could you blame me?” Nesta hisses, leaning forward in her seat to glare at the male across from her.

“Now, now, Nes. Is that any way to treat your husband?”

“Haven’t you ever heard the saying happy wife, happy life?”

Cassian snorts, settling back comfortably against his seat. His hazel eyes seem to flare, his smirk twisting and growing at the remark. It’s certainly not the reaction Nesta is used to receiving when she dares to bare her teeth. When she gives in to that fire that always seems to thrum and burn beneath her skin, raging to be released.

Cassian’s lips part, but before he can get another jab in, the carriage pulls to a stop, the alpha glancing sidelong out the window. “We’re here.”

Cassian pushes open the carriage door, ducking down and stepping out with ease. Nesta waits for Cassian’s hand to reach back inside for her, but it never comes. With another roll of her eyes and a huff, Nesta slips out of the carriage herself. She takes a moment to straighten out the skirts of her dress before finally looking up and around her. The sight almost takes her breath away.

Large trees stretch far around them, their branches reaching up toward the stars and the sky beyond. The night air whispers of pine, of crickets and critters that call these trees and forest home, and through the trunks of trees, Nesta can spy what appears to be some sort of lake, the moon’s light glinting off the ripples of water.

The ground has been worn and covered with small rocks beneath her feet, creating a path that winds between the trees and leads to a whole village. Homes have been built into the hills and the rocks, between the trees. Made of wood and covered in moss, they blend in almost perfectly with the woods around them, a living, breathing part of the forest. The whole village is almost mystical, the melody of a wolf’s howl somewhere deeper in only adding to her new surroundings.

“Come on,” Cassian orders gruffly, already making his way down the path and further into the village.

Nesta hurries after him, trying to keep up with his long legs and longer strides. He leads them to the other side of the village. Wooden planks have been worked into the side of the hill to create stairs, the largest cabin that Nesta has seen yet sitting at the top. It’s clear this is the alpha’s home, built so it looks out over the other cabins, over the rest of the pack.

There’s a male Nesta has never seen before waiting by the front door when they reach it, along with the trunks and bags Nesta had packed earlier this morning. It’s a stark reminder that her whole life is somehow contained within them, that her whole life is here now. Cassian offers the male a nod in greeting that’s reciprocated, but nothing is said.

The other wolf starts to make his way back toward the stairs, but Nesta is quick to call after him, “I’d like my things moved to my room.”

The male blinks a few times at the request before turning his attention toward Cassian, clearly asking for permission. Nesta doesn’t even bother holding back her scoff. She may be married to the alpha of the pack now, but it means nothing, gives her no power or standing here. She’s still just as powerless as she was beneath her grandmother’s thumb, her mother’s thumb. She’s still just a witch, just an outsider.

Cassian must give whatever acquiesce is needed because the male returns to Nesta’s things, hefting them up into his arms. Nesta follows him and Cassian inside the cabin. There’s a kitchen to the left, large windows with curtains currently drawn above the sink, and to the right is a large living space. A gorgeous, stone fireplace sits in the center of that space, a large sofa and comfortable armchair arranged around it. A set of bay windows covers the wall on the other side, a seat built in below it and shelves beside it.

Following the male down the hall, Nesta steps inside a large bedroom. She watches him set all of her things down, and only when the door closes behind him, does Nesta finally breathe. She closes her eyes and rolls her neck, breathing deeply in and out until she finally feels centered again. Only then does she open her eyes again, and look around.

The furnishings are fairly simple, a bed taking up the majority of the space at the center of the room, tasteful rugs, a dresser sitting against one wall and two armchairs and a small table set by the windows. The only personal touch is a painting hanging on the wall, pine trees and a large mountain, a galaxy of stars above.

When Nesta tries the door at the far corner of the room, she finds the bathing chamber, just the sight starting to tug relaxation through Nesta’s muscles. She spins on her heels and digs around in her trunk until she finds a silky sleeping gown and some of the oils and soaps Elain had given her, deciding to take advantage of the abnormally large bathtub to soak. The warm water and sweet floral scents are everything she needs, and she sighs softly as she sinks in up to her chin.

It isn’t until the water starts to go cold that Nesta forces herself up and out of the tub. She takes the time to brush out her hair, using a towel to squeeze out the excess water, and tugs on the sleeping gown. She steps out of the bathing chamber, mind already dreaming of sinking beneath the soft looking blankets of the large bed, but her steps stutter to a stop when she finds Cassian sitting in one of the chairs by the window.

Cassian’s gaze rakes over her, drinking her in. Those hazel eyes take in her now exposed legs, tracking across her collarbones, straying just a moment too long on her hair where it falls around her shoulders and down her spine. Nesta swears she can feel the weight of his attention like fingers sliding across her skin. Goosebumps erupt and prickle, but Nesta blames it on her current lack of dress and the cold air in the room.

Cassian clears his throat awkwardly, finally tearing his eyes away and pushing a hand up and through the tangled mess of his curls, his own wedding band glinting in the low light of the room. “Do you… have a preference for how we do this?”

“Excuse me?” Nesta asks, crossing her arms to cover herself and raising her chin. Here he is, barging into her room, and now he’s speaking in cryptic phrases.

Cassian sighs, shaking his head, and when he meets her gaze again, there’s a coldness to his expression. “Do you care how we fuck?”

“How dare you.”

“Did you forget the magical bonds we just made? It demands consummation.”

Nesta rolls her eyes, no matter how true the words may be. “Go fuck yourself.”

“You think I want this?” Cassian demands, pushing up to his feet to glare right back at her. “You think I want to be married to some prissy, spoiled brat of a witch?”

Nesta lets a slow smile pull across her face, one that’s all teeth and mocking saccharine. She steps closer to him until they’re almost toe to toe, tilting her chin up and looking down her nose at him despite the height difference between them. “Should I get on my hands and knees then? Isn’t that how you dogs like it?”

Cassian growls, his hand snapping up and curling around her throat. His fingers squeeze, Nesta’s breath hitching in her chest, but she doesn’t back down. She can see the fire blazing in his hazel eyes, the barely held back restraint, and she meets it head on.

“Do it,” Nesta spits at him. “I dare you. You need this alliance just as much as I do.”

“Exactly. So be a good girl.” A shudder crawls up Nesta’s spine of its own accord, and with the way they’re pressed together, Cassian clocks the reaction with ease. “Why am I not surprised…”

Nesta shoves hard at Cassian’s chest until he releases his hold of her. Shoves hard until he stumbles back a few steps. Shoves hard until he’s tumbling back onto the bed and she can climb over him and straddle his hips. She skates her index finger up his arm, over his bicep, across his shoulder. Her fingers card up and through his hair, and then she curls them, yanking hard.

“No kissing,” Nesta informs her, her voice low and harsh.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

Cassian's hands settle on her hips, fingers spanning wide and gripping tightly, and he flips them over with ease, pressing Nesta back against the mattress. He leans back enough that he can fist the back of his shirt, tugging the fabric off and tossing it away.

All her feelings toward her new husband aside, Nesta can't deny that Cassian is attractive. His wide shoulders almost completely bracket her in, biceps shifting and bulging as he places his hands either side of her head. Black ink swirls across his golden brown skin and twists down his arms, daring Nesta to trace those lines with a finger. With her tongue. Her eyes follow the hair on his chest down his stomach, down over the hard lines of muscles, down to where that trail vanishes beneath his waistband.

Cassian leans back into her, burying his face against her neck and sliding his nose over her skin. Nesta feels him inhale deeply, goosebumps pebbling across her skin. His hand slips up her calf, over her knee, along her thigh, sliding the hem of her sleeping gown up with the movement. Already, Nesta’s heart begins to thunder between her ribs, her blood heating at just that small gesture. Cassian’s hand moves, his fingers tracing up the inside of Nesta’s thigh, and her own hair buries into the long, curly stranding of his hair, tugging as those fingers reach higher and higher.

“Already so responsive, Nes.”

“Don’t be so fucking cocky.”

Cassian’s hand shifts fully between her legs, sliding two fingers over the fabric of her panties teasingly. Try as she might, Nesta is unable to swallow down the moan the touch pulls from her throat. There’s no stopping her body’s reaction, the heat and dampness that starts to flood her core as Cassian finds her clit with ease. Judging from the smirk tugging up Cassian’s lips, he knows it.

“And already so wet for me,” Cassian continues, adding more pressure to his fingers over her clothed center, both a teasing and a promise.

“Less talking, more putting yourself to good use,” Nesta tells him, placing her hand on his shoulder and shoving in hopes he’ll understand what she’s suggesting.

Cassian pulls his hand back, Nesta frowning at the sudden loss, but then he uses his hand to gather both her wrists, pinning them back above her head in that single grip. “But don’t you want to be a good girl?”

Cassian leans back slowly, settling on his haunches, watching, waiting. It would be so easy for Nesta to fight back, to move, but she keeps her hands exactly where he pinned them. Seemingly satisfied, Cassian returns his hands to her thighs, fingers curling around the hem of her sleeping gown and tugging it all the way off. The fabric has barely hit the floor before Cassian his body pressed back down against hers.

His mouth closes around her breast, and Nesta tosses her head back, arching up into the warm heat. His tongue moves in languid circles around her nipple, his teeth just grazing the skin in a way that’s both obscene and feels too good. His free hand comes up to her other breast, the span of it large enough to fit the whole thing in his palm with ease. He kneads and squeezes before switching his mouth’s attention.

“Cassian,” Nesta moans softly, her hips bucking up in search of friction.

Cassian pulls his mouth back with a soft pop, offering her one of his cocksure smiles. “Who knew my name could sound so good falling past a witch’s mouth.”

Nesta rolls her eyes, a well placed retort already poised and ready on the tip of her tongue, more than ready to put this wolf back in his place. But before she can, Cassian slides further down the bed, pulling off and discarding her panties as he goes. His hands curl around her thighs, fingers digging in against her skin until she’s sure she’ll have bruises. He pries her thighs apart, settling her legs over his shoulders.

“Now let’s see what it sounds like when I make a witch scream.”

He leans in, licking a stripe all the way to her clit. The groan he lets out sends vibrations echoing through Nesta’s whole body. She drops a hand to his head, threading her fingers through the dark strands of his hair, as he starts to devour her. He alternates between swirling his tongue over her clit and teasingly fucking the tip of his tongue into her.

Nesta tries to shift her hips as best she can, trying to meet him stroke for stroke, chasing the heat pooling low in her gut, but Cassian’s grip tightens, holding her still exactly how he wants her. Nesta wants to be annoyed, but the display has sparks firing through her every nerve ending, has another low moan of Cassian’s name tumbling past her lips without her control.

Cassian pulls back, the sight of him licking his lips as indecent as it is attractive. “I was so sure that if I ever heard you chanting my name, it would be you cursing me, but I much prefer this.”

“I will curse you if you don’t finish what you started,” Nesta pants out, tugging tighter on his hair.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Cassian tells her, suddenly sinking two fingers into her and drawing a gasp in response. “We’re just getting started. Have to get you ready to take my knot.”

The words draw Nesta out of the moment. She knew knots were a part of werewolves’ anatomy, had made sure to do her research once the marriage and plans had been finalized. But hearing the words from Cassian suddenly makes them real, makes Nesta realize she may be more out of her depth than she initially thought.

All thoughts eddy out of Nesta’s mind, though, when Cassian curls his fingers. She clenches down hard around them, her hips bucking against his hold. He sets a hard and fast pace, the wet sound of his fingers working her open swirling and filling the room, mixing with the soft sounds of her moans. He leans down, not pausing or slowing down his hand as his mouth finds her clit again, sucking the bud between his lips.

The extra stimulation sends Nesta flying over the edge, her orgasm tearing through her like a wildfire. She’s half aware of her thighs squeezing tight around Cassian’s head, of the very unladylike shout she lets out, but that fire burning through her veins feels too good, daring Nesta to drown in it. Cassian continues to move his fingers, his mouth unrelenting, dragging her orgasm out with aftershocks until it starts to teeter into pain.

“W-wait,” Nesta gets out between pants, reaching down and curling her fingers around Cassian’s wrist.

“You can take it,” Cassian pulls back enough to murmur. “Besides, I told you, we have to get you ready to take my knot.”

Nesta whimpers, but already, he’s stoking those embers and building her higher again. He scissors and curls his fingers, squeezing in a third digit. The stretch is somehow too much and not enough at the same time, Nesta’s toes curling against Cassian’s shoulders as she starts to rock against his hand.

“That’s it,” Cassian praises, his own voice breathless. “That’s a good girl.”

The words have Nesta tumbling closer to that edge again dangerously fast. When Cassian leans back down, his mouth finds home on her breast this time. He gently tugs her nipple between his teeth at the same moment his fingers curl deep inside her. Before Nesta knows it, before she can stop it or warn him, her second orgasm crashes through her. The force of it is enough to bring tears to the corner of her eyes, a choked off gasp tugging free from her lungs.

Cassian finally pulls back, and Nesta slumps back against the mattress, catching her breath. He slides off the bed, reaching for the waistband of his pants, the dark curls of his hair tumbling forward across his temples, his shoulders, at the movement. Nesta presses up onto her elbows, watching the way the muscles in his arms, his chest, shift and move as he works his pants and undergarments down his legs and kicks them aside.

It leaves his thick thighs on full display, but even more than that, Nesta can’t help but stare at his cock. She hasn’t seen many naked men in her life, but she knows he’s larger than most. It hangs hard and long between his thighs, his large hand fisting the girth of it. She can see the tip already glistening, the thick vein that runs along the underside on display each time Cassian works his hand up and down. The sight has Nesta’s breath catching in her throat, has her body already clenching in anticipation despite the two orgasms Cassian has already wrung from her.

Cassian kneels back onto the bed, settling between her still spread thighs. He rubs the head of his cock against her, gathering the wetness and working it over himself. Every catch of the head of his cock against her clit sends a shudder scraping up her spine, her fingers fisting in the blankets.

“I’m not going to beg if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

Cassian chuckles, pressing his hips forward enough that just the head of his cock slips into her, just that stretch leaving Nesta hissing. “Oh, I have no such notions of that. Yet.”

Any retort Nesta has dies in the back of her throat when Cassian snaps his hips forward, sliding the rest of the way in in one smooth thrust. She feels stretched and full in a way she’s never felt before, his cock somehow reaching deeper than she thought possible. Tentatively, testingly, Nesta clenches down around him, pride swelling within her at the groan it draws out of Cassian.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” Cassian pushes out between his teeth, burying his face in Nesta’s neck.

Nesta wraps her legs around his hips, pressing the heels of her feet against his ass. “Fucking move.”

She half wonders if Cassian truly will make her beg, but he must feel just as desperate as she does because he pulls his hips back. The drag of his cock against her walls has Nesta throwing her head back against the pillow with a long low moan. He sinks back into her, pressing deeper still, but the slow thrust is merely a tease. He sets as brutal a pace as his fingers before, snapping his hips hard against her own, cock driving and burying into her as surely as it steals the breath from her lungs.

Nesta can do nothing but hold on as Cassian uses her body, dragging her along with him. He’s turned her into a moaning mess, a puddle of pleasure, as he plays her like his favorite instrument. She clenches with every inward thrust, her fingernails dragging down Cassian’s back. She’s worried at just how fast she’s started to crest higher and higher again, her blood singing with liquid fire and threatening to send her spiraling through yet another orgasm, but then she feels it.

His knot.

The bulbous swell of it slaps against her with every hard thrust, promising to lock them together. She already feels so full, already feels split open on his cock, that she has no idea how his knot is going to fit.

“It won’t—”

“You’ll take it,” Cassian growls, his hands sliding under her ass and lifting her hips higher.

The new angle has Nesta letting out a broken sob, her every nerve ending feeling like a livewire seconds away from catching fire and dragging her into the flames. One more hard thrust from Cassian and his knot notches within her. The combination of pleasure and pain has Nesta’s whole body tensing. She clenches down hard against the knot, all but screaming Cassian’s name. She’s half aware of the warmth of his seed filling her, the way his hips continue to rock against her with every spurt of his cock.

Despite the way she’s dripping, the slippery wetness between her thighs, Cassian’s fingers still find her clit. It barely takes two tight circles of his fingers before she’s coming for the third time tonight. She arches up against Cassian, her whole body shuddering and shaking through it. She squeezes even tighter around his knot, Cassian groaning and his cock twitching and filling her even more in response.

It feels almost strange coming down and catching her breath while still feeling so full, her cunt fluttering around Cassian’s cock and knot with the aftershocks. Her hand slides up to her neck, fingers skating across her sweat slicked skin, but there’s no stickiness of blood, no soreness, like she expects to find.

“You didn’t bite,” Nesta comments quietly, frowning in confusion.

Cassian lifts his head enough that he can peer down at her. “What?”

“I thought werewolf tradition was to bite to seal the bond between a pair.”

“I didn’t know you were suddenly an expert in our traditions.”

“You think I didn’t do my research? To know what I might be walking into?” Nesta snaps with a roll of her eyes. She hates that the fact they’re still joined together means she can’t shove at his chest, can’t escape the heat radiating from him and encasing her. But it doesn’t stop her from raising her chin regardless, from narrowing her eyes at him. “Was it wrong then? Is that not the tradition?”

“It is our tradition.”

“But you didn’t—”

“Did you forget that I didn’t choose this? Choose you?” Cassian cuts her off, his lips pulling back in a sneer, hazel eyes practically blazing. “Biting a mate, claiming them, it’s sacred for wolves. Mates are precious, and it is a blessing to be bonded that way. A mate is someone you fully give your heart over to. Someone you would gladly lay down your life for. And you are neither of those things to me.”

His knot has gone down enough that Cassian is finally able to pull out, Nesta still wincing at the drag, the soreness she can already feel between her legs. She swallows hard at the stormy, hard expression still on Cassian’s face, watching him shift to the other side of the bed. With a huff, she tugs herself off the bed, holding her head high, her spine straight, and refusing to allow Cassian to see their romp in the sheets or his words having an effect on her. Only when the door to the bathing chamber closes firmly behind her does she allow herself to slump and deflate.

She takes her time scrubbing herself clean again, washing away the feel of Cassian against her skin. But she realizes belatedly that she forgot to grab a fresh sleeping gown to change into. Sighing softly, she pulls back open the door, padding across the room and toward her trunk of things. She nearly jumps out of her skin in surprise when she spies Cassian still in the bed, now casually lounging beneath the blankets.

“What are you doing?” Nesta demands, snatching up a clean sleeping gown and quickly tugging it on. “You’ve completed your duty, so you can get out of my room now.”

“I think you mean our room, wife,” Cassian offers back, smirking openly at Nesta.

Nesta scoffs, but she doesn’t do much more. She’s too exhausted, her body too wrung out, from this too long night to fight. She makes her way over to the bed, yanking the blankets back and slipping beneath them. “Who knew you were such a traditionalist.”

“What can I say, I don’t want you getting any ideas. Like slipping out the window.”

Nesta punches her pillow, simply because she knows she can’t punch her new husband in the face. She curls up on her side, her back to Cassian, and tucks the blankets up to her chin. She’s never been particularly religious, never truly believed in a higher power blessing her family with their magic the way her grandmother claimed, but Nesta still finds herself sending a silent prayer to the Mother. Praying and hoping that at least her sisters are having better luck with their own husbands.

Chapter Text

Nesta

Nesta supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when she wakes alone.

She certainly didn’t expect to wake within some sort of lover’s embrace. It was clear last night that her and Cassian’s marriage was nothing more than duty, he to his pack and she to her family. But still…

With a soft sigh, she shifts and rolls over beneath the blankets, reaching a hand out and finding nothing but cold sheets. Early riser or didn’t even bother to stay the night? With another huff she sits up, rubbing the final remnants of sleep from her eyes. The room and the cabin doesn’t look much different in the light of day. The rays of sunlight spill in through the windows, painting patterns across the blankets and turning the wood beams of the ceiling into amber.

It could almost be described as homey if it weren’t for the frigid, cloying air still clinging to the room from the previous night.

Pushing the blankets off her legs, Nesta climbs off the bed. She starts to pad over to her trunks before a thought strikes her, her eyes dancing toward the bedroom door. Cassian made it clear last night that he doesn’t trust her, so does that mean he would lock her in? Keep his new wife locked away in the tower?

She steels her spine and stalks toward the door, hesitating for just a moment with her hand outstretched in front of her. Slowly, her fingers curl around the knob, but thankfully, there’s no resistance as she twists. Unlocked. Small consolations.

Shaking her head, Nesta spins on her heel and returns to preparing for the day. With running hot water and no one around, she dares to take another long bath. Loathe she is to admit it, there’s a lingering ache between her thighs, a delicious soreness to her muscles as she stretches out beneath the water. She tips her head back against the lip of the tub and closes her eyes, breathing deeply.

As much as she’d like to, Nesta knows she can’t hide in the warmth and safety of a bath all day. This is her life now, Archeron or not. This is her life here. She’s married to the alpha, a member of this pack even if they don’t fully trust or accept her. A witch amongst wolves.

Heaving herself out of the bath, Nesta finishes readying for the day and steps out of the bedroom. The rest of the cabin is just as quiet, but she pads her way into the kitchen. It takes some rooting around in the cupboards, but she’s able to find everything she needs to prepare a cup of tea, the strong taste and warmth of the drink at least helping to soothe some of the knots twisting around in her stomach.

It’s only when she settles at the small, wooden kitchen table that she notices the letter, her name scrawled across the page in familiar, crisp cursive. She snatches it up, flipping it over quickly. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised to find the wax seal already broken, but annoyance flares like low burning embers in her chest nonetheless. She opens the letter and skims through her mother’s words. It’s all polite and basic, reporting on her sisters, inquiring if she’s settled, but she notices the ink pressed into the right, bottom corner.

A crow.

Nesta pushes to her feet and finds a candle, placing it on the kitchen table and lighting it. She holds the letter over the flickering flame until the ink swirls, bleeding to the edge of the paper and melting away into nothing. She closes her eyes and says the incantation quietly beneath her breath before blowing across the page, revealing the ink and message hidden beneath.

A meeting.

It’s a meeting request that Nesta is sure was also sent to both of her sisters. No new husbands though, a meeting of just the Archeron ladies. Cassian is already suspicious of her, so she’ll have to figure out an excuse that will allow her to attend. A problem for her to work out later. For now, Nesta holds the letter over the candle again, this time until the corner of the parchment catches, the entire letter going up in flames.

She returns to her tea, the cup almost drained when the front door of the cabin swings open, Cassian striding inside. He’s dressed in surprisingly casual attire, a loose shirt tucked into his pants, the sleeves rolled up to expose the lines of tattoo and golden skin of his forearms. His hair is pulled back and piled into a bun at the back of his head.

“Oh, good. You’re awake,” Cassian says in way of greeting. He gestures with his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Nesta crosses her arms across her chest, raising an eyebrow and refusing to move. “I did sleep well. Thanks so much for asking.”

“You want to do fucking pleasantries?” Cassian scoffs, shaking his head.

“Oh, but dear husband, how did you sleep?” Nesta asks, offering a saccharine smile. The sight of Cassian’s lips pulling back in a snarl has it building into a full blown smirk.

“Do you want to see the village or not?”

“I’m surprised you’d allow a witch such free range around your pack.”

“If you’d prefer, we can stay here and continue our marital duties,” Cassian offers, his tone derisive, the golds of his hazel eyes practically sparking with the challenge.

Nesta’s smile drops away. “Fuck you.”

“Are you sore this morning, sweetheart? I’d be willing to bet that was the first time a prim princess like you has taken a real cock.”

“You wish,” Nesta growls, finally pushing to her feet just so she can glower at Cassian.

She wants to hate the way he doesn’t balk from her ire, the way his smirk almost seems to twitch and grow at her response. The way the golds of his hazel eyes practically spark at the challenge. The sight has Nesta’s scowl deepening, her mind grasping for a way to wipe that stupid expression off his face. Perhaps, she’ll threaten to curse him with impotence.

“Going to curse me, sweetheart?” Cassian drawls, raising an eyebrow and all but daring her.

Nesta refuses to let the surprise at him reading her so easily show. “You’re not even worth the waste of magic.”

Cassian snorts quietly, gesturing with his head again. “Are you coming or not?”

With a quiet huff, Nesta takes a moment to straighten out the skirts of her dress, striding right past Cassian and out the door. The village certainly looks different beneath the sun, and from this vantage point atop the hill, Nesta can see the various members of the pack milling about. There’s a group of women, baskets full of vegetables on their arms, a group of young men unloading crates from a wagon, and children running around. There’s even a few members of the pack moving about in their wolf forms.

Cassian leads the way down into the heart of the village, pointing out different places for her as they walk. The hall where the pack council meetings are held. The market square. The butcher and the bakery.

It’s almost strange the way everyone is so friendly and open with Cassian, smiling and greeting him as he passes, the way he gives the same energy back. It’s clear that he’s a beloved alpha, clear that he cares just as much for his people. It makes it all the more awkward the way everyone eyes her suspiciously, whispers of witchcraft swirling in her periphery.

They come to a stop in some sort of clearing between the trees. Circles are carved into the ground, creating three rings, and Nesta spies who she remembers are Cassian’s second and third sparring in one of them. Wooden dummies are set up along the other end of the clearing, wooden and steel weapons beside them. A group of young boys and girls alike run through a series of maneuvers, a woman with pure white braids along her back leading them through the steps.

Cassian whistles, and his second and third both snap their attention toward them, practically pausing mid swing. The woman gives the man one final shove, as though for good measure, before they’re jogging over. On instinct, Nesta’s spine is straightening, chin pinching higher in preparation.

“Nesta,” Cassian begins. “This is my second, Emerie, and my third, Balthazar.”

“My friends call me Baz,” Balthazar tells her easily, placing a hand on his heart.

“You can call him Balthazar,” Cassian says gruffly. Nesta scoffs and rolls her eyes, but neither Emerie or Balthazar seem to disagree with the order. “And over there is Cresseida. You’ll begin training with her each morning starting tomorrow.”

Nesta doesn’t bother holding back her glare, anger already simmering beneath her skin. “Excuse me?”

“My wife needs to be able to defend herself.”

“What makes you think I don’t know how to defend myself? What do you think I was taught growing up?”

Cassian steps closer into Nesta’s space, the sneer on his face sending her annoyance skyrocketing. “I don’t think you want me to answer that, princess.”

Nesta raises her chin higher to hold his gaze. “Fine. You want me to prove it? I’m more than happy to step in the ring right now.”

“I’m sure we can find a beginner opponent that will be willing for your little demonstration.”

“And miss the opportunity to knock you on your sorry ass?”

Cassian laughs, the sound nothing short of mocking, but he gestures toward the training rings with his arm. “Fine then. After you, Nes.”

Nesta scowls at the nickname, but she stalks forward into one of the three rings. Cassian follows behind her, stepping over the line at the opposite end. They’ve already drawn the attention of the group training, and Nesta is sure that word will quickly blaze through the rest of the village. The witch challenging the alpha.

She’s sure there will be more sneers, more whispers and snide remarks. She’s sure that if her mother could see her now, she’d call Nesta foolish, chide her for letting her emotions get the better of her. But Nesta swore to herself a long time ago that she would never be weak again, and she refuses to let Cassian or his pack see her as such. Alpha or not, marriage sham or not, she intends to meet that fire she’s seen sparking in his eyes head on. Intends to burn just as bright until she wipes that cocksure smile clean off his face.

“I’ve got Cassian in this,” Balthazar murmurs.

“Oh, I’m definitely taking Nesta,” Emerie answers.

Nesta closes her eyes, letting the village, the pack, Cassian, all fade away. She centers herself the way she always has, sinking beneath the rippling waves of her well of power. Even the birdsong around her dampens to nothing, warmth trickling through her veins and pooling in her fingertips. She opens her eyes, allowing the power to swell to the surface, knowing it’s now flickering within her gaze.

Cassian’s own eyes widen, his movements pausing, but he’s quick to shake his head and set his stance, mouth pinched in a firm line. The beast within Nesta gives a low growl of approval. She can feel it pressing down onto its haunches, desperate to be released, and she dares to turn the key in the lock, keeping the cage firmly closed. For now. She widens her feet and raises her fists in a defensive positioning, raising a single eyebrow in challenge to the male across from her.

He moves faster than she expects, Cassian all but charging toward her. His arm swings out, but Nesta is quick to duck beneath the arching punch. It seems to be the exact response Cassian was expecting, what he was hoping for. The palm of his other hand slams into her collarbone, the force enough to throw off her balance and send her toppling onto her ass with a soft grunt.

Cassian lets out a derisive snort above her, but Nesta glares up at him, jumping back up to her feet. She loosens that leash on her magic, feels the familiar heat of flames twisting and wreathing around her wrist. She drives her hand against Cassian’s chest, releasing all that magic through her fingers. The alpha goes careening back, landing hard in the dirt sprawled on his back.

Cassian sits up, spitting to the side and wiping his now split lip with his hand. “Using magic is cheating.”

“Because war is all about rules and fighting fair,” Nesta drawls sarcastically.

“Touche,” Cassian comments idly, pushing back to his feet. “We can play it like that, sweetheart.”

It’s like watching the whole thing in slow motion. The way that Cassian’s muscles seem to ripple and bulge. The way fur sprouts and cascades down his skin. The way magic practically shimmers around him as he shifts. One blink and a large world stands before Nesta’s eyes. His fur is a dark brown, lighter along the chest and down the belly and a black that seems to match Cassian’s hair around the face and ears. But there’s no mistaking the golden glow of his eyes, pinning Nesta firmly in place.

Cassian snarls, the sound low and viscous. It’s Nesta’s only warning before he leaps and closes the distance between them. Nesta doesn’t have time to react, to move out of the way or call forth her power again. Pain radiates down her spine as her back hits the dirt, large paws pinning her shoulders down. Cassian’s canines are dangerously close to her face, hot breath panting across her cheeks, but Nesta doesn’t look away from those golden eyes.

He doesn’t scare her.

A calm washes over Nesta, but that beast within her tugs at the leash, practically chomping at the bit. Just as she’s always done, she imagines slipping fingers through fur, even as she finally opens that cage door. With a deep breath in, power fills her chest, expands between each rib and twines around her lungs. She pictures curling her fingers and grasping the beast’s fur.

Giving permission.

Flames burst out of Nesta in a cascade of silver, crashing around her. With a surprised yelp, Cassian goes flying through the air as those flames curl around his limbs. The force of her power sends him all the way outside of the training ring, skittering and sliding through the grass beyond before his wolf form finally comes to a stop.

“Holy shit.”

Cassian

With a grunt, Cassian tosses the large stone out across the water, watching the ripples as it bounces once, twice, before vanishing beneath the surface. His arm is sore with the effort, but it’s a welcome feeling. One that he can control. His entire body still aches, and he doesn’t even dare to look to check for the bruises he’s sure are mottling his skin.

He’d known the Archerons were powerful, everyone knew that, but to witness it in action had been something else entirely. That power had rippled around him, pressing and scraping along his skin until every hair had stood on end. For a moment, his heart had stuttered to a painful stop in his chest. With the silver flames burning and engulfing her eyes, Cassian hadn’t even been sure it was truly Nesta staring back at him. And then all that magic crashed into him with an almost sickening crunch. It threw him hard and far enough that had he been in his human form, Cassian is confident his shoulder would have shattered with the force of his landing.

Huffing quietly, Cassian reaches down, sifting through the rocks at his feet until he finds another flat one. He tosses it gently in his hand, testing the weight of it, allowing the familiarity of it to center him. This deep in the woods, none of the sounds of the pack or the village reach him. It’s just the small, gentle waves lapping along the shore, a birdsong further in the forest, and the wind whispering through the branches and leaves.

“Have you finished sulking yet?”

Cassian throws the rock in his hand hard enough it merely plops beneath the water. “Fuck off.”

“I couldn’t help but notice that Nesta doesn’t have mating marks this morning,” Emerie comments. Her tone is idle, but Cassian doesn’t buy it for a second.

“She’s my wife, not my mate.”

“Is that so?”

Cassian knows what that sarcastic drawl means. He whirls around on his second, a growl rumbling deep in his chest. “Don’t.”

“Just like your father then.”

“I said don’t.”

Emerie rolls her eyes at his clipped voice, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. “Do you plan on taking other females to your marriage bed as well, then? Plan to have a whole brood of little bastards just like yourself.”

With a snarl, Cassian closes the distance between himself and Emerie until he’s looming over the female. “Don’t make me relieve you of your post.”

She doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t step back. That same unimpressed look is painted across her face, exasperation spilling through her brown eyes as she continues to meet his gaze.

“You and I both know you made me your second because of this,” Emerie reminds him, shoving hard at his chest until he steps back. “Because I call you out on your bullshit. Did you forget there’s a war coming? Hybern may be quiet for now, but we both know too quiet is worse. Especially now that he has the Cauldron. Our pack is strong, but we’re not that strong. What happens when your wife, when her family, abandons you? Abandons us? Because you had a stick up your ass?”

“And what would you have me do?”

“Stop being a dick to your wife,” Emerie tells him, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “If you respect her, the rest of the pack will respect her.”

Cassian sighs, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’ll try, alright?”

“I guess that’s the most I can ask for from an idiot male such as yourself.”

Emerie leaves Cassian alone with his thoughts after that, trekking back through the trees and toward the village. He stares out across the water of the lake, letting out another sigh. He hates that Emerie is right. The whole reason he agreed to this alliance, why he went through with this marriage, is for the pack. Loathe as he is to admit it, they will need Nesta and the Archerons if they want to stand any sort of chance against Hybern, no matter his own thoughts or feelings or opinions.

Besides, it’s not like they have to love one another, they just have to be amicable with each other.

Cassian groans, tilting his head back and scrubbing his hands down his face. Rolling his shoulders, he heads back toward the village. He stops in at the blacksmith, chatting easily with Elis while he works the flames and testing the weight and balance of the newest swords. He hits the bakery next, selecting some fresh goods to take back to the cabin. But as he steps back out, he catches the eye of Cresseida at the shop across the way. She’s wearing the same unimpressed expression that her wife did, and Cassian can practically hear Emerie’s voice in his head, chastising him for stalling.

He flashes Cresseida the finger, earning a fond shake of the head in return, but he gets the message. He trudges the rest of the way back to his cabin, taking the stairs slower than he normally would, but there’s no delaying the inevitable.

He pushes the door open and finds Nesta sitting on the sofa in front of the fire. She has a book open and propped on her knees, one he has no idea where she got it from. She doesn’t even bother to look up or acknowledge him, pointedly turning a page, so with a soft sigh, Cassian turns his attention to the kitchen. He starts pulling out ingredients, lining the counter with everything he’ll need, and grabs a pan.

“Have you eaten?” Cassian calls out, sparking a flame.

The sound of a book snapping shut lets Cassian know he heard her. “Are you intending to cook for me?”

“I promise not to poison it and everything, sweetheart.”

“How generous.”

It’s with a familiar ease that Cassian begins chopping up everything he needs, adding everything to the pan to saute. He mixes up the spices and prepares the sauce just as his mother used to when he was growing up, the smells swirling and filling the kitchen tugging at his memory as much as they tug at his heart.

He feels more than he hears Nesta step into the kitchen. Even with his back to her, his every nerve ending prickles with awareness of exactly where in the room she is, always zeroing in on her presence. The tickle of her breath skates across the skin of his neck as she stands just behind him, pressing up onto her toes to peer over his shoulder.

“Don’t trust my promise?”

Nesta huffs quietly, taking a step back from him. “I want to see my sisters.”

Cassian hums, so she knows he heard her, but he continues to prepare their food. He gives it all a good stir, scooping some onto the wooden spoon and holding it out toward Nesta in offering. She hesitates for a moment, gaze dancing between the spoon and his face, but then she slowly leans forward, accepting the taste.

“I want to see my sisters,” Nesta repeats, crossing her arms. “I want to make sure they’re alright.”

“Is it the vampires or the Vanserras that you don’t trust?” Cassian asks, plating up their food. “Or is it both?”

“It’s not about trust. You agreed to this marriage because you knew it was the only way to keep your pack safe from Hybern. I did it for my sisters, to ensure that Elain and Feyre would be safe. So I want to see them. My mother wrote a letter, and she will arrange it all. I just need a carriage.”

“Fine.”

Nesta blinks a few times, reaching out to accept the plate Cassian extends toward her. “Fine?”

“But either Emerie or Baz will accompany you. You can choose which.”

“Did you hit your head when I knocked you on your ass or something?”

“You wish,” Cassian tells her, settling at the table with his own plate. “You said so yourself, we need each other if we want to stand any chance against what’s coming. But I can assure you, sweetheart, I won’t let you get another chance like that again.”

Nesta hums noncommittally, but she settles in the seat across from him nonetheless. Cassian doesn’t miss the fact that she waits until he’s fully taken a bite of his own food before digging into her own. He doesn’t take it too personally.

They eat in relative silence, just the quiet clink and scrape of utensils. When they’re finished, Nesta snatches up her book again and retires to the bedroom. Cassian continues to putter around the cabin, sorting through the papers on the desk in his study, studying the information and intel about Hybern his wolves have been able to discover, scrutinizing the map and the markings on it.

But as clouds continue to move across the sky, masking the silver glow of the moon, as shadows continue to stretch across the floors of the cabin, exhaustion begins to tug at Cassian’s limbs. He knows that, realistically, he should retreat to the extra bedroom in the cabin, the one he always keeps made up in case one of the younger wolves needs a place to crash. But that voice in the back of his mind continues to whisper, continues to prickle and scrape for his attention. His nerve endings still feel on high alert, all too aware of the witch between these four walls.

Emerie just told him to stop being a dick to his wife. She never said anything about needing to trust her.

Cassian doesn’t even bother knocking, strolling straight into the bedroom. Nesta is already settled beneath the blankets, pillow propped at her back and that same book still in her hands. She glares over the pages at Cassian, making an affronted sound when he closes the door behind him.

“What are you doing?” Nesta demands with an annoyed huff. “There’s no magic dictating us anymore. Don’t you have another bedroom you can stay in?”

“Did you forget that you’re in my bedroom?” Cassian fires back.

He can feel Nesta’s glare sinking into his shoulder blades like knives as he turns his back on her. Can practically hear the way she’s seething. But she doesn’t say anything back, and Cassian refuses to be bothered. He fists a hand in the back of his shirt, tugging it up and off and tossing it aside. He continues stripping down until he’s comfortable to sleep, pulling the tie from his hair until his curls tumble comfortably around his face and shoulders.

When he turns back toward the bed, Nesta’s eyes are glued to his chest. Already, Cassian can feel a smirk tug across his face, a teasing comment on the tip of his tongue, but then he takes in Nesta’s expression. The slightly hollowed look to her blue eyes, the pinched brow and downturned lips. He looks down at his own chest, and barely holds in a wince at the sight. Purple and red patches are mottled across his skin, stretching up over his ribs.

“Is that regret I see on your face, Nes?”

That all too familiar scowl is back in a second. “Not if you keep calling me that.”

“Do I need to sleep with one eye open?” Cassian asks, stepping over to the bed and slipping beneath the blankets.

“Just fuck off, and go to sleep.”

Nesta rolls over and places her book on the small, side table, extinguishing the lantern and casting the bedroom in darkness. Cassian snorts softly at the dismissal, but he settles back against the mattress. He closes his eyes and wills his body to relax, but Nesta shifts, clearly getting more comfortable, and he’s painfully aware of her presence beside him.

She hasn’t been here long, but already her scent has permeated the cabin, and with her so close again, vanilla and lilies flood Cassian’s nose. He can feel the warmth of her, and when she shifts again, her foot brushes against his leg. He dares to turn his head to the side, toward her. Nesta has her back to him, but the blankets still cling to her every curve, rising and falling with each slow, steady breath. Her hair is fanned out across the pillow behind her, the strands practically glistening under the moonlight spilling through the window.

Cassian can still remember the way those strands of golden brown hair felt twisted between his fingers. He can still remember her body pressed against his, the sweet sounds of her moans echoing in his ears. He can still remember the tight heat wrapped around his cock. He squeezes his eyes shut against the onslaught of memories, suddenly feeling like a livewire. It would be too easy to turn to her fully, to press his body against hers. To latch his lips to the skin of her neck. To slide his hand across her waist, down her stomach, lower still.

Nesta’s name weighs heavy on his tongue, but Cassian is quick to swallow it back down. He rolls over onto his side, away from Nesta, giving his pillow a hard punch. These are the last type of thoughts he needs. Sighing softly, Cassian forces his mind to empty, to quiet, forces himself to give in to sleep’s embrace.

Chapter Text

Cassian

Cassian watches as Nesta works through the combination, fists hitting against Cresseida’s raised palms. Her hair is tied back in a braid that runs down her back, the strands swishing across her shoulder blades with each movement and glinting beneath the rays of the afternoon sun. She’s been at it for a while, pink coloring the apples of her cheeks and stretching down her throat to her collarbones, and even from where he’s standing, Cassian can see the beads of sweat speckled across her skin.

Before he can stop them, his thoughts start to spiral down and down. He still remembers the last time he saw that sheen along her skin. Still remembers exactly how far down that flush can go. His body still too keyed-up after sleeping beside her the night before. He has to tilt his head up toward the sky with a sigh, determined to cool the heat sparking and simmering in his veins.

When Cassian focuses his attention back down, Nesta and Cresseida have moved on to sword practice. Wooden sword in hand, Nesta moves first slowly then with more speed through the steps Cresseida directs. Cassian keeps waiting for Cresseida to correct Nesta’s stance, but after the fourth repetition, he can’t take it any longer, striding across the training rings.

“Watch your foot.”

Nesta sighs at the sound of his voice, dropping her wooden sword to her side and turning to him with an unimpressed expression. “What?”

“Your foot. You’re turning it inward each time you lunge,” Cassian explains, gesturing down toward the foot in question. “You’ll lose strength and control doing that.”

Nesta glances down to her own feet, and Cassian wonders briefly if she intends to ignore the advice out of pure stubbornness, out of pure, witchy spite. Another way for her to pull one over on him while they’re trapped in this blazing wildfire burning around them, between them. But instead, surprisingly, Nesta readjusts her stance, shifting her foot so it faces forward.

“Thanks,” Nesta mutters, raising her sword again to work through the same sequence. “Did you need something else then?”

“Just trying to help, sweetheart.”

“And yet, I don’t recall ever asking for it.”

“Cassian!”

Cassian turns at the call of his name, finding Baz just outside the training rings. For once, there’s no smile on his third’s face, his brown eyes missing their usual, playful spark. It has cold dread flooding through Cassian’s limbs, crystalizing between his ribs until the weight twists and presses in. He breathes through the churning in his gut, but his muscles feel tense, his lips pressed into a grim line by the time Baz reaches him.

“What’s happened?” Cassian demands, skipping right past pleasantries.

“Alistair and Cormac have returned,” Baz explains.

Cassian sighs softly, squinting back toward the village and the rows of cabins, his mind reeling over this news. There’s no denying the relief that floods through him, the way it soothes the fear that always sparks within him every time they send out scouts. But what did they see? What information are they bringing back? It’s a stark reminder of the storm clouds looming just over the horizon, of the thunder shaking the ground beneath Cassian’s feet, beneath the pack’s security.

Nodding to himself, Cassian turns his attention back to Baz. “Gather the elders. We’ll meet immediately.”

“Already on it.”

Baz turns on his heels, jogging away, and Cassian watches him go before making his way toward the meeting hall with another sigh. Anxiety prickles across his skin at what they’ll learn, what will be discussed. He makes it a few steps outside of the training rings when the sound of a second set of footsteps reaches his ears, Cassian stopping short. He turns to find Nesta walking beside him, her brows furrowing at their sudden halt.

“What are you doing?” Cassian asks, gesturing back toward the training rings. “Go back to training with Cresseida.”

“It sounds like there’s important news, clearly an important meeting,” Nesta offers, peering up at him as if it’s obvious.

“And?”

“And? And I’m joining you.”

Cassian scoffs, crossing his arms. “You’re not attending this meeting.”

“What,” Nesta snaps dryly, her tone low and incredulous. “Why not?”

“I’m not having a witch in the room when we discuss pack business.”

Cassian is certain that the glare Nesta settles him with would cut down a lesser man where he stands. The blue of her eyes is pure ice, a fire burning in them and promising to swallow him whole in a blazing storm. She steps closer to him, her chest brushing against his own with every annoyed, heaving breath, lip pulled back in a sneer.

“I am your wife,” Nesta reminds him, words cold and clipped.

Cassian leans down until they’re eye to eye, offering a glare of his own. “I didn’t choose you.”

This close together, Cassian catches it, the way her mask slips for just a moment. He almost thinks he imagined it, that flash of emotion in her eyes, before the fury returns. He doesn't dare look down, look away from her gaze, but he can feel the sparks of silver flames prickling across his skin where their hands hang a hairsbreadth apart. He resets his stance, shifting his feet and preparing for the impact of her magic.

“You’re a godsdamned bastard,” Nesta seethes.

She doesn’t say anything else, surprisingly keeping a leash on her magic and her rage. Instead, she turns on her heel, stalking back toward Cresseida on the other side of the training rings. Cresseida meets Cassian’s gaze briefly, shaking her head, before holding out the wooden sword for Nesta to take again. But Cassian doesn’t have time for disappointment or other’s opinions on what he should or shouldn’t do.

On how he should or shouldn’t run his pack.

He winds his way through the village until he reaches the meeting hall. Baz and Emerie are already standing outside, and he offers them both a nod in greeting.

“Are all the elders gathered?”

“Everyone’s gathered and ready, yeah,” Baz explains, glancing behind him to the open doorway.

“Where's Nesta?” Emerie asks, looking pointedly over Cassian’s shoulder as though she expects the witch to appear.

“Hell if I know,” Cassian shrugs, moving to step forward into the meeting hall but Emerie is quick to step directly into his path, blocking him. He rolls his eyes. “Last I left her, she was at the training rings with Cresseida.”

“Should we wait for her before we start, then? One of us can go grab her,” Baz offers.

Cassian lets out a derisive snort. “Why would we wait for her? She’s not attending a pack meeting.”

The cold look Emerie settles him with rivals Nesta’s. “She’s your wife.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? Did everyone forget that I didn’t choose her?”

“Did you forget that she didn’t choose this either?” Emerie demands, smacking him hard in the chest. “You were there. Her mother practically sold her and her sisters like cattle. I thought I already told your dumbass you need to respect her.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Cassian growls, side stepping around Emerie and into the meeting hall. “Let’s go.”

“Fucking idiot…”

The sigh that tumbles past Cassian’s lips is heavy, icy claws sinking into his lungs and drawing blood with the exhale. He digs his fingers through his hair, the strands already starting to knot with how many times he’s repeated the gesture. The map continues to lay splayed out across the wood of the table in front of him, and all he can do is stare at it, blink at it.

“We’ll have to inform the vamps and the Vanserras,” Baz’s voice draws Cassian from his quickly spiraling thoughts. “We can’t keep this information to ourselves.”

“A temple,” Emerie whispers, almost to herself. “What kind of evil do you have to be to attack and destroy a temple?”

“If Cormac is right, they got whatever they were looking for,” Cassian comments, leaning forward over the map and sliding his finger along the parchment, along the ink of the lines, the trees and the mountains. “Hybern’s even more dangerous now, and we need to be ready. We need to up our defenses along the western lines, make sure our warning system gives us as much time as possible.”

“You really think Hybern would try something? Attack the pack directly?” Baz asks, a hollowness taking over his usual sunny expression.

“Mother knows what Hybern is thinking or planning,” Cassian says, pushing back up to his feet. “But I’m not willing to risk it. Not willing to risk our pack.”

Emerie nods in agreement, the weight of what Cormac and Alistair described finding at the temple clearly still pressing on her even as she defiantly holds her chin up high. “I’ll make sure the new orders are delivered and implemented.”

“Tomorrow,” Cassian offers, giving Emerie’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “We’ll worry about implementing everything tomorrow. I think we all could use a night off after that.”

“And maybe a drink,” Baz mutters, the barest hint of a smile starting to return.

Cassian chuckles softly, unable to deny the idea sounds appealing. He has a bottle of whiskey back at his cabin that’s smooth and aged, and it might just be calling his name. “And maybe that too.”

Cassian rolls up the map and returns it the rightful place, following his second and third out the door the elders vacated what feels like hours ago. True to his teasing words, Baz heads for the pack’s favorite watering hole, Emerie vanishing toward her cabin to find her wife. It leaves Cassian to make the trek back to his own cabin alone.

The meeting lasted for hours, darkness having now blanketed across the village. The clouds shimmer and shift across the face of the moon, the silver light rippling like waves across the grass where it bleeds through, casting shadows over the trees and cabins. He just hopes it means that Nesta may have already retired for the night. The last thing he wants after that meeting is to rehash an argument with her.

He’s already dreaming of a tall glass of whiskey, of settling before the fire and relaxing at least for one night, as he makes his way up the steps to his cabin. He reaches forward for the handle of the front door, but a shock jolts through his fingertips, skittering up his arm and through his entire body. His eyebrows pinch, and he shakes out the pins and needles before trying again, only to earn the same reaction, his every muscle tensing in response.

“What the fuck…”

Cassian raises his hand, carefully, slowly, pressing his palm forward. The magic glimmers around his touch, spreading outward in silver swirls that Cassian suspects must be some sort of runes. They stretch all the way up and around the cabin like a shield.

A ward.

She’s put a ward around the cabin, locking him out.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Nesta?” Cassian shouts, loud enough she can hear him from wherever she is inside. “Let me in!”

Only silence answers Cassian, mocks him.

“Nesta, I know you can hear me! This isn’t fucking funny.”

Cassian growls in frustration when there’s still no response. He slams a fist against the ward, but the magic seems to give back whatever impact thrown at it, silver flaring around him and the force sending him stumbling back a few steps. He scrubs a hand through his hair and down his face, sending a silent prayer up to the Mother. He doesn’t know how long his stubborn witch of a wife intends to let him stew, but it’s clear that it’s going to be a long night.

Nesta

Nesta tugs on the strands of her hair, shifting them until they sit how she wants. She holds them steady in place, plucking the pin from between her teeth and sliding it between the strands. Examining her work in the mirror, she hums quietly in approval, finally stepping back and toward the door. She winds her way through the cabin and to the front door, but her steps stop short when she pulls it open.

Cassian is curled up on his side, his back to the door. One arm is tucked up beneath his head, cheek pillowed on his bicep, and his hair is a tangled mess all around his face. For a moment, Nesta can do nothing but gape, nothing but blink in surprise at the sight of him here in front of the door. When she’d warded the cabin last night, she assumed that he’d find somewhere else to sleep, perhaps crash with Baz wherever the third’s cabin is.

Guilt begins to spool in Nesta’s gut, but then she remembers everything that happened yesterday. She remembers how Cassian seems set on locking her out of everything involving this pack. As if being isolated from her family through this farce of a marriage wasn’t bad enough, she’s stuck being just as isolated here thanks to her dear husband. As if Hybern and its king aren’t as much of a threat to her as they are to Cassian and the pack.

All of the anger and rage from yesterday blazes back through Nesta’s veins like a wildfire, and she raises her chin, stepping right over Cassian’s still sleeping form. Hopefully, now, the alpha has learned his lesson. He wants to play games and shut her out of everything, then he can enjoy sleeping outside in the cold and being shut out of his own cabin.

“Nesta.”

Nesta sighs, pausing just two steps down from the cabin. She turns around just in time to watch Cassian scramble up to his feet. Despite not being in his wolf form, his eyes still glow golden, furious in the way they spark and blaze. His lips are pulled back in a snarl, brows pinched down low as he glares at her.

Nesta raises a sardonic brow, not giving him an inch with her cool expression. “Sleep well? Who knew you took your inner wolf so seriously that you take to sleeping outside now.”

“Do you think this is a fucking joke?” Cassian growls, fists clenching at his sides.

“I don’t know. Did you think yesterday was a fucking joke?”

Cassian scoffs, but Nesta has heard enough. She spins on her heel and continues down the steps that lead away from the cabin and back toward the village.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Emerie is waiting for me with a carriage,” Nesta explains, not stopping or turning around. “I don’t want to be late for tea with my sisters.”

She can feel Cassian’s ire following her the whole way, burning a brand into her spine. The low sound of his growl practically echoes in her ears. It has a self-satisfied smirk tugging up Nesta’s lips the whole rest of the way, and if Emerie notices her expression, she thankfully doesn’t comment on it as Nesta climbs inside the carriage, as it carries them away from the village.

It feels almost strange to be back at the Archeron manor, to peer up at the dark red brick, the spires, and the climbing ivy through the carriage window. Almost subconsciously, her thumb slides across the slightly raised skin on the back of her left hand, tracing the scar back and forth. A deep breath in and out, and Nesta opens the carriage door, stepping out and into the misty morning light.

She walks up the front steps, the front door swinging open right before she reaches it. At least, the magic imbued within the wood and brick of the house still recognizes her. Nesta steps inside, instantly greeted by the familiar smells of fresh lavender, ginger, and basil, and follows the halls all the way to the sunroom at the back of the manor.

The round table in the room is already covered in a white, lace tablecloth, a steaming teapot placed at the center. Elinor sits primly in the seat directly across from the doorway back into the main house, hair neatly and harshly tugged back away from her face and chin raised high. As soon as Nesta steps inside, her mother’s cool eyes are pinning her in place.

“Mama,” Nesta greets quietly.

Feyre is already settled in the seat directly to Elinor’s right, so Nesta takes the seat across from their mother. She chances a glance toward her youngest sister, but Feyre has her eyes cast downward, staring intently at her plate. Nesta doesn’t miss the way Feyre chews on her bottom lip, the way she aimlessly pushes around her eggs, even as her grip on her fork is white knuckled.

Giving her hands something to do, Nesta reaches forward for the teapot, pouring herself a cup. Thankfully, just as she’s taking a sip, Elain steps inside the sunroom, brown eyes wide and almost nervous as they flit around the table. She’s quick to settle into the final seat beside Nesta, fingers twisting and fisting into the skirts of her dress.

“My girls,” Elinor begins, taking the time to look at all three of them. “Back together again. Have you all been well?”

Feyre’s eyes flash up at the question, but Nesta is quick to jump in. “I’m sure we’re all still adjusting, Mama.”

Elinor hums, Nesta’s fingers twitching and tensing in response to the disapproving sound. She has to shake the urge to trace that scar on the back of her hand again, that sound and what typically followed it still haunting and prickling in the back of Nesta’s mind.

“And what have we learned, hm?” Elinor continues, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “The rumors say that Rhysand’s numbers are beyond what we’ve been led to believe. Is it true? Are there more vampires than we know?”

“How would I know that, Mama?” Feyre sighs softly.

“You’re his wife now, are you not? And what about the wolves?” Elinor asks, her attention snapping to Nesta. “There’s long been stories of their training, of their strength.”

“I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary with the pack,” Nesta explains, trying to hold her mother’s gaze but dropping her eyes to the dark swirls of her tea.

“And how about the Vanserras? And their coven’s spellbook?”

“I… I haven’t seen any spellbook, Mama,” Elain murmurs, her voice quiet.

Elinor sighs, and Nesta tries to brace for whatever is coming. “I give you girls everything that you need, set you and this family up, and this is what you offer me?”

“Mama…” Nesta starts, prepared to place herself in front of her sisters and in the line of fire with their mother if need be.

“You all have to be better. You’re Archeron women for the Mother’s sake.”

“Are we? Since you married us off,” Feyre mutters under her breath, but not quiet enough that their mother doesn’t hear.

“You insolent child,” Elinor seethes, turning her ire on her youngest daughter. “I am making you all stronger, ensuring you can take your birthright. And you’re ungrateful?” She takes a calming breath, smoothing out the lines of her skirts. “I expect you all to be better than this moving forward. At least I see you haven’t allowed the vampire bite, nor the wolf mating bite. That’s good. Elain?”

Elain’s grip on her skirts is near white-knuckled beneath the table, pink beginning to spill through her cheeks. With each second of silence that stretches around them, Nesta frowns in confusion, trying to surreptitiously reach toward her sister in comfort without their mother noticing.

“Elain,” Elinor repeats, her voice clipped.

Another tense moment passes, but then Elain slowly lifts her hands, placing them palm up on the table. The pink line across her left palm is unmistakable, still slightly puckered and not fully healed. A bonding spell, a witch’s equivalent of tying two souls together through blood and magic.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Elain whispers, wincing when Elinor’s fingers curl around her wrist in a tight grip. “It was Eris. He insisted that Lucien and I do it.”

The response has Nesta even more confused. Elain has never been a particularly good liar, neither when they were girls and she was stealing cookies and sweets from the kitchen nor when they were teens and she was sneaking out to meet Graysen Nolan in town. And Nesta knows that Elain is lying now; although, she has no idea why.

“What were you thinking, Elain? This type of stupidity is beneath you.”

“Please, Mama. You’re hurting me.”

“Do you have any idea what this means? What you’ve done? You’re an Archeron, dammit, not some Vanserra’s tramp. Marriage or not, I will not have you tarnishing this family’s name.”

Elinor releases Elain’s wrist, crescent shaped indentations embedded in the skin from her nails. Elain clutches her hand back to her chest, cradling her wrist. Anger sparks and flares in Nesta’s chest in her sister’s defense. She glares across the table at their mother, but Elinor’s focus stays glued on Elain. The biting words sit heavy on the tip of Nesta’s tongue, poised and ready to fire without a second thought for the consequences, for what she knows it would mean to bring Elinor’s ire back her way.

As long as it’s off Elain and Feyre.

But before Nesta can say anything, Elinor pushes up to her feet. She looks down her nose at all three of her daughters, a cruel queen and her subjects. “Remember your place, remember what is expected of you as an Archeron, and do not fail me again.”

Nesta is quiet the entire carriage ride back to the pack’s village. She can feel Emerie’s curious gaze watching her from the seat across from her, but Nesta keeps her eyes firmly out the window. She watches the leaves and the trees shift and morph as they move past, her mother’s words, the whole morning, still playing over and over in her mind.

She’s an Archeron woman. A witch who comes from a long line of proud, powerful women. One of three sisters said to be blessed by the Mother herself. No matter that she’s a married woman now. No matter that she and Cassian may one day be amicable. No matter what the pack might one day mean to her. An Archeron is what her mother expects her to be, and Nesta will not fail her.

She will not be a failure again.

“Are you alright?” Emerie finally dares to break the quiet to ask. “You seem… tense.”

“I’m fine,” Nesta dismisses curtly. “Besides, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“You’re the alpha’s wife. You might be surprised, but that actually means something to me.”

The words take Nesta by surprise, and she turns her attention to the second, blinking a few times before remembering herself. “Thanks.”

Emerie shrugs like it’s easy, like it doesn’t mean anything, but it does to Nesta. It makes her feel like she may be less alone in the pack after all. She’s about to ask Emerie if she likes to read, to see if they may share any interests, but the carriage pulls to a stop. Emerie is quick to hop out, holding the door open for Nesta to step down as well.

“I promised Cresseida I’d relieve her from shop duty as soon as I got back,” Emerie explains, waving off the carriage. “You’ll be alright?”

“I’m fine.”

Emerie’s gaze sweeps over Nesta, like she doesn’t quite believe the words, but she doesn’t comment or say anything else. With a nod of her head, she heads toward the market square. Left alone, Nesta takes a moment for herself. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in, allowing the scent of the trees and the moss around her to fill her senses. The peace this deep into the forest licks at her wounds in a soothing way she doesn’t expect, has that magic within her settling like a beast returning home.

Home.

Is that what this place is now? Between her grandmother and her mother, the Archeron manor certainly never truly felt like a home. Nesta has never really felt like she had a home, not a true one,at least. When she was younger, she used to read stories of sweeping romances and believed that she could find one just like the women between those pages. Her mother always said they were nothing more than fairytale dreams, always chastised her when she had her nose in those books.

Maybe that was one thing Elinor was right about.

Sighing softly to herself, Nesta rolls her shoulders and starts along the winding path through the village, back toward the alpha cabin on the top of the hill. When she pushes through the front door, she’s surprised to find Cassian standing in the kitchen. He looks just as surprised to see her, but then his expression changes, morphs into rage with the way his lips pull back in a snarl, the way his hazel eyes flare and narrow.

Nesta had almost forgotten about Cassian, certainly forgotten about their previous argument and the ward she’d placed around the cabin last night. She’d been too caught up in her mother and her sisters, between the disaster that was tea this morning. But it’s clear that Cassian hasn’t, and it all comes crashing back to Nesta as she takes in the way he’s glaring at her.

It’s the perfect distraction.

“I see you got yourself back inside after all,” Nesta comments idly, turning her back on him and removing her shoes and her cloak.

“We need to talk about last night.”

“What’s there to talk about? I thought it was rather fitting. Perhaps, we should build you a dog house.”

Nesta turns back around, offering her best saccharine smile, knowing it’s exactly the thing to get under his skin and fuel the fire. To draw out the pull to her push until they’re burning together and everything else fades away with those flames. But Cassian merely tilts his head, watching her in that unnerving way of his as though he can see right through her. It has Nesta’s hackles raising.

“Do you want to play, Nes?” Cassian drawls, taking slow, measured steps closer to her.

“Play? There’s no playing. You’re insufferable.”

“Insufferable? That’s weak, even for you.”

Nesta scowls up at him, daring to close that final step between them until they’re toe to toe. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on. Is that the worst you’ve got? I’ve been called much worse than that, sweetheart.”

“Like what?” Nesta asks, any other cutting words dying on her tongue.

“Offended on my behalf?” Cassian fires back, reaching a hand up between them to cradle her jaw, dragging his thumb across her bottom lip.

The teasing tone has the scowl returning in an instant, Nesta smacking his hand away. “Perhaps, I want to shake the person’s hand. Exchange ideas.”

“Ideas?” Cassian continues to tease, walking Nesta back until her back hits the wall.

“Yes. Ideas I could have shared in the pack meeting yesterday.”

Any teasing drops away completely from Cassian’s expression as he rolls his eyes. “Back to that, are we? It’s my pack, remember? Did you forget who the alpha is?”

“Did you forget I’m your wife? I should have been in that meeting.”

“Oh, you want to be my wife, now? How about you be a good little wife and get on your knees and suck my cock?”

The words are crude, all but snarled in her face, but that doesn’t seem to stop the way Nesta’s body responds. She still remembers that cock all too well. Remembers the way it had felt fucking into her. Remembers the way his knot had stretched her. Remembers the delicious ache between her thighs that remained for the entire next day.

But she’ll be damned if she lets Cassian know all that.

“Fuck you,” she snarls instead, shoving at his chest, but of course his large frame in unmoving.

“You’ve certainly forgotten how good a wolf’s sense of smell is,” Cassian tells her, leaning down over her with a cocksure smirk. “You think I can’t notice the sweet scent of your arousal? Do you want to suck my cock, sweetheart?”

“It’s clear you certainly want me to.”

Nesta shifts her hand, reaching down to grip Cassian’s cock through his pants. He hisses at the contact, but she can feel how he’s already half hard, can feel the way he twitches against her palm. It’s clear he’s getting off on their back and forth just as much as she is. She rubs her hand up and down, squeezing when she reaches the head of his cock.

Cassian continues to swell beneath her ministrations, and Nesta can’t help but lick her lips. How would the weight of him on her tongue feel? How would he taste? Just the thought has her clenching her thighs, desperate for friction, for relief, beneath the skirts of her dress. There’s a hunger yawning in the space between her ribs, clawing and gnawing at her chest, and she sees that same hunger echoes in Cassian’s own burning gaze, in his darkening hazel eyes.

“The no kissing rule still applies,” Nesta tells him, pulling her hand away so she can focus on the laces of her dress. “This is just sex.”

“Just sex,” Cassian agrees, reaching a hand back to fist in his shirt, tugging it up and off.

Nesta’s dress has barely hit the floor in a crumple of fabric before Cassian is pressing fully into her space. His hands find her thighs, fingers spread wide and digging into her skin, and he hauls her up off the ground with ease. He turns on his heel, only taking a few long strides before he deposits Nesta on the kitchen table, the wood pressing against her back.

Cassian takes his time roving his eyes over her, tracing down her throat and collarbones, lingering on her heaving chest and her peaked nipples, following down her stomach and between her spread legs. He dares to reach his hand forward, shadowing that same path with two fingers. It’s a spark catching, goosebumps erupting across Nesta’s skin as she arches up against that touch.

“So pretty flushed like this,” Cassian comments idly, using those same two fingers to toy with the waistband of her undergarments. “Good enough to eat.”

Cassian gathers up his hair in his hands, tugging it away from his face and securing it with a leather band, before he slowly drops down to his knees. His fingers curl around Nesta’s ankles, calluses along his palms sliding up her calves, over her knees, up her thighs. He pries her legs further apart, leaning in until even through the fabric separating them still, Nesta can feel the ghost of his hot breath against her cunt, until he can lick a thick line over the dampness that’s already gathered there.

Cassian groans softly, giving her cunt another lick. “And oh so sweet too. Who knew just the thought of sucking my cock would have you dripping already?”

His hands slide up over her hips, and Nesta can feel the heat of them scorching her skin. She can feel the hint of claws too, teasing and drawing a shudder up her spine. Would he fuck her with those claws? What would that feel like?

The sound of tearing fabric is almost too loud, even over Nesta’s panting breaths. She snaps her attention down just in time to watch what remains of her undergarments fall away. That cocksure grin of his is out in full force, hazel eyes glinting from between her thighs. Normally, Nesta would want to wipe that smirk clean off his face, but right now, all she can think about is the sight of him on his knees before her, about the blissful release that sight promises.

“Cassian,” Nesta whines instead, trying to buck her hips up against his hold. “Please.”

“What a good girl,” Cassian praises, mouthing along Nesta’s inner thigh and drawing a soft whimper from her lips. “Now, keep those eyes on me and keep moaning my name.”

The first slide of Cassian’s tongue against her cunt has Nesta gasping, thighs squeezing instinctively around the alpha’s head. Cassian groans against her, his mouth moving to her clit and tracing slow, tortuous circles over it. Nesta tries to keep her gaze firmly on him, but it feels almost unfair. His wide shoulders bracketed between her thighs, the shorter strands of hair falling out of his updo and along his temples, and his eyes…

His eyes glow golden as though the wolf within him has decided to join as well. As though Nesta truly is the prey caught in the predator’s trap. But she’s not sure she’d rather be anywhere else.

Cassian groans again, and then he really starts to devour her. He fucks his tongue up into her, curling and flicking it along her walls. Nesta feels like she’s burning, every nerve ending blazing and focused on where Cassian’s mouth works her higher and higher. Her feet scrabble desperately for some sort of purchase, against Cassian’s shoulders, against the edge of the table.

“Cass… Cassian… fuck.”

Nesta knows that she’s babbling, knows he’s turned her into a puddle of moans and canting hips, but she can’t find it within herself to care, not with the way he plays her body so well. She slides a hand down to Cassian’s head, holding him right where he is, the other finding her own breast to pinch and tweak her nipple in time with the movements of Cassian’s tongue.

Cassian focuses his attention back on her clit, and that fire blazes hotter until it swallows Nesta whole. Her back arches up fully off the kitchen table, fingers curling tight enough in Cassian’s hair that her nails bite into his scalp. She moans loudly as her release carries her right over the edge, trailing off into a whimper when Cassian continues to lap at her still fluttering cunt until he’s had his fill.

When Cassian finally pulls back, Nesta is forced to release her grip on his hair, her hand falling back to the table with a soft knock. His lips and chin glisten, and he makes a big show of sliding his tongue around his mouth and gathering up the excess. Nesta watches from beneath hooded eyes, that heat in her blood still simmering.

She pulls herself up into a seated position, reaching for the laces of Cassian’s pants. She makes quick work of the knot, pushing the fabric down until it slips from his hips and falls to his feet. Just the sight of his cock bobbing free has her thighs clenching again, has her swallowing hard and licking her lips. She eyes the vein that runs along the underside, the already weeping head, remembering exactly it’ll feel when she sinks back onto it.

Her legs are shaky as she slips off the kitchen table, but she’s able to guide Cassian back until he’s falling into one of the kitchen chairs. She sinks down onto her knees between his spread legs, sliding her hands up over his knees and along his thighs. She drags her nails along the skin, through the coarse hair lining his strong thighs, before finally curling her fingers around his cock, squeezing the base.

“Now this is a sight I could get used to,” Cassian comments, his hips bucking up against her grip. “A good girl on her knees before her husband, ready to take his cock so well.”

Nesta wants to roll her eyes at the words, but there’s no stopping the way her body responds to the praise. She decides to focus on the task at hand, leaning in and licking at the arousal dribbling from Cassian’s cockhead. She moans softly at the salty taste blooming across her tongue, opening her mouth wider to swallow him down. She slides her tongue along the underside, relaxing her throat to take as much as she can and working what she can’t with her hand. The weight of him in her mouth is exactly as unparalleled as Nesta imagined, and she moans around his cock as she starts to bob her head.

Tears start to prickle Nesta’s eyes, but she doesn’t let it deter her, blinking and peering up at Cassian through her eyelashes. His gaze is already pinned on her, lips parted and expression nothing short of enraptured. His dirty mouth is silent now. Nesta almost wishes she could smirk around the way her mouth is stuffed full. She may be the one on her knees, but it’s the pack alpha rendered powerless.

It goes right to her head and right to her cunt.

She widens her stance and dips her free hand between her own thighs. Her fingers slip through the wetness, and she teases her clit briefly before sinking two fingers into her cunt. She tries to match the pace of her fingers with the movements of her mouth, curling her fingers every time she swirls her tongue over the head of Cassian’s cock.

“Gods, look at you,” Cassian’s voice draws her attention back to him. “Go on, sweetheart. Add a third finger. Get yourself nice and ready to take my knot.”

Nesta whines around Cassian’s cock, but she does as she’s told. She presses in a third finger, fucking her cunt hard and desperately. Heat coils low in her gut, her thighs beginning to tremble, and when she dares to press her thumb against her clit, Nesta has to finally pull back from Cassian’s cock. She drops her forehead to his thigh, letting out a high pitched cry as her walls clench around her own fingers, her release making a mess of her own hand.

But still she wants more.

She’s not sure how she manages it, but she pushes back up to her feet. She moves to straddle Cassian’s lap, to finally take what she wants, but she barely gets a single knee up onto the kitchen chair. Cassian’s hand snaps to her throat, fingers pressed hard against her thundering pulse. Her cunt echoes the squeeze of his fingers, clenching around nothing desperately.

“Nice try, Nes,” Cassian leers up at her, keeping his hold of her as he stands up. “But I’m still the one in control here.”

He tightens his grip around her throat briefly, Nesta’s breath catching with the squeeze, before releasing it entirely. He spins her around, her back pressed firmly to his front and her hips digging into the edge of the kitchen table. She can feel his cock still hard and waiting, and Cassian shifts his own hips so that it slips between her thighs, dragging teasingly through the mess of wetness there, along her clit.

Cassian presses his lips to her ear, hot breath skittering across her skin. “Beg for it.”

“Please. Fuck me, please.”

Cassian groans at her words, but still, he doesn’t give her what she wants. His hand slides down her stomach, down between her thighs. He sinks two fingers into her dripping cunt, spreading them and stretching her wide, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. It’s nothing compared to the real stretch she knows he can give her.

“Do you want my cock, Nes?”

“Yes,” Nesta moans, tilting her hips back to grind more firmly against his cock. “And your knot. Please.”

Cassian’s teeth snag on her earlobe. “Good girl.”

Cassian pulls his fingers free, but Nesta barely has time to whine at the loss before he’s replacing them with his cock. Already, just the stretch of him has stars popping in Nesta’s vision, her cunt fluttering and clenching down around him as though desperate to draw him deeper still, to keep him right there. She feels so incredibly full, her toes curling against the hardwood of the cabin floor.

“Two orgasms already and you’re still so tight around me,” Cassian sighs, pressing between Nesta’s shoulder blades until she’s bent in half over the table. His hands find her ass, fingers digging in against the flesh. “But Mother save me, look at the way you take me so well.”

Nesta whimpers as Cassian pulls his hips back, the slow drag of his cock, but then Cassian is snapping his hips back forward. Again and again he drives into her, setting a hard and fast pace. It’s everything that Nesta needs. Every thrust that has him pressing deeper still, every slap of his hips against her ass, has Nesta keening. She claws at the kitchen table, desperate just for something to hold onto.

As that heat starts to lick up her spine again, her body coiling tighter and tighter like a bow string, Nesta reaches a hand between her hips and the table edge, fingertips trying to catch on her clit despite the jostling. A growl sounds from behind her, fingers curling around her wrist. Cassian yanks her hand away, pressing it to the table and holding it firmly there.

“You’ll come on my knot or not at all.”

It’s a threat and a promise.

Her entire body feels wrung out, but she doesn’t want him to stop. She hopes that he doesn’t stop. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knows she should feel embarrassed at this hunger that cloys in her gut, that flares through her chest, but she can’t find it within herself to care. She wants this. Wants him. Wants his knot.

Her throat feels hoarse with how much the male behind her has made her scream, but there’s no stopping the litany of moans that tumble past her lips. Especially when she starts to feel the swell of Cassian’s knot, feels it catching against the lips of her cunt with every forward thrust.

But he only seems to keep teasing her with it.

The next time that Cassian snaps his hips, Nesta presses her own back to meet him, forcing his knot to sink into her, to properly notch and lock them together.

“Fucking shit,” Cassian groans, dropping his head to her shoulder.

His hands grip Nesta’s hips hard enough to bruise, his cock twitching and flooding her core with warmth. The stretch of his knot, the feeling of being so completely and utterly full, is indescribable, and Nesta clenches down, milking his knot and his cock with a soft moan.

“Still want to be a good little wife, Nes?” Cassian asks, grasping her jaw and pulling her head back against his chest. “Then come all over your husband’s knot.”

His free hand slips down between her thighs, pressing hard against her clit. It’s all it takes for Nesta’s third release of the afternoon to tear through her. She all but screams Cassian’s name, her body trembling through the way his knot still presses against the walls of her cunt, the way she can still feel his cock twitching and filling her deep, the way he doesn’t relent with the rough circles he traces against her clit.

When Cassian releases his hold on her, Nesta is like a marionette with her strings cut, slumping down against the kitchen table with a soft whimper. Her chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath, tries to calm her thundering heart and come down from her high. With her cheek pressed to the table, breath puffing against the wood, Nesta allows her eyes to fall shut.

She and Cassian may never be the sort of husband and wife Nesta often dreamt of as a girl, will certainly never have the sort of love she read about in books, but at least they can have this.

Chapter Text

Nesta

A high pitched whine bubbles up in Nesta’s throat, spilling past her lips before she can stop it. Heat blazes through her veins, flames twining deliciously around her every nerve ending. She wants the feeling to swallow her whole, wants to sink fully into that fire.

Cassian moves his tongue to swirl over her clit, and Nesta gasps out a low moan of his name. Her fingers tighten in the dark, curly strands of his hair, nails scraping against his scalp with the force of her grip. She tries to rock her hips against his face, but the hold he has on her thighs keeps her firmly in place. Even when she tries to press further up onto her knees, he pulls her right back down onto his mouth.

He groans against her, the vibrations against her cunt sending Nesta bowing forward. The movement has her catching Cassian’s gaze, already pinned on her. In moments like these, it’s hard for Nesta not to find him beautiful. His hazel eyes practically blaze with a fire of their own where they peek out from beneath her thighs, the golden glow of his wolf flickering through. She can see the pride, the bravado, the victory, gleaming in those eyes, and it has no right being as attractive as it is.

As Cassian continues to work his mouth over her, Nesta can feel that heat pooling low in her gut, coiling tighter and tighter. She drags her free hand up her stomach and to her breast, kneading and squeezing in time with every swipe and every drag of Cassian’s tongue. That precipice glimmers right in sight, and Nesta tosses her head back, ready to tumble right over it.

Except she doesn’t.

Before Nesta can even wrap her mind around the way Cassian has pulled his mouth back, her back hits the mattress, the male having used his grip on her thighs to all but toss her aside. His face swims into her vision, his lips red and glistening with her arousal but still pulled back into a smirk.

“Fuck you,” Nesta spits, huffing through her still heaving breaths. “I was close.”

“Oh, I know,” Cassian teases. He slides his hand down the center of Nesta’s chest, a shiver skittering up her spine in response to his touch. “You always get such a pretty pink flush here when you’re close.”

“Then why’d you stop?”

“I thought you were a good girl, Nes. Thought you knew that you’ll come on my knot or not at all.”

Cassian’s hands grasp at her hips, flipping her over onto her stomach, and Nesta moans into the sheets at being manhandled, at the blatant strength he simply throws her around. She pushes up onto her knees, spreading her legs wide and arching her back. Cassian’s fingers skate down along her spine, her skin blazing with heat and cascading in goosebumps everywhere he touches her skin.

“You are a good girl, aren’t you? Look at this display, just for me. Absolutely dripping and ready for me.”

He slides the head of his cock through the wetness of her cunt, teasing over her clit. The shudder that rocks through Nesta’s body is enough to already have her toes curling, to have her cunt clenching in anticipation. Desperation claws up her veins and sends her rocking her hips back. She feels desperate for the stretch of his cock, the stretch of his knot.

Feels desperate for him.

“Please,” Nesta moans softly again. “I need it.”

Cassian chuckles behind her, but this time, when he slides the head of his cock over her cunt, he presses his hips forward, the tip of him sinking into her. He continues to rock his hips, burying his cock inch by teasingly delicious inch. No matter how many times they do this, no matter how many times Cassian has her orgasming and screaming his name, the stretch of him continues to be indescribable. She can feel every curve, every vein of his cock as it drags against the walls of her cunt, and Nesta clenches down around it.

“Fuck. That’s it sweetheart. Look at how your cunt swallows me.” Cassian’s hands slide to where they’re joined, his thumbs spreading her wider still. “You’re just desperate for your husband’s cock.”

Nesta closes that final distance between them, pressing back until their hips are flush together. “Stop talking and fuck me. Take me.”

“Well, since you beg so pretty.”

Cassian pulls his hips back just to snap them back forward again. Each thrust is hard and deep, and Nesta moves her own hips to meet every one. His fingers find home in Nesta’s hair, curling harshly against the strands, but the burn is exactly what Nesta needs.

Cassian yanks until Nesta’s back is pressed to his chest, head tilted toward his shoulder. His teeth scrape teasingly against her throat, and for a moment, Nesta’s entire body freezes up. The pleasure coursing through her is blinding, spots dancing behind her closed lids, and she clenches down hard enough around Cassian’s cock that his answering groan echoes in her ear.

He shoves her back down into the mattress, grip returning to her hips as he pounds into her. Nesta moans and whimpers into the blankets, clawing desperately at them just to give herself something to hold onto. She’s half aware of the mess of arousal that continues to build and drip with every drag of Cassian’s cock, coating the inside of her thighs. Half aware of the wet sounds of sex, of slapping skin, and her own breathy, hoarse cries of pleasure filling the room around them. But it’s hard to focus on anything other than the feel of Cassian’s cock spearing deep into her cunt over and over again.

“Gods, nothing feels like your sweet cunt squeezing me,” Cassian groans softly, his snapping hips stuttering. “Desperate and ready to take my knot, aren’t you, Nes?”

Nesta’s body feels too wrung out to form coherent words, but she can feel Cassian’s knot teasing with every forward thrust. She widens her stance even more, opening herself up completely in anticipation. In invitation. A few more thrusts, and Cassian’s knot breaches, locking them together.

Nesta moans lowly at the stretch of his knot, at the feel of his cock pulsing deep in her cunt. Her moans turn high pitched and breathy when a hand curls around her hip, callused fingers tracing deft circles over her clit.

“Come on,” Cassian breathes right against her ear. “Want to feel you really milking my knot.”

Cassian starts to rock his hips shallowly, matching the movement of his fingers, but Nesta is already too keyed up, and it doesn’t take much for her own orgasm to crash through her. She slumps down against the blankets, catching her breath while waiting for his knot to subside. When Cassian finally pulls out, she relaxes fully into the bed, giving herself one more moment before clambering up to her feet. She doesn’t even look back as she grabs her robe, tugging it on and padding into the bathing chamber.

She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when she steps back out and finds the bedroom now empty. With a soft sigh, she steps over to the vanity, taking the time to run a brush through the strands of her hair before beginning the process of intricately braiding it away from her face.

As much as she hates to admit it, she’s grown into a comfortable routine with the pack over the past week. She spends most of her mornings and afternoons with Cresseida, Emerie, or both of them. While the weight of a sword in her palm is still unfamiliar, there’s something satisfying too about the ache in her muscles. Something exhilarating about learning the steps and moves as though it’s a new dance. Something enthralling about disarming an opponent without touching a drop of her magic.

For once, she doesn’t mind training. For once, it’s actually fun.

Even more fun is what often comes after training. Discovering that she and Emerie have such similar tastes in books had been an exciting surprise, and it had led to Nesta and the pack’s second spending hours discussing their favorite characters. Had led to Nesta laughing harder than she had in years, until a stitch had sunk its claws into her side, causing her to laugh even more.

Which is why when Nesta finishes getting ready and steps out of the alpha’s cabin, she heads toward Emerie’s shop rather than the training rings. She still gets a few dubious looks, a few whispers behind her back, as she makes her way through the center of the pack’s village. But she earns a few polite nods as well, even gets a friendly smile from the baker, Nevaeh.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Emerie greets from behind the counter as soon as Nesta pushes through the door of the shop.

Nesta rolls her eyes good naturedly. “Hello to you too.”

“Have a good morning?” Emerie asks, the teasing tone of her voice and the smirk firmly on her face belying any innocence behind the question.

“What is that—”

“Ugh, who reeks of sex?” Cresseida calls out, stepping out from the back room with a box hefted in her arms. “Oh. Hi, Nesta.”

“Oh, yes, fine. Laugh it up,” Nesta scoffs with another roll of her eyes. “Wolves.”

Emerie laughs, the sound bright and easy, making it hard for Nesta to stay too mad at her. With a shake of her head, Nesta brushes past them both and steps into the back room, locating the remaining box. She returns to the main part of the shop, placing the box on the counter and opening it up.

“So, I take it you didn’t finish My Warrior’s Heart yet, then?” Emerie asks, reaching into the box and pulling out the clothing packed inside.

“Not yet,” Nesta sighs softly, reaching into the box as well and finding the soft, knit fabric scarves that she pulls out and adds to Emerie’s stack. “I got about halfway through last night, though. I just got to the part where Leila has been kidnapped.”

“That means you’re almost at my favorite part.”

“No spoilers!”

Emerie laughs again, but before she can say anything else, the door to the shop swings open, a small head of ashy blonde hair tumbling over the threshold and into the shop.

“Miss Cresseida! Miss Cresseida!”

Nesta lets out a quiet gasp of surprise when a weight knocks into her legs. She looks down and finds a child curled around her knees, small fingers curled into the skirts of Nesta’s dress. The little girl pulls her face back enough to look up, blinking at Nesta with wide, tear filled brown eyes. She lets out a gasp of her own, seemingly realizing she’s latched onto the wrong adult in the room.

“Miss Cresseida,” the little girl cries again, stumbling away. “The older boys pushed me into the dirt and I scraped up my knees.”

“Oh, Gracie,” Cresseida hums, crouching down to the little girl’s level. “And what did you say to them first?”

Gracie at least has the decency to look sheepish at the question, her bottom lip finding home between her teeth and her eyes glancing away nervously. Her fingers twist into the fabric of her shirt and she rocks back on her heels, but it does nothing to hide the little girl’s guilt.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I’m sure those older boys deserved it,” Emerie jumps in to offer, leaning over the counter enough to wink at Gracie. “That’s what you’re teaching her and training her for after all, aren’t you, Cress?”

“Don’t encourage her,” Cresseida scoffs, but Nesta spies the way her lips twitch with the barest hint of a smile. She scoops Gracie up under the arms, placing her on the counter. “Now, let’s look at those scraped knees.”

Nesta steps closer as Cresseida carefully lifts the hem on Gracie’s pants. She has to swallow down a wince as she takes in the state of the little girl’s knees. Angry, red lines criss cross over one another, and a particularly deep cut on her right knee still bubbles with droplets of blood. Already, the skin has started to purple, the beginning signs of what’s sure to be a nasty bruise.

“Do you have herbs?” Nesta asks, already making her way toward the stairs and the home above the shop before she even gets a response.

She steps into the kitchen, opening up cabinets, reading labels, and opening different jars to sniff at the contents within. She gathers everything she’ll need into her arms, heading back down the stairs and into the main shop. She sets everything down on the counter, making quick work of grinding down the herbs, mixing in honey until she’s created a familiar paste. It’s practically second nature, the way her hands work without a second thought.

“This might feel a bit cold,” Nesta explains, stepping around to Gracie and offering the little girl a small smile.

Gracie glances toward Cresseida and Emerie for a moment, but when she looks back at Nesta, she nods her head. Carefully, Nesta spreads the mixture on Gracie’s knee and the cuts there.

“And this will tingle,” Nesta warns, setting the small bowl back on the counter and raising her hand over Gracie’s knee.

Closing her eyes, Nesta reaches for the well of power within her. She keeps her touch gentle until she can feel fur slipping beneath her fingers, until she can feel the purring hum of her magic waking and responding. Until there’s a familiar warmth and golden glow pouring from her hand. Gracie lets out a gasp, but when Nesta opens her eyes and peers up at the little girl, her eyes are wide with awe, not pain.

Nesta has to bite down a smirk at the reaction as she finishes up, wiping away the remnants of the mixture from Gracie’s skin. “There. Good as new.”

Gracie swings her legs, seemingly testing her newly healed knees, before offering Nesta a wide toothy grin that shows off her missing bottom tooth. “Thank you, Miss Nesta!”

Gracie jumps down from the counter, running toward the door of the shop. She lets out a quiet oof when she collides with another body, Cassian’s large hand settling on the little girl’s shoulder to keep her from toppling over backwards. She quickly mumbles out an apology, cheeks turning bright pink, before continuing her sprint out of the shop.

“You have healing magic.”

The surprised tone is enough to have Nesta bristling. She turns her back on Cassian, cleaning up the supplies she used as an excuse to busy her hands. She’s all too aware of the way Cassian steps further into the shop, of his presence and heat closer to her, but she refuses to be cowed by him.

“That’s right,” Nesta finally answers, her voice cold and clipped. “I can in fact do more than just curse people. I’d offer to heal your stupid face, but I fear it’s unmendable unfortunately.”

“And yet, I distinctly remember how much you enjoyed sitting on my stupid face this morning.”

A snort comes from Nesta’s left, and she turns to glare at Emerie before turning her attention back on Cassian. He’s leaning casually against the shop counter, arms crossed over his chest and that ever present cocksure smirk painted across his face. He’s undeterred by the scowl Nesta settles him with, his hazel eyes only seeming to spark with amusement, with a challenge.

“Did you need something?” Nesta pushes out between gritted teeth.

“We’ve been summoned by the Vanserra coven. It seems that Eris thinks enough time has passed for you and your sisters to be… settled in. He wants you to try and locate the Cauldron.”

Cassian

Cassian knew that the Vanserras are known for their strength and magic of the natural elements. Knew that the few rumors and stories that slip from the tight knit members of the coven whispered of the family being all but attuned to the wood, to the fire beneath and the sunlight above. He knew that the place the coven called home was nicknamed the Forest House.

And yet still he finds himself surprised as he steps out of the carriage.

The manor is large, sprawling and stretching in front of them, and it seems to be growing right out of the ground. The spires twist and reach for the sky like the branches of trees, the stone facade all but blending in with the rocks. The shingles match the oranges and reds of autumn leaves, and Cassian swears they shimmer and shift with the evening breeze. With the setting sun sinking just behind the estate, it’s like a natural wonder.

Nesta sighs softly as she steps down from the carriage behind him. “Let’s get this over with.”

She lifts her skirts up, striding right past Cassian and toward the intricately carved oak front door without a care. Cassian is quick to jog after her, only needing a few of his longer strides to catch up. He tries to catch her arm with his, but she yanks it back, whirling on him and pinning him with those icy blue eyes narrowed in a glare.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s important that we present a united front,” Cassian explains, taking her arm again and placing her hand in the crook of his elbow. “I won’t have anyone thinking the pack has vulnerabilities that can be exploited.”

“And who is it you don’t trust?” Nesta asks, tilting her head but not removing her hand. “Rhysand and his vampires or the Vanserras?”

“I don’t trust anyone who isn’t a member of my pack.”

Her fingers flex and tighten against his arm, and Cassian places his own hand over hers, desperate to keep her from yanking away. “And does that include me? Am I a member of your pack?”

“I don’t know, Nes. Are you?”

He knows they’re expected inside, knows they shouldn’t keep someone like Eris Vanserra waiting, but he wants to see if she’ll answer. Wants to see just where her allegiance might lie. He meets her gaze head on, those icy blue eyes of her that blaze with a fire bright enough to incinerate him where he stands.

“I told you not to call me that.”

With that, Nesta turns away from him, the expectation clear. Cassian rolls his eyes at the clear dismissal, but then again, what did he really expect? He leads the way up the pathway and toward the large front door, intricate leaves and vines carved into the wood. It takes less than a second before the door swings open, a well dressed member of staff gesturing for them to enter and follow through a winding hall.

Eris has them set up in a large library. Tall, dark wooden shelves stretch all the way to the ceiling and along the walls, each shelf filled with various books and volumes of different size and age. Deep green rugs and curtains further add to the moody autumnal mood of the room, a fire roaring in the large fireplace along the left wall. And in the center of the room sits a large table, a map spread out across it.

“Nesta.”

Elain stands up from the arm of the large armchair she was sitting on, leaving her husband still settled against the plush, leather material. The middle Archeron–or Vanserra now, Cassian supposes–steps over to her elder sister, squeezing her hand with an easy smile.

“Just the two of you?” Eris asks, eying the way Nesta still has her hand tucked into the crook of Cassian’s elbow.

“Don’t worry, Eris. My wolves are near enough that I can call them if needed.” Eris’s attention turns to look out the window, and Cassian lets out a derisive snort. “You won’t see them.”

“I was checking on the sun,” Eris bites out. “We will have to wait until it properly sets before we see Rhysand and his little wife.”

“Is that all we are to you?” Nesta asks cooly, raising an eyebrow. “Little wives? And here I thought it was my sisters and I that you needed. Our magic and the strength we possess.”

Eris’s lips pinch, clearly holding back a sneer at the backhanded comment. His attention dances back toward Cassian, but the alpha merely meets his gaze with his own expectant expression. If Eris expects Cassian to keep Nesta Archeron in check, the coven leader has a new thing coming.

“I see we’re all here.”

Cassian turns his head just in time to see Rhys and Feyre stroll into the room, the vampire leader’s tiny second in tow just behind them. Rhys places his hand on the small of Feyre’s back, clearly intent on guiding her, but Cassian doesn’t miss the hard look Feyre cuts toward her husband, the underlying and unsaid tension between the two palpable.

At least, he’s not the only one with his hands full with an Archeron sister.

“Do we intend to stand around all night or are we going to find the damn Cauldron?” Rhys’s second asks the room at large, her voice sharp and annoyed.

“Amren is right,” Rhys agrees, shoving his hands into his pockets. “No point wasting anyone’s time.”

Eris hums his own agreement, stepping forward and sweeping his arm across the map. “Ladies.”

Sighing softly from beside him, Nesta finally drops her hand from the crook of Cassian’s elbow. He refuses to acknowledge the coldness that seems to seep beneath the fabric of his shirt and along his skin at the loss of her touch. Instead, he focuses on watching Nesta approach the table. She slides her fingers along the map, tracing the lines until she reaches the small wooden bowl Eris has placed at the corner.

“Are we sure this map is large enough?” Nesta asks, picking up the bones and stones from the bowl and sliding them between her palm and fingers. “It won’t work if the Cauldron is outside these boundaries.”

“It’s the best map we have,” Eris explains. “That includes all of Hybern’s known territories.”

“I’m sure it will be fine, Nesta,” Elain adds, stepping closer to her sister.

She holds out her hand expectantly, and Nesta sighs again but slides her free hand into Elain’s. Elain turns enough that she can reach out her other hand, Feyre stepping forward to take it. As soon as Feyre’s palm connects with Elain’s, as soon as her fingers close around her sister’s and the link is complete between the three of them, the whole energy in the room seems to shift.

For a moment, Cassian swears that the temperature in the room drops, swears that the flames in the fireplace flicker. Everything goes quiet enough that even without his wolf hearing, he could hear a pin drop. Everyone seems to be holding their breath, all eyes glued to the Archeron sisters.

All three close their eyes, and Nesta begins to murmur some sort of incantation beneath her breath, an old language that Cassian isn’t familiar with. Whatever she’s saying, every hair on the back of Cassian’s neck stands on end. His entire body feels on edge, warning bells leaving his nerve ends sparking, and he clenches his fists at his sides, resetting his stance. It’s as though another presence has entered the room, slinking along the floor like a shadow.

Nesta’s voice slowly trails off, and even from where he’s standing, Cassian can see the tension radiating off her and her hiked shoulders. He can see the way her fingers flex around the bones and stones in her hand, the way her chest expands with a hitched breath.

“Something’s wrong,” Lucien breaks the quiet of the room, pushing up from his seat and striding determinedly toward his wife.

“Don’t,” Eris hisses, glaring at his brother. “You’ll break their concentration. Wait just a little longer.”

A gasp draws everyone’s attention back to the sisters just in time to watch Feyre yank her hand away and cradle it against her chest.

“Ow, Elain. What the fuck?”

Nesta drops the bones and stones onto the table with a careless clatter, turning fully toward her sister. “Elain? Elain, pull back.”

Elain inhales sharply, swaying on her feet for a moment. Her eyes snap open, but they’re no longer a soft brown. Instead, there’s a milky white haze over her eyes, one that seems to glow with magic. It’s sight enough to have Cassian swallowing hard.

“Elain,” Nesta urges again, shifting her hands to her sister’s shoulders and squeezing. “What do you See?”

“Red,” Elain whispers, her voice raspy and somehow sounding far away. “So much red. It runs like a river. Runs through the field and stains the blades. It blinds and writhes like a fire so bright. Then a fire so cold. Cold… cold… so cold.” Elain gasps again. “It sees.”

It’s like watching a marionette get its strings cut, the way Elain’s eyes shutter, her entire body slumping. Lucien is quick to rush forward, catching Elain before she can fall to the floor. He gathers his wife against his chest, sliding a hand soothingly through the honeyed strands of her hair and tucking his face to whisper against the crown of her head.

It’s clearly a private moment between the two, but Cassian finds he can’t look away. He can’t tear his eyes away from the male tending to his wife so… tenderly. It seems so at odds with the circumstances of all the married couples in this room, and yet, a dark emotion that feels suspiciously like envy twists around Cassian’s ribs and threatens to squeeze around his heart.

“Well, that wasn’t ominous at all,” Rhys remarks dryly, breaking the quiet of the room.

Cassian can’t decide if he’s surprised or not that Nesta doesn’t speak once they leave the Vanserra estate. He can’t decide if he minds the tense quiet in the carriage or not. His mind keeps replaying Elain’s words on an endless, torturous loop. Of course, he’d known there was always going to be a war, knew that’s always where they were headed, but for her to have Seen a battlefield covered in blood has his chest tightening enough that his lungs hurt.

Whose blood was it? Was it his pack’s? After everything he’d done, everything he’s trying to do, would he still end up with his wolves strewn across a battlefield and nothing else to show for it?

Cassian chances a glance toward Nesta across the carriage, but her eyes are glued firmly out the window. Had her mind strayed to similar thoughts? She told him once that she only agreed to this marriage for her sisters, that everything was to keep them safe. Was she imagining them in Elain’s vision?

When the carriage finally pulls to a stop, Cassian is quick to slip out of the confinement and into the safety and familiarity of the pack village and the forest that stretches around it. He reaches a hand back expectantly, Nesta only hesitating for a moment before her palm slides against his, fingers curling gently as he helps her down.

Night still clings to the sky above, shadows casted across the branches of the trees and stars twinkling from between the leaves. The village is all quiet at this hour, the only sound the gentle breeze and crickets chirping from the brush. But Cassian knows that morning is only a few hours away, that soon the village will be teeming with the sounds of the early risers of the pack.

For now, though, they’re the only souls weaving through the center of the village.

Cassian makes a beeline for the kitchen as soon as they step inside the cabin. He grabs the kettle and fills it with water, keeping his hands busy preparing two mugs. When he turns again, Nesta is simply standing in the middle of the room. The blue of her eyes is dull, unfocused, and even in the dimness of the cabin, he can see the darkness that clings to the skin beneath them.

“Drink,” Cassian tells her, placing one of the mugs on the kitchen table in offering.

“What’s that?” Nesta asks, crossing her arms.

“It’s just tea, sweetheart.” Cassian pushes the mug further across the table, closer to her. “Drink.”

Nesta rolls her eyes and huffs, but she slides into the seat at the table, pulling the mug closer and curling her palms around the ceramic. She takes a small sip, but it does nothing to smooth the line between her eyebrows, to soothe the pinch of her lips. To erase that distant expression on her face.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cassian broaches, taking a sip of his own tea. “Elain’s vision?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“We can talk about something else instead, then. Like your healing magic. You never mentioned you could do that.”

“I didn’t realize I was meant to be giving you detailed descriptions of my magic and capabilities,” Nesta offers sardonically with another roll of her eyes.

One step closer to drawing her out.

“You have healing magic and yet you haven’t healed that scar on your hand,” Cassian points out, nodding toward her left hand and the raised, slightly pink line that runs just beneath her thumb. He’d first noticed it on the day of their wedding, noticed the way she often ran her thumb over the scar almost absentmindedly at times.

“Perhaps I like to keep it as a reminder.”

It’s more than she’s ever dared to reveal to him, and Cassian tilts his head curiously. “A reminder of what?”

“What do you care?” Nesta sneers, baring her teeth.

Cassian doesn’t bother biting back his smirk at the fire blazing in her eyes now, the color that’s returned to her cheeks, as she glares at him. There she is. He’d noticed the way she sometimes curled in on herself, picked up on the way their back and forth often brought the Nesta he knew back to the surface.

“My father was the previous alpha,” Cassian answers instead, offering a piece of himself.

It’s enough to give Nesta pause, a small, confused frown tugging at her lips. “Your mother was–”

“No. Osian thought that as alpha, it was his right to take all of the… pleasures the pack had to offer. Sometimes forcefully,” Cassian explains, unable to swallow down the anger that colors his tone, that claws between his ribs whenever he thinks about the sorry excuse for a male that sired him. “My mother never told me he was my father. I never knew growing up.”

He never got to thank her for that, for the way she kept him shielded. The way he’s able to look back on his childhood fondly, remembering instead the lullabies she sang, the stories she told him.

“How did you find out, then?” Nesta asks quietly.

“It turned out Osian was chasing more than just pleasure. He wanted the best chance for creating a strong heir. But when Osian died, Kallon, Carwyn’s only son, didn’t appreciate his status as ‘true heir’ being in jeopardy. He went after all of us bastards, and he didn’t fight fair.”

“You killed him.”

It’s not a question, but Cassian still answers, “yes. After he killed my mother. And any supporters of Kallon were banished from the pack.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nesta reaches a hand across the table, curling her fingers around Cassian’s own. The touch is light, but still it sends a soothing balm cascading through his veins. He can’t tear his gaze away from her eyes, from the clear icy blue of them. They’re unguarded in a way he’s never seen before, open in a way that threatens to pull him under those waves. They’re beautiful.

A frantic knocking at the door finally pulls Cassian’s attention away, sparing him from fumbling for a response. He jumps to his feet in an instant, anxiety prickling through his veins even before he reaches the door. At this hour, there’s no denying that whatever awaits on the other side can’t be good. It’s his second that he finds on his doorstep, Baz’s chest heaving as though he ran all the way here.

“It’s… Elain… The Cauldron’s taken Elain.”

Chapter Text

Cassian

Cassian never thought he’d see the day where he visits the estate of the Vanserra coven not once but twice, and especially not within the span of the same day. And after today, he can confidently say he never wants to be between these four walls again. The library looks exactly the same as it did the previous evening, but the tension in the room is even thicker than it was when the Archeron sisters were scrying for the Cauldron. It sits like a weight on everyone’s shoulders. Writhes in the shadows and curls around Cassian’s chest, threatening to crush the air right out of his lungs.

Lucien paces back and forth across the room, practically leaving a simmering trail of ash beneath his feet the way he stalks across the rug. It’s almost strange seeing the male so out of sorts. Every time that Cassian has ever seen the witch, he’s looked impeccable, not a single piece of clothing or hair out of place.

The same can’t be said for the moment.

Lucien’s red hair is a mess where it hangs around his face, tangled and knotted from the way he’s been repeatedly running his fingers through the long strands. His skin is unusually ragged and pale, dark circles clinging beneath his bloodshot eyes. He’s long discarded his jacket into a crumpled heap in one of the large armchairs, his shirt creased and wrinkled where it hangs only half tucked into his pants.

“We’re wasting time,” Lucien growls out for the second time tonight, turning his attention toward his brother.

“I told you, we have to be smart about this,” Eris reminds him, his voice low with warning.

“Every moment we sit around here talking in circles, the Mother only knows what Hybern is doing to Elain.”

Sitting as close to her as he is, Cassian doesn’t miss Nesta’s almost imperceptible flinch at Lucien’s words. She’s been quiet and the picture perfect of calm ever since Baz informed them of the news about Elain, but Cassian has gotten to know his wife too well since their marriage. He knows that the press of her lips conceals the sharp words sitting on her tongue that she’s holding back. Knows that her narrowed blue eyes hide the fire burning just behind them.

He knows that deep down, she’s afraid.

Knows that her straightened spine and held back shoulders are the armor she wears to cover her concern. Knows that the way her fingers flex, her arm jumping back to brush against his own, means her own mind is conjuring images the same if not worse than whatever Lucien might be imagining.

It’s practically instinct, the way Cassian reaches a hand out toward her. His fingertips just barely brush along the back of Nesta’s hand before he thinks better of himself. Before he catches himself. He pulls his hand away again, fingers curling tight until his nails cut into the palm, the pain a reminder of himself, and resettles his hands back in his lap again.

“You’re assuming the worst,” Rhys pipes up from where he and Feyre sit. “They’re probably just keeping her to use as a bargaining chip.”

“Probably?” Lucien snaps, whirling on the vampire. “You expect me to be alright with probably?”

Eris sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And what would you have us do? Storm through Hybern’s gates?”

“Yes. They have my wife.”

He says the words with no hesitation, with a sheer surety and determination that has Cassian tilting his head curiously. He’d noticed the way Lucien and Elain seemed unusually close, strangely comfortable in each other’s gravity the other night. The way the two seemed less like two people who had married for an alliance and more like two people who actually chose one another.

But this, watching Lucien now, watching his reaction, is somehow different than the other night, something more than just amicability. It’s almost like…

Cassian refuses to finish the thought, refuses to give the notion any sort of weight. But it’s still there, niggling in the back of his mind. It still has an ache threatening to build and sink its roots into Cassian’s chest. Threatening to twist and shift into begrudging anger.

“We don’t even know for sure that’s where Elain was taken,” Nesta finally speaks up, her voice surprisingly cool and calm. “Our best bet is having Feyre and I scry again for her before we make any rash decisions.”

Lucien scoffs, but Eris nods his agreement at her words, pulling back out a map and spreading it across the table. Nesta stands up, taking a moment to fix the skirts of her dress before she strides forward. She holds her hand out, waiting until Eris hands over the bowl of bones and stones, to turn expectantly toward her younger sister. Feyre hesitates for only a moment before she stands as well, stepping over to Nesta and the table.

“What if it sees us too?” Feyre asks quietly, Cassian’s wolf hearing still picking up the question.

“We’re not looking for it,” Nesta tells her, taking Feyre’s hand in her free one. “We’re looking for our sister.”

Feyre swallows hard, but she nods her head, squaring her shoulders and focusing on the map before them both. Both sisters close their eyes, murmuring whatever scrying incantation they need, the words still so unfamiliar to Cassian. Just like the previous night, the temperature in the room seems to drop, the air stilling and prickling with static electricity. Cassian scoots forward in his seat, keeping his eyes pinned on Nesta.

He swears he can see a slight tremble to her hand where she has her closed fist extended over the map, can see where the blood’s been cut off, her skin pale from the tight grip she has over the bones and stones in her palm. Her whole body stiffens, and Cassian almost rises from his seat before he catches himself again, closing his own hands into fists to keep himself together.

There’s nothing comforting about the silence that settles over the room. It’s more like a yawning void with the promise of teeth and claws. It reminds Cassian of when he was young, of those dark nights in the woods where he swore something watched him back from between the tall, shadowed bark of the trees. Something wrong and twisted.

A minute passes.

And then another.

Something changes in the air, a crackling spark that steals the breath even from Cassian’s lungs. Nesta’s breath starts to come fast and hard, her lip curling back as she pants between her gritted teeth, and Cassian can’t take it anymore, pushing to his feet and striding toward the table. There’s a small noise, one that Cassian can only describe as pure terror, but it doesn’t come from Nesta.

It comes from Feyre.

The youngest Archeron gasps, pressing her free hand to her heaving chest as she all but curls over the table. “I… I can’t…” She turns her attention toward Nesta, blue eyes wide with fear. “Open your fist. Now.”

“No,” Lucien growls, stalking closer to the table again. “We can’t stop. Find Elain.”

“You have no idea what we saw,” Feyre snaps.

The two continue to bicker and snarl at one another, but Cassian tunes it all out. He settles one hand along Nesta’s lower back, able to feel the tension in her body beneath his touch, the small trembles and shakes that rattle her limbs. With his other hand, he reaches up toward her face, gently sliding the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

“Nesta.”

Nesta’s eyes snap open, zeroing in on him, and Cassian once again gets a glimpse of the magic that rages like a wildfire beneath her skin, of the silver flames that flicker around her irises. He doesn’t remove his touch though, doesn’t step away.

“Open your fist, Nes.”

Nesta’s fingers splay, bones and stones clattering against the table as they’re released from her hold, slightly pink from where her grip was tight enough to break skin. Cassian slides his hand around to Nesta’s waist, catching her and holding her steady when she sways. He tilts his head down enough that he can press his lips to the crown of her head, tuck his nose to the golden brown strands of her hair.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” he speaks quietly, only loud enough for Nesta to hear.

“Look.”

Eris’s words are enough to have Nesta pulling away from Cassian, and he refuses to acknowledge the coldness that burrows beneath his skin at the loss. Refuses to name or give in to what feels suspiciously like disappointment creeping up and between his ribs. Instead, he swallows hard and rolls his shoulders, joining everyone else in the room leaning over the table to see.

To see the bones and stones standing on end upon the map, to see them forming a perfect, unnatural circle.

“Good. Now we know where she is, for sure,” Lucien says, pushing off the table’s edge and offering his brother a pointed, sardonic, look before striding toward the library doors.

“Lucien–”

“Try and stop me. I dare you.” Lucien whirls around, and Cassian catches a glimpse of the burning flames infamous to the Vanserras flickering in his russet eyes. “If I have to march into Hybern by myself, then so be it, but I am getting back my wife.”

Cassian half wonders if Eris would, if he’d stop his own brother in order to save Lucien from himself. He half wonders how Lucien might claw his way out of whatever restraints Eris put him in, how he might cleave through any chains or spells to get to Elain. Cassian has to give the male credit for his dedication.

For his devotion to his wife.

That dark, twisting feeling climbs back up Cassian’s chest, twining like brambled vines around his ribs. Around his heart. It feels an awful lot like bitterness, but he’s quick to shove it back down. It doesn’t stop that dark part of him that revels in seeing the mess of emotions wreaking havoc on the youngest Vanserra, to see some semblance of his own emotions and experience finally reflected back at him, especially after how happy Lucien and Elain had looked together the previous night.

It doesn’t stop the voice that whispers in the back of Cassian’s mind, wondering what it would take to draw such a visceral reaction from himself.

“I can offer a squadron of wolves. Just one, though. I won’t risk any more than that.”

Despite the words being for Lucien, it’s Nesta that Cassian doesn’t take his eyes off of. He knows how important her sisters are to her, how much she cares about them. He can still remember their wedding day, when Nesta told him plain and simple that she only agreed because of them. That she chose him over the other factions in the name of protecting them.

The declaration has a new emotion sparking amongst the icy blues of Nesta’s eyes, one that Cassian doesn’t quite recognize. It’s a look he hasn’t yet cataloged, hasn’t yet named, that takes over her expression. Cassian’s heart squeezes in response, and he has to swallow hard against the way his breath threatens to catch in his throat.

“Thank you,” Nesta tells him, her voice quiet and sincere. Just for him.

Cassian nods his head once, determined to keep his own emotions tampered, his own face neutral. “Guess we’re going to Hybern.”

Nesta

Nesta twists enough that she can secure the final buckle, pulling at the strap until it tightens. She slides her hands down along her waist and hips, stepping over to the small mirror in the bedroom. It’s almost uncanny, the reflection staring back at her. She had been unsure when Emerie had handed her a pair of leathers to wear, and it’s as strange seeing them on as the fabric feels against her skin.

Still, the Mother only knows what could be waiting for them at Hybern, and Nesta will take any extra protection and armor she can get.

It had been one of the easiest decisions she had ever made, agreeing to help Lucien and rescue Elain. One she’d made as soon as those bones and stones had landed across the map, before she could even voice it. She’d do anything for her sisters, even if it meant storming into what was most likely a trap. Even if it was the last thing she ever did. And she didn’t care what anyone said, including her dear wolf of a husband.

Although, she hadn’t needed to worry about that last one in the end.

She still can’t quite wrap her mind around Cassian not fighting her about going to Hybern, how the only “order” he gave was for Emerie to locate some leathers for her to wear. She still can’t wrap her mind around him offering up his own wolves to help with the rescue. Elain means nothing to him, he has no reason to volunteer his help, and yet…

And that look on his face… Nesta still can’t get it out of her head. The way the hazel of his eyes seemed to burn in a way she’d never seen before. The way that gaze had been pinned to her as he spoke the words. It had been indescribable. It had something warm threatening to unfurl in her chest.

It was dangerous.

Sighing softly and shaking her head of those thoughts, Nesta steps out of the bedroom. She finds Cassian standing in the front room of the cabin, the alpha already wearing his own leathers. It’s certainly a sight, the way the fabric clings to his frame and emphasizes the large muscles of his chest, his arms, his thighs, the way the red hued scales along the shoulders seem to flicker in the low light of the room. With the stubble along his jaw, his hair scraped back away from his face, and the twin blades strapped along his back, he certainly paints the image of a warrior prince.

His eyes sweep over Nesta before he offers a single nod of approval. “This is for you.”

Nesta looks down at the blade Cassian slides across the table over to her, blinking in surprise. Slowly, she reaches her hand out, picking it up. She examines the leather criss crossed tightly along the hilt, pulling the blade free from the scabbard to reveal the Illyrian steel.

“I had Elis make it,” Cassian continues. “Had him make sure it was the perfect weight and balance for you. I know you have your magic, but considering what Hybern may have, better safe than sorry.”

Nesta curls her fingers tighter around the sword, taking a moment to swallow hard and secure it to her belt. “Thanks.”

The silence that settles around them feels charged somehow, prickling along Nesta’s skin. She dares to meet Cassian’s gaze again, but he has that same burning, piercing look painted across his face, and she has to look away. When there’s a short rap to the cabin door, she’s never been more grateful.

It’s time.

It takes a large amount of magic to travel to Hybern, to keep everyone cloaked, and Nesta’s hands are clammy and shaking by the time they’re landing beneath the stretching bark and branches, the dark canopy of trees. There’s the threat of a migraine building in her head, a pressure just behind her eyes, but Nesta breathes through it all, taking in gulps of the cool night air around her.

She can feel Cassian’s presence beside her, feel the warmth that radiates off him from where he’s standing close. She can feel his attention solely on her, the barest brush of his fingertips along her arm.

“You made it.”

Nesta snaps her attention toward the sound of the voice, watching as Lucien stalks out from between the trees, members of the Vanserra coven that she doesn’t recognize following behind him. They’re all dressed in leathers of their own, reds and greens and golds befitting of the coven’s autumnal ties. Lucien has his curtain of red hair tied off away from his face, and beneath the moonlight, the scar across his face stands out especially stark and the flames in his eyes burn especially bright, flickering with anxious determination.

Nesta almost feels bad for whatever Hybernian soldier tries to come between him and Elain.

Almost.

“We’re just waiting for Feyre then,” Nesta offers, glancing around the wood in search of her youngest sister.

“She’s not coming.”

Nesta frowns at Lucien. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she’s not coming. From what I overheard with Eris, it sounds like Rhysand wasn’t as forgiving about his wife in Hybern,” Lucien explains; although, his eyes flick to Nesta’s right as he says the words. “Sounds like there may have been some locked doors involved.”

Nesta has to swallow down a wince. She remembers the quiet, but harsh words spoken between Feyre and Rhysand at the Vanserra manor, remembers the way her sister loudly proclaimed her husband to be a prick. There had been glares and snarls, and Feyre had stormed off in the end, but Nesta thought her sister’s stubborn recklessness would win out in the end.

“If that’s the next rescue mission, you can count me out,” Baz speaks up from Nesta’s left, his whole body shuddering. “I am not going in that place.”

Nesta snorts softly. “Really? Hybern is fine, but you won’t go to the vampire den?”

“I’ll do most things for the Pack, but I have to draw the line somewhere.”

It’s an odd thing to say. Nesta half expected him to make a joke about how Cassian could never order him into the den the way he was ordered here tonight. After all, there’s nothing here for the Pack tonight. Elain has nothing to do with them.

“How about you do something useful and sweep the perimeter.”

Baz makes a big show of rolling his eyes at Cassian’s words, but he gestures with his head, and the other wolves follow him as they vanish amongst the shadows of the wood around them. Lucien leads the smaller group that remains away, daring to press right up to where the treeline ends and crouching down amongst the brush there.

Looking out across the field of tall grass, Nesta gets her first look at the fortress the king of Hybern calls home. Dark stone stretches high and wide, a wall hiding away the towers and keep just beyond. It’s like something out of a fairytale. Or a nightmare. The almost black hue of the stone, the ivy and bramble that creeps along it, the spikes, it all reminds Nesta of a dark thunderstorm.

“There’s a servants’ entrance through that gatehouse there,” Lucien says, his voice quiet. “According to the intel Rhysand’s spymaster offered, many of the servants don’t live within the walls, they come and go each day.”

“A good entrance for us to use then as well,” Cassian comments with a nod of his head.

“My thoughts exactly. If we’re lucky, we can get in and get out without starting a war.”

“Bit late for that, don’t you think?”

“Even so, we clearly don’t have the numbers for a big fight. I doubt you want to lose any wolves tonight.”

Cassian doesn’t say anything, but Nesta doesn’t miss the way a muscle in his jaw ticks, Lucien’s words clearly having hit their mark. He crosses his arms and focuses his attention back on the fortress, eyes flickering as he takes in every detail, as he devises his own plan with all the prowess Nesta expects from an alpha general.

“Well, then,” Cassian finally says. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

They make it inside the fortress with surprisingly little fanfare. There’s only a trio of guards at the gatehouse, Cassian trapping one in a headlock until he loses consciousness while Lucien and one of his other witches take out the other two. They encounter even fewer as they cross to the servants’ entrance, stepping inside an empty and dark kitchen, stoves and flames long gone cold and the staff long retiring for the night.

“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Cassian suggests.

At Lucien’s agreement, he sends the other Vanserra witches to the western wing, offering to take the main house himself. It leaves Nesta and Cassian to search the eastern wing in hopes of locating Elain.

As they creep up one of the servants’ stairwells, Nesta reaches within for her magic. Just as she always does, she imagines stroking her fingers through soft fur, but this time, she gets a growl in response, leaving the hairs on the back of her neck standing on edge, a shiver skittering across her skin. It’s a warning.

It means something’s wrong.

Swallowing hard around that feeling, Nesta tightens her grip around her magic, pulling it forward forcibly until silver flames curl between her fingers, wreathing her wrists and providing light through the winding dark corridors. The distinct sound of blades unsheathing has Nesta’s entire body tensing on instinct, but when she whips around she finds it’s merely Cassian, both his blades raised and ready.

“You feel it too, then.”

Cassian’s lips press into a thin line. “Coming here may have been a mistake.”

“Don’t let Lucien hear you say… that…”

Nesta’s voice trails off as they reach the end of the corridor, her steps stuttering to a stop. The caress up her arm, along the back of her neck is undeniable, and it’s wrong. It curls around her ear until the ringing taking up home there morphs into a whisper, a temptation. A siren song. A sudden pressure starts to build in her chest, wrapping like cold, spindly fingers between her ribs and around her lungs until the air is squeezed out of them. And that grip on her tugs, calling her down and down and down.

Nesta’s entire world tilts as her body is yanked back, the hand pressed to her mouth muffling her yelp of surprise. She tries to struggle against the tight hold before she realizes she recognizes the warmth, the body, pressed along her spine. With a huff, she shoves Cassian’s hand away from her face, turning to glare at him. But Cassian has a single finger pressed to his own lips, signaling quiet.

Carefully, Nesta leans forward enough that she can peer out of the alcove Cassian has pulled them into. She frowns at the dark corridor, as empty as it was before. What has his wolf hearing picked up that she can’t see?

Cassian yanks Nesta back again, out of view just as a pair of Hybernian soldiers come stalking around the corner and down the corridor. Nesta holds her breath as they come to a stop right where she and Cassian are hiding. Her heart skips and starts to pound in her chest. Why haven’t they continued on with their patrol?

“What have we here?” One of the soldiers turns with a sneer, somehow looking directly at Nesta through the shadows. “A little mouse just for me?”

“More like a wolf,” Cassian growls, stepping out of the alcove.

Nesta barely has time to blink before Cassian is leaping forward, both his swords swinging. He takes down the soldier who spoke with ease, a feral grin on his face despite the blood now staining his leathers. Nesta focuses her own attention on the remaining soldier, reaching once again for her magic. She sends silver flames cascading toward the male, but not before he gets off a spell of his own, alarm bells blaring around them.

“Well, there goes our element of surprise,” Cassian comments.

He sheathes one of his swords and grabs hold of Nesta’s hand, pulling her down the large, main staircase. They burst through the large, wooden doors that lead in and out of the eastern wing, coming face to face with even more soldiers rushing toward them. Cassian drops her hand to free his second blade again, resetting his stance so his back is to her. Nesta takes it as the cue that it is. She takes a moment, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. She can feel the swell of her magic, feel the familiar burn through her veins, across her skin, in her eyes.

A smirk pulls up her lips as her eyes snap open again, zeroing in on the soldiers standing before her. Zeroing in on her prey. It’s the only warning she gives them before she unleashes the beast writhing and skulking within, towering flames arcing away from her and swallowing every soldier in their path.

She turns on the spot, toward the next round of soldiers who dare to step up against her. She’s surprised to find a soldier closer than she expects, dark eyes narrowed and lips curled back in a leer. He raises his hand, so Nesta summons what remains in that well of her magic, wills it to thread between her fingers again. But before she can strike, the soldier unfurls his fingers, revealing some sort of blue powder that he blows directly into Nesta’s face.

Nesta coughs, turning her head away, but whatever the substance was, it’s too late. Her vision starts to blur around the edges, and she tries to blink around it, tries to shake it. All the sounds around her seem to fade, the shouts and cries of soldiers falling, replaced by an almost buzzing that presses into her ears. Her limbs feel strangely heavy, and when Nesta reaches inside herself she finds… nothing. There’s just emptiness.

A roar breaks through the haze to Nesta’s right, warm liquid splattering across her cheek, her neck. Greens and golds flood her vision, and it takes her a moment too long to realize it’s Cassian in front of her, his eyes dark with fury, with worry.

“Nesta, run,” Cassian tells her, clearly repeating himself. “Make for the woods, but run.”

Nesta doesn’t need to be told again. She somehow gets her legs under herself again, breathing through her pounding heart, through the hollowness clawing in her chest, as she pushes toward the tree line.

As she gets closer, she spots two wolves charging right for her, one dark gray with a silver underside and the other an almost shaggy brown in color. The gray one rushes ahead, leaping right at Nesta, and she drops to her knees on instinct, a terrified gasp clogging up her throat. She waits for the pain, for teeth to sink into her flesh, but all there is is a pained cry from behind her. She whips around, only to find the wolf tearing a Hybernian soldier to shreds with its teeth.

“Nesta.” Nesta turns around, meeting Baz’s face, the Pack’s third now back in human form. “Are you alright?”

Nesta nods, taking Baz’s proffered hand and allowing him to pull her back to her feet. Whatever magic she was hit with, she still feels out of sorts, still feels unsteady, and she stumbles back a few steps, right into a firm, hard body. Hands on her shoulders catch her, but then they’re sliding down to lift her fully off her feet, cradling her against a chest and enveloping her in the familiar scent of pine and low burning embers. She wants to protest, but she’s tired, so tired, and she slumps fully against Cassian.

“Lucien has Elain. Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Chapter Text

Nesta

Nesta’s head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton and then held under water. She feels like she’s floating even as weight tugs at her muscles and threatens to drag her under and to the bottom. Her every limb seems to ache, a soreness lingering there and burrowing right down into her bones, and there’s a quiet, insistent pounding right at her temples. Her skin feels overheated, but when she shifts, the silk sheet draped over her body is cool against it, a welcome reprieve.

She blinks a few times before finally opening her eyes, taking in the familiar rug, the familiar dresser and painting of the forest and night sky hung just above it, the golden light that spills across the fabric tucked around her. She’s clearly back in the Pack village, back in Cassian’s cabin and their room, even though she has no recollection whatsoever of how she got here.

The onslaught of sudden light has the pain in her temple flaring, and Nesta squeezes her eyes shut before daring to open them again, slowly this time. When she glances around the room, she's surprised to find Cassian standing in front of the small table by the window. She's not sure how much time has passed since Hybern, but he's changed out of his leathers, instead wearing a soft looking shirt. His hair hangs loose down to his shoulders, the sunlight glinting off the dark, curly strands.

"How are you feeling?" Cassian asks, not even bothering to turn around from the tea he seems to be preparing in front of him.

Damned wolf hearing.

"Like shit," Nesta tells him, pushing herself up and into a seated position.

Cassian chuckles softly at that, finally turning around. He steps over to the bed, holding out a mug of tea that Nesta accepts with a quiet thanks. She takes a small sip, the warm liquid already soothing her head, the ache that still clings to her limbs. It's prepared just the way she likes it, without her even having to ask.

"The Pack healer already looked you over," Cassian explains. "You need to rest, but you'll be alright."

"Did everyone make it out?"

Cassian turns away from her again, but not before Nesta catches a glimpse of the wince that takes over his expression. He's quiet for a moment, focusing his attention again on the small table by the window and the tray there.

"We lost Mack." Cassian sighs softly, pushing a hand up and through his hair. "But we all knew the risks, knew what we might be getting into when we went to Hybern."

Nesta heart twists and twinges between her ribs at the information, and she has to swallow hard against the lump threatening to build in her throat. She remembers Mack, one of the older members of the Pack whose greying hair along his temples seemed to echo even in his wolf form. He'd been gruff but never cold, and Nesta is sure that the Pack must be feeling the loss of him.

"Why did you do it then?" Nesta dares to ask.

It's a question that's been on her mind since Cassian first offered his wolves back at the Vanserra's estate. Even when her only worry and focus was on Elain, on getting her sister back safely, it was still there, niggling for attention, like a whisper she could never quite escape. It simply didn't make sense, and try as she might, she still hasn't been able to work out a logical explanation. Sure, she and Cassian finally seemed to be moving past their early animosity, and they'd certainly found compatibility in the bedroom between the sheets, but if there's one thing Nesta has learned from their time together, it's that his Pack was and always would be Cassian's top priority.

And Nesta has learned a lot about Cassian in their time together, in her time in this cabin and with this Pack. She's learned that he always shoves his fingers through his hair when his nerves get the better of him. She's learned that the lightness never quite reaches his hazel eyes when his teasing remarks are just a front. She's learned the truth of his father, and she knows that he'd do anything for his wolves, for those he cares about, to protect them.

So, why do this?

Rather than answer, Cassian turns back around with the tray in his hands, revealing a bowl of stew and bread. "You need to eat. It'll help you get your strength back."

"Cassian," Nesta sighs. "Why did you volunteer to go to Hybern? To risk your wolves like that?"

Cassian reaches across the bed, setting the tray down beside her. It's more deflection, but she doesn't call him out on it. Doesn't call out the fact that it's also an excuse to avoid meeting her eyes.

"I know how much you care about your sisters."

"Exactly. How much I care, my sisters. It doesn't make any sense."

"What do you want me to say, Nes?" Cassian asks in exasperation, moving toward the door of the bedroom. "Eat. Rest."

It's clearly an order, and it leaves Nesta bristling in annoyance, but before she can say anything else or argue, Cassian vanishes out the door. With a huff and a roll of her eyes, she settles back against the pillows. When it's clear that Cassian has no intent of returning, she shifts the tray he set down onto her lap, picking at the bread and nibbling on the bites she tears off.

She's just finishing the final bites of stew when there's a soft knock at the bedroom door, a head of dark braided hair revealed when the door opens. Emerie's smile is teasing as she steps fully inside, closing the door behind her.

"Well, look who looks like shit."

"Hello to you too," Nesta fires back, but the roll of her eyes is fond.

Emerie laughs easily, clambering up onto the bed beside Nesta. "Our dear old alpha seemed to be in a mood when he let me in. Was he being an idiot again?"

"Actually he was being strangely kind. He made me stew and tea."

"That's kind? Pretty sure that's the bare minimum when your wife gets hit with a blast of fae bane."

Nesta hums, picking at a loose thread on the blankets. "He told me about his father, the previous alpha, before everything happened and we went to Hybern."

Emerie makes a sound somewhere between a scoff and a mocking laugh. "Osian was a real piece of work. A traditionalist too. If you asked him, he thought a female's place was in the home, servicing her husband, and nowhere else…" Emerie makes a face at that, but then her expression turns almost wistful. "But once, when we were young, Cassian caught me behind my father's shop, swinging around a stick. He ran off, and I thought for sure that he was going to inform my own father of what he saw, that I'd earn a lashing for it, but instead, he returned with two proper wooden swords. From then on, he basically trained twice, once with the boys in the training rings, and then again, with me, where he'd teach me everything from the lesson that day."

Nesta can practically picture it, a young Cassian with hair even more unruly than it is now, with scrapes on his knees and dirt on his cheeks. She can picture him and Emerie deep in the woods and away from prying eyes, slowly working through different exercises, small wooden swords knocking together as they spar.

"I don't understand. Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you described Cassian as being strangely kind."

Nesta rolls her eyes at that. "Fine. Strangely kind to me."

Emerie turns to face Nesta fully, her face surprisingly serious. "You're part of this Pack, Nesta."

Nesta doesn't know why, but the words have a twinge splintering through her chest, spindling between her ribs and digging into her heart. It feels suspiciously like longing. Despite the circumstances that led her here, Nesta does consider Emerie to be a genuine friend, someone who gets her, someone to laugh and talk with. And she'd like to think that even in another world or life that they'd still be friends. But that doesn't make the words true.

"More like a wolf in sheep's clothing," Nesta sighs softly, picking again at that blanket thread. "Or a witch in wolf's clothing really."

Emerie is quiet for a long moment, and when Nesta looks up at her friend again, there's a sadness clinging to the corners of her brown eyes. But there's an understanding too, in the small smile she offers, in the hand she reaches over to squeeze Nesta's own, gently tugging away from the blanket thread.

"Would you leave?" Emerie asks, her voice barely above a whisper. "If you could?"

"Where would I even go?"

"Back home. To your mother."

It's second nature the way Nesta's fingers reach for the scar across her hand, the way her thumb drags across it. She's not sure that Archeron Manor could ever really be described as a home. A house, sure, held up by expectations, built on a foundation of responsibilities tied to the family name. The ivy twining around the exterior hiding the cracks within as surely as the cracks on the outside. And there was no warmth to be found between the red brick, only the echoes of the lessons with her mother, with her grandmother.

Do not fail. Do not be a disappointment to the Archeron name.

There was no young wolf to help her escape deep into the woods for fun, to reach out his hand and take her away from those lessons, those demands and the punishments when they weren't met. No one to rescue her.

"There's nothing left for me at Archeron Manor anymore."

Cassian

Cassian throws a punch against the bag, watching as the dummy sways slightly with the force of it. The familiar ache cascades through his knuckles, up through his wrist and his arm, the familiar fire licking through his veins. He shifts his stance and throws another punch, quickly following it up with a defensive jab with his forearm. He keeps working through the combination until his chest starts to heave with the effort, until sand begins to trickle from the bag from the repeated beating.

He takes a step back, using the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, dragging the fabric down his skin. He tugs at the wrappings around his wrists, flexing his fingers and shaking out his hands when they're finally free and unbound. Rolling his shoulders, he turns toward where his water sits, but he's surprised to find Nesta standing just outside the training ring.

Her hair is braided away from her face, but rather than pinned back in her usual crown, it hangs loose down her spine. She has on her normal training attire, the comfortable but fitted clothing Cresseida had given her when they started training. And even with the distance between them, Cassian doesn't miss the barest hint of pink sitting high on her cheeks.

"Where's Cresseida?" Nesta asks, averting her gaze from him and glancing around the rest of the ring. "The rest of the wolves?"

Cassian continues toward his water, grabbing it and taking a long sip. "They have the day off."

"The day off? From training?"

"You can't train every day, sweetheart. No matter how strong you may be, your body still needs rest," Cassian tells her, looking her up and down pointedly as he says the words, but it only earns him a roll of her blue eyes.

"I'm tired of resting." She steps fully into the training ring, widening her stance and beginning to stretch. "I'll just have to train with you then."

Cassian chuckles softly, but he watches the way she stretches each arm across her chest, the way she bends forward toward her toes. "I'm not sure you want to do that. I'm a much tougher teacher than Cresseida."

"Try me."

She stands up to her full height again, settling her hands on her hips. With her eyes narrowed and her lip slightly curled, it's a look Cassian certainly recognizes, one he has begun to become all too familiar with. And it's a look he knows there's no point in arguing against.

"Fine. We'll start with a run, to warm up."

With that, he turns toward the path that cuts and winds between the trees, breaking out into a jog. He glances over his shoulder, making sure that Nesta's fallen into step behind him, and then they're both vanishing beneath the canopy of stretching branches and green leaves.

Despite his earlier words, and though he'd never admit it aloud, Cassian keeps his pace light and easy. With each mile they run, he dares to check over his shoulder to make sure Nesta is keeping up. With each hill they crest, he dares to ensure she isn't pushing herself too hard. And when they reach the final mile, he dares to cut through a short-cut he knows, leading them to a small clearing along the far side of the lake shore.

Cassian takes a moment to catch his breath, to stare out across the water. It's mostly still, small ripples breaking across the service from fish below and bugs above, the tiny waves catching the glinting rays of sunlight overhead. The only sound is the quiet rustle of leaves, the slide of sand beneath their feet.

"So, is that it?"

Cassian turns to where Nesta stopped just behind him. Pink clings to her cheeks from the exertion of the run, sweat along her temples and collarbones leaving her skin glistening beneath the high sun overhead. Cassian doesn't miss the way her chest still heaves as she tries to catch her breath, even if she tries to hide it with her hands on her hips, her chin raised in defiance. Even as her eyes blaze with those flames of challenge that always seem to be daring him, always leave him biting back a smile.

"I told you. That's just the warm up," Cassian tells her, stretching his arms across his chest. "Now, we spar."

"Perfect."

Nesta gets to work stretching as well, bending over and reaching for her ankle. Cassian doesn't even bother to not stare. He catches the barest hint of skin beneath the neckline of her shirt when she bends forward, and he watches the way her back arches and curves with the stretch, the way his added height gives him the perfect view of her ass.

When she straightens again, she schools her features into a neutral expression, but it's not fast enough. Cassian still catches the smirk she tries to hide. He almost wants to be impressed at the whole display, the purposeful attempt at a distraction.

"And no cheating this time."

Nesta snorts softly. "Don't worry. I intend to knock you on your ass without magic this time."

"We'll see."

Cassian sets his stance, raising his fists in a defensive position. Nesta mirrors his stance, her mouth set in a hard line, and eyebrows pitched low in concentration. With a smirk, Cassian starts to move, starts to take slow, measured steps, around her. His inner wolf practically purrs in delight at the little game, circling his prey.

"Scared?" Nesta taunts, turning in place to keep her eyes on Cassian.

"Didn't Cresseida teach you that the best offense is a good defense?"

"Is that what you're calling this little spectacle? Defense?"

Cassian laughs easily at the quip. It earns him an eye roll from Nesta, but that's just the opening he needs. He lunges forward, arm swinging, but Nesta throws her own arm up, quickly blocking and deflecting his hit. But Cassian doesn't let up, continuing his offense of jabs and hooks, forcing Nesta back and back as she tries to keep up.

Nesta stumbles back a few steps, and Cassian finally lets up, giving her a chance to reset, to catch her breath. She takes a moment to shake out her arms, but then she seems to clock the respite he's giving her. The blue of her eyes flare, her lip curling back, and she goes on the attack. There's not much finesse, but there's enough power and a quickness behind her punches that Cassian actually has to work to block each one.

The next swing she takes, Cassian side steps her completely. He loops his arm through hers and turns, twisting Nesta's arm and pinning it between her back and his body. She tries to squirm, to break free of him, but he keeps his grip tight, unable to bite back his smirk as he dips his head down and presses his lips to her ear.

"Do you yield, Nes?"

"Like hell, you bastard."

Nesta swings her free arm back, slamming her elbow straight into Cassian's gut. With a wheeze, he stumbles back from the force, his grip loosening enough that Nesta can break free. She's quick to spin around, ready to attack again, but Cassian is quicker to recover. He catches one of her wrists in his hand, and when she tries to punch with her other arm, he catches that wrist too.

She tries to tug herself free, but Cassian keeps his grip firm, smile growing at the frustration twisting across her expression, the all too familiar annoyed scowl. She yanks her arms harder, but it merely causes her to loose her footing. They both go tumbling to the ground, Cassian finally relenting his grip just in time to brace and catch himself, but he still ends up sprawled half on top of her.

"You know, sweetheart, if you wanted me on top of you, all you had to do was ask."

Nesta scowl deepens at the drawling comment, and she shoves hard at Cassian's shoulders until he rolls off her with a laugh. She pushes up and to her feet, taking a moment to dust off her pants, but Cassian remains lounging against the ground, lifting his arm so that he can tuck his hands behind his head. He takes a deep breath in, enjoying the sun on his face until Nesta blots it out.

"What are you doing? Shouldn't we go again?"

Cassian hums, pretending to think about it. "I'd much rather cool off instead."

He sits up enough that he can fist a hand in the back of his shirt, tugging it up and off. He pulls the leather strap from his hair next, settling it around his wrist instead, and takes a moment to drag his fingers through the strands, shaking them out. He can feel Nesta's gaze burning across his skin as he pushes to his feet, deft fingers undoing his pants and shoving them down his legs.

With his clothes discarded, Cassian walks slowly backwards into the lake, the cool water lapping at his ankles, his calves. He doesn't bother taking his eyes off Nesta. Doesn't bother biting back his smirking grin. Doesn't bother hiding as he stretches his arms up and over his head, flexing his muscles.

"Aren't you coming?"

"What?"

Cassian stops when the water reaches his waist, spreading his hands. "Get in the water."

Nesta crosses her own arms across her chest. "No."

"So, it's true then? That witches melt when they get wet?"

"I am not going to melt," Nesta snaps with a scowl.

"Then get in the damn water."

Nesta rolls her eyes, but she turns away from him, carefully peeling off each layer of her clothing. Cassian tracks her every movement, tracks as she turns back around again and slowly steps into the water. His eyes trail up her body slowly, taking in the long lines of her legs, the sway of her hips, the freckles on her shoulders that seem to catch and glint in the sun. He's almost disappointed when she finally reaches him, the water reaching up to her chest.

"Aren't you worried someone is going to see us out here?" Nesta asks, glancing toward the trees around them.

"No one comes out here to this side of the lake," Cassian promises.

Nesta hums, clearly appeased by his response. She leans back in the water, tipping her head up toward the sky, and for a moment, Cassian can do nothing but stare. Stare at the way her braid floats up behind her, the way her arms stretch and move just beneath the water, the serenity that overtakes her expression. And when she opens her eyes again, at the way the sunlight makes them look extra blue.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Nesta straightens again, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. "If I say no, will you still ask?"

"There was a moment, when we were at Hybern. You… it was like you went somewhere else. Almost a trance."

"It was the connection my sisters and I have with the Cauldron. I don't know how to explain it. Sometimes…" Nesta trails off, her fingers skating back and forth across the top of the water, making tiny waves. Her eyes go a bit distant, as though she's returning to some memory, but then she shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."

"Like your healing magic?"

"Back on that, are we?"

Cassian chuckles softly, sinking further against the cool water. "Well, we never really got a chance to talk about it. I've seen the healing magic, I've certainly felt the flames, but is that all?"

"Magic is… tricky to explain. It's almost like a well within you. When I was a girl, I used to imagine it as some sort of beast, used to imagine running my fingers through—it's silly. Sorry."

Nesta turns her face away, the barest hint of pink beginning to spill across the apple of her cheeks. Almost instinctively Cassian's hand reaches beneath the water toward her, but before he can make contact, he thinks better of it, his fingers curling back against his palm.

"It's not silly," he tells her quietly instead.

Nesta shakes her head, clearing her thoughts. "But like a well, it's important you don't expend too much. Or to let it overflow. I usually have to do small magic here and there every day."

"Small magic?"

Cassian doesn't miss the way Nesta's lips twitch up in a smirk, the spark that flares through her blue eyes. He knows exactly what that look means, but he doesn't have time to react. A simple twist and wave of her fingers, and Nesta sends a splash of water directly into Cassian's face. He splutters against the onslaught, raising a hand against the stream of water, but any annoyance falls away at the light and melodic sound of Nesta's laughter bouncing off the trees around them.

"You'll pay for that."

Nesta tries to swim away, but Cassian's large frame and stride gives him the upper hand. He's on her in a second, his hand closing around her throat. He can feel the way her pulse skips and flutters just beneath his palm, can feel her breasts pressed against his chest and the way her breath has started to quicken. And even with the water lapping against them, he can still catch that sweet scent of her.

"If you weren't still recovering, I'd take you right here, right now," Cassian warns her lowly, dragging his thumb across Nesta's bottom lip. "Give you a proper punishment."

"Do it," Nesta breathes, pressing closer still until Cassian can feel every inch of her, until he has to swallow down a groan.

"Later."

It's certainly a promise that Cassian intends to keep.

Instead, he steps away from Nesta completely, moving back toward the shore of the lake. "We should head back to the village."

They take the time to pull their clothes back on once they step out of the lake, Nesta squeezing any remaining water from her braid. Cassian then leads the way back through the woods, opting for a direct way to the village rather than the winding path they ran earlier. When they arrive, Cassian is surprised to find some sort of commotion happening, a small crowd having gathered.

"What's going on?" Nesta asks from beside him.

Cassian shoulders his way through the group, and he almost snorts at what he finds waiting for him at the center. The red cape is unmistakable, the dark green livery and the golden emblem of autumn leaves. The soldier is flanked either side by Emerie and Baz, clearly uncomfortable under the scrutiny and watchful gazes of the Pack's second and third.

"Oh, good. You're here," the soldier says, straightening and reaching for an inside pocket for a piece of parchment. "I was instructed to deliver this to you personally."

Cassian raises an eyebrow, but he takes the parchment held out to him. He takes a moment to turn it over curiously, casting a questioning glance toward the soldier again, before finally breaking the wax seal.

The Vanserras formally request your attendance at the Forest House for a ball in honor of the safe and healthy return of Elain Vanserra.

Chapter Text

Cassian

Cassian steps through the door and inside the shop, the herbal scent of freshly brewed tea drifting down from the upper floor and tickling his nose. Emerie sits atop the shop's counter, legs dangling casually over the edge. With a chocolate cookie of some kind half hanging from her mouth, she merely raises her eyebrows in greeting.

"There you are," Cresseida declares, stepping out from the back room of the shop and grabbing Cassian's arm. "Come on."

She all but drags Cassian deeper into the shop and over toward a set of mirrors where a large box has been placed to act as a platform. Cassian steps up onto the box, and then Cresseida is snapping a measuring tape along his shoulder blades. She hums, the sound of a pen scratching across parchment echoing in his ears, before she's back in his space. This time, she clutches at his forearm and raises his arm into the air. Hard.

"Who knew being measured could be so… aggressive," Cassian notes teasingly, turning his head enough to follow Cresseida's hands as she measures from shoulder to wrist, only for her to force his eyes back forward again with a firm hand against his cheek.

"Maybe I'd be a bit gentler if I was also going to a ball," Cresseida fires back, wrapping the measuring tape a bit tighter than Cassian thinks is warranted around his bicep. "You know, as the wife of your second."

"You mean the second that I need to stay here? Just in case?"

"You really don't trust Vanserra?" Emerie pipes up to ask. "Think it's all some ploy?"

"Hybern could mount an attack any day. What kind of person decides that is the time to throw a ball?"

"Perhaps someone who wants to celebrate the joys while we still can?" Cresseida suggests, moving to his other arm.

Cassian hums, but he doesn't say anything more. He supposes he can understand the logic, but to him, it all seems… frivolous. To spend an evening frolicking and dancing, pretending like there isn't a war about to darken their doorways, lurking in the shadows waiting to strike? A waste. That time could be spent training and better preparing their troops. Not to mention the fact that having all the factions together in one place, defenses down while they drink and pretend like they haven't been at each other's throats for generations, is a strategic attack just waiting to happen.

Silence falls over the shop as Cresseida finishes up the last of her measurements, and then she's taking her notes and vanishing into the back room again. Cassian watches her go, letting out a heaving, relieved sigh when he's finally free from the aggressive snap and looping of that damned measuring tape.

"Don't worry about her," Emerie assures him, Cassian meeting her brown eyes through the mirror in front of him. "She's already sketched about five different dress options for Nesta. She'll live vicariously through her while you twirl her around the ballroom all night."

Cassian scoffs, turning his attention back to his own reflection and fixing a stray strand of his hair. "You and I both know I don't dance."

"So what's your plan, then? Brood in the corner the whole night? Perhaps you should find Rhysand's shadowsinger. Can brood together."

"Look, we'll show our face, do the required pleasantries, and then leave. It will be just like the wedding."

"I'm sure your dear wife will appreciate that," Emerie mutters, her tone one Cassian is all too familiar with.

With a soft sigh, Cassian turns around completely to face her. Unsurprisingly, Emerie is already watching him with that unamused expression of hers painted across her face, eyes slightly narrowed, lips pursed, and one eyebrow raised. Even when they were younglings, it's something Cassian has always appreciated about her, the unashamed honesty. The way she'd stare right into the face of anyone and call bullshit, including him. It's why making her his second was the easiest decision he ever made.

"Just say what you really want to say, Em."

Emerie settles her hands behind her and leans back, the picture perfect of casual, even if Cassian doesn't believe it for a second. "How is your wife?"

It's certainly not the question Cassian was expecting, and his brows pinch in confusion. "Fine?"

"You were so protective over her when you returned after Hybern, practically growling and snapping at anyone who dared go near her. I thought we'd have to forcibly pull you away to let the healers look over her."

"Very funny," Cassian intones dryly.

Emerie shakes her head. "All these years, and you're still bone dead stupid sometimes, did you know that?"

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Okay, I have fabric samples we can test," Cresseida announces, stepping back out into the main part of the shop and interrupting whatever response her wife may have given to Cassian's question.

But even as Cresseida forces Cassian's to face the mirror again, even as she drapes different fabrics over his shoulders and hums in thought, he finds it hard to pay attention. Finds it hard to shake Emerie's comments where they sink like claws into the back of his mind. Finds it hard to stop his thoughts from drifting toward a different unimpressed expression, one with soft lips twisted into a scowl and bright, icy blue eyes.

Nesta

Nesta peers out the window, at the village stretching out below, at the soft golden hues the setting sun casts across everything, purples and pinks already beginning to creep across the sky. It's easy enough to spot Cassian, his overly large frame unmistakable as he weaves down the worn path.

Even with the distance, Nesta can see the way the golden rays of the setting sun glint off the dark strands of his hair, can see that warm and easy smile of his as he stops to speak with one of the younger wolves. Unbidden, thoughts of the two of them down at the lake shore start to creep to the forefront of her mind.

Floating amongst the cool waves of the water, with the crystal blue sky and sun above, there had been such freedom, a soft peace that settled over her. For that moment, everything else had washed away. What had happened to her and her sisters. What had happened at Hybern. What's lurking just behind the corner for them all. For that moment, the entire world had quieted, the only sound the rush in her ears when her head was underwater.

Perhaps that peace was why Nesta had felt comfortable enough telling Cassian about her magic, about the thread that seems forever looped around her and her sisters, tying them to the Cauldron. She hadn't told him, though, about the way the Cauldron seemed to whisper to her when she was a girl, like a siren song luring her under. Hadn't told him about the way she even used to dream about the Cauldron, about that dark water washing over her and sinking beneath.

Shaking her head, Nesta steps away from the window, turning her attention back to preparing a cup of tea. She takes a deep breath, allowing the steam to tickle her cheeks, before taking her first sip, but she's only half finished her tea when the front door to the cabin opens, Cassian stepping inside.

"Cresseida wants me to inform you that she needs you for your first initial fitting tomorrow."

Nesta hums, taking another sip of her tea. "Did she show you the designs she did for you?"

"I don't care what she designs for me," Cassian scoffs, making his way toward the kitchen. "She can dress me up however she wants for this whole farce of a ball."

"Isn't there an importance for unity amongst the factions?"

"Is that what we're calling prancing around all night? Unity?"

"Is that what you'll be doing? Prancing?" Nesta fires back, barely hiding her smirk behind the lip of her mug. "I heard you can't even dance."

"Emerie…" Cassian curses beneath his breath. He turns to face Nesta completely, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. "What difference does it make anyways?"

"All of the factions will be there," Nesta reminds him, her tone firm. "And they'll all be looking at you, looking at us. I refuse to allow us to be an embarrassment because you have two left feet."

"Refuse to allow?"

"That's right," Nesta tells him, leaning back in her seat and crossing her own arms. "I'm going to teach you to dance."

"Alright then, sweetheart, teach away."

Nesta rolls her eyes at the mocking drawl of his words, but she pushes up and to her feet. She steps over to the living room, where there's more space for them to move, and looks back toward Cassian expectantly. He lets out a heaving sigh and all but drags his feet, but he moves closer to her.

"We'll start with the waltz. Something easy enough that even you can do it."

Cassian scoffs at that, but Nesta doesn't let it deter her. She grabs Cassian's arm, guiding it to her waist then settles her free hand in his. Just as she was taught as a girl, she straightens her spine and holds her shoulders back, relaxing into hold like it's a second skin.

"It's a simple box step," Nesta explains. "Forward. Right. Back. Left."

Nesta takes a step forward, intent on leading at least for demonstrative purposes, but Cassian's movements are slow, stilted, awkward. Her foot collides with his before he seems to remember to move, and when he does, he merely stumbles backwards. His entire body locks up in response, his grip on Nesta tightening enough that Nesta has to bite back a wince.

"Fine," Nesta huffs, straightening and finding her frame again. "You lead if doing backwards is too complicated."

Cassian turns his attention down to their feet, staring intently. "You said forward… with my right foot?"

"What other foot would you lead with?"

His gaze dances back up toward Nesta's face, a low simmer burning in his hazel eyes, but he surprisingly doesn't say anything, doesn't snap back or fall into that familiar banter the way Nesta expects him to. Instead, he returns to staring at their feet, slowly but surely taking a step forward with his right foot, Nesta following his lead with grace and ease. But then he stops, and Nesta has to close her eyes just to keep from rolling them.

"What was after forward?"

"It's a simple box step. You can't even do that?"

Cassian's answering chuckle is low and mocking. "Not all of us can be prissy princesses who waste time on dance lessons."

The words have Nesta freezing. She's quite confident that if she ever dared to say that her dance lessons were a waste, her grandmama would have smacked her hard enough to see stars. She can still remember the way her grandmother scowled, the way those cold, blue eyes blazed, the cutting words, when Nesta suggested they merely end their lessons early so she could join her sisters playing in the garden.

Almost instinctively Nesta's fingers itch to trace across the scar on her hand, but despite his words, Cassian still hasn't released his hold on her. She can still feel his fingers curled around her own, can still feel the brush of his chest with every inhale. And it has a fire flaring to life low in Nesta's gut. She raises her chin and scowls, keeping her expression cool and looking down her nose at him despite the head he has on her.

"I'd rather be that than some untrained bastard."

"Careful, Nes," Cassian warns, a growl practically reverberating through his chest.

"It's not that hard. The problem is you. Who knew you would have so many issues moving your body?"

Cassian tips his head down, getting right into Nesta's space. That simmer in his eyes has turned into a flickering flame, his voice deep and slow when he says, "I think you and I both know I have no issues with moving my body."

Nesta refuses to back down, her lip curling as she stares him down. "I've yet to see it. Forward. Right. Back. Left."

Cassian quirks an eyebrow at her words. He straightens, his fingers flexing as he readjusts his grip on Nesta's waist. He takes a step forward. And then another. And then another. Forward and forward until Nesta's back hits the wall, Cassian's large frame all but caging her in, trapping her in his presence, in his warmth.

"I think you're forgetting who's in charge here."

"Oh, fuck off with the big bad alpha charade," Nesta dismisses with a roll of her eyes.

Cassian lets out a sound between a scoff and a surprised laugh. "Charade?"

"I'm the one giving the orders." Nesta places a hand in the center of Cassian's chest, shoving at him, but of course he doesn't move an inch. "And you're going to listen until you can finally get this dance down."

"I don't think so."

Cassian's hand reaches up toward her face, his fingers finding a stray strand of her hair and twisting and twirling it. He tucks the strand of hair behind her ear, the backs of his fingers dragging down her temple, her cheek, tracing across her jaw. It's slow, sensual, Nesta able to feel the charge in the simple touch, the one building between their bodies. His thumb drags across her bottom lip, Cassian leaning in and sliding his mouth teasingly over her throat, up and up until his lips reach her ear.

"You and I both know I don't follow orders, but you do, don't you, sweetheart?" he breathes right against her ear, sending a shiver skating up Nesta's spine. "You love being a good girl."

"This is meant to be a dance lesson," Nesta tries to remind him, but she knows the breathlessness of her voice betrays her, is sure that her scent has already shifted and Cassian's wolf sense of smell has clocked it.

Cassian's answering chuckle seems to confirm her suspicions. Both his hands find home at Nesta's hips, spinning her around and pulling her spine flush against him, until she can feel every hard line of his body, including his half hard cock pressing against the cleft of her ass. One of his hands reaches down her leg, fisting in the skirts of her dress, and Nesta's breath catches in her lungs as he pulls it up, the fabric sliding against her skin slow and tantalizingly.

"How about a different kind of lesson?"

With the skirts of her dress gathered in one hand, Cassian uses his other hand to slide down between her thighs. His touch is all teasing, a drag of callouses along the inside her thigh, the barest hint toward where she really wants him before he pulls away again.

"Maybe a lesson in how loud I can make you scream for me?"

The next pass of his fingers, Cassian finally seems to take pity on her, or perhaps he's truly as desperate as she feels. Just the simple drag of two of his fingers, and even with the fabric of her undergarments still between them, still has sparks flickering across Nesta's skin, still has her arching back against him with a quiet whine. The way she can feel Cassian's groan as it reverberates through his chest only seems to add to the pleasure building and threatening to cloud her mind.

"Already so wet for me," Cassian continues, dragging his nose down her throat and pressing his fingers with more purpose.

He traces a line all the way up to her clit, Nesta's hips jumping with the pleasure as his fingers move in circles there. With a soft moan, she lets her head drop back against Cassian's shoulder, lets her eyes flutter closed, focusing solely on the feel of his chest along her spine and holding her up, on the scent of him flooding her senses, on the way his hand moves. Especially when his fingers move right back down, pressing against her undergarments in a promise of what's to come.

"Please. Cassian, please."

"Well, you certainly don't need a lesson in how to beg. Always such a pretty sound."

Another teasing drag of fingers and then he pulls his hand away completely, Nesta's skirts dropping back down around her ankles. She nearly whines at the loss, but then Cassian's hands are at the laces of her dress. He's not gentle about it, the way he tugs and pulls, and Nesta is sure that her dress will be ruined after this, but she can't find it within herself to care.

As soon as her dress is undone enough, she's quick to shove the fabric off her shoulders and down her arms, quick to let it drop and pool at her feet. She spins around to face Cassian, and it's almost instinctual, almost second nature, the way her body sways forward of its own accord, the way she presses up onto her toes until her face is a few inches from Cassian's own. But then her mind catches up to her, thoughts clearing with such a startling abruptness that it nearly sends Nesta tumbling in the opposite direction.

That's not them. Not what this is. After all, they're husband and wife in name only and nothing more, and they agreed long ago that this was just sex.

Nesta recovers from the lapse quickly. She fists her hands into Cassian's shirt and focuses on dragging the hem up and over his stomach. If he notices her stumble, the trick of her own thoughts, he doesn't say anything. Instead his own hands curl around her wrists and halt her movements, that cocksure smirk of his tugging up his lips.

"Patience, sweetheart. No need to be greedy." He gives her wrists a squeeze before dropping them and taking a step back. "Now, be a good girl and put your hands on the back of the sofa."

The low timbre of the order has another shiver ricocheting up Nesta's spine. Her movements are slow, and she dares to add an extra sway to her hips, but she moves over toward the sofa, curling her fingers in the back of it. It's the heat of Cassian's large frame that she feels first as he steps into the space behind her, but then Nesta is trying and failing to swallow down a gasp when he kicks her feet apart, spreading her wide.

The quiet thump behind her practically echoes in the cabin around them, and she frowns in confusion for a moment, but before she can even glance over her shoulder, she gets her answer in the form of Cassian's hands finding home on her ass. His fingers dig into the flesh there, the large span of them covering her completely and the warmth from his palms bleeding even through the fabric of her undergarments.

He continues to knead and squeeze for a moment before his fingers hook in the waistband of her undergarments, pulling them down her legs. No sooner has Nesta stepped out of them that Cassian tugs and tilts her hips back, burying his face between her thighs.

Nesta has to tighten her grip on the back of the sofa just to keep her knees from buckling. The press of his mouth is hot and insistent. He drags his tongue over her cunt, paying special attention to her clit, and Nesta can do nothing but moan. She tries to rock her hips back, to meet and chase the obscene way he works his mouth, but Cassian's grip on her is too tight. She can only take what he gives her.

And he gives.

He fucks his tongue up into her cunt and curls it, groaning until Nesta can feel the reverberation all the way down to her toes. Her head feels dizzy with the pleasure of it all, the heat coursing through her veins threatening to carry her away. It's almost unfair that one man could be so talented with his mouth.

"Cass… Cassian…"

The gasping moans of his name are the only warning Nesta is able to choke out. When he sucks her clit between his lips, the dam breaks, her orgasm tearing through her. Her toes curl against the wooden floor beneath her feet, her body slumping forward against the sofa. She tries to pull air back into her lungs, but it quickly stutters out in a shuddering gasp of breath when Cassian's mouth doesn't relent. His thumbs spread her wider still as he devours her with a fervor that has Nesta's entire body flaring with heat and overstimulation.

Nesta whines high in the back of her throat, her whole body jerking. "I can't… I can't."

"I think we both know you can," Cassian pulls back enough to assure her, and Nesta can practically hear that tell tale smirk of his in his voice. "We have to get you good and ready to take my knot."

He sinks two fingers into her cunt, and Nesta gasps at the intrusion, at the way the thickness of them stretches her. Even still, she spreads her legs wider, pressing her hips back and drawing those fingers deeper. Even still, she moans when he starts to rock those fingers, a slowly and steady pace that drags against the walls of her cunt in a way that leaves those embers of pleasure burning brighter again.

"That's what I thought," Cassian chuckles quietly, the vibrations scattering across Nesta's skin when he teasingly drags his teeth across her hip, down her ass. "Perhaps, we should do a lesson in how many times I can make you come."

"Sounds like a lesson meant to fuel your arrogance, and it's already so large that—"

Nesta's words cut off into a choked off moan. Of course Cassian chose that exact moment to curl his fingers. Her entire body seems to seize up, including her cunt that clenches and squeezes around those fingers.

"What was that, sweetheart? So large…? Large as my cock."

"You're merely proving my point about your arrogance," Nesta finds her voice enough to comment dryly.

It's as though Cassian takes her words as a challenge. He starts to move his fingers in earnest, scissoring and curling them. His free hand slides up over her knee, along her thigh. It travels up over her stomach until he reaches her breast, fingers kneading and squeezing. Nesta almost doesn't know what to focus on: the hand working her breast or the fingers still buried in her cunt. All she knows is that the dual sensations drive her higher and higher, her mind dizzy with the pleasure of it all.

"That's it, Nes. Can't wait to feel you squeezing my cock the way you're squeezing my fingers."

"Why wait?" Nesta pushes out between moans. "Just fuck me now."

"Are you so desperate for my cock that you forgot we're having a lesson?"

"Fuck—" Nesta gasps when Cassian squeezes in a third finger beside the first two. "You."

"If you want me so badly, then be a good girl and come all over my fingers."

Nesta wants to hate the way the words affect her, the low timbre of his voice as he says them. She wants to hate the way she's still on edge from her last orgasm. She wants to hate that her dear husband really is talented, that he knows exactly how to play her body in just the right way.

She wants to hate that she can do nothing but obey his request.

Her entire body trembles as her release tears through her. A cry of Cassian's name is pulled free from her lips, her heart thundering between her ribs seemingly in time with the pulsing flames that flood her veins, the pulsing between her thighs. She closes her eyes, trying to catch her breath, a whine bubbling up her throat when Cassian pulls his fingers free.

But then those same, large hands of his are gripping her hips, and her entire world topples and turns over.

Soft, plush cushions meet Nesta's limbs, and it takes her a moment to realize Cassian all but tossed her over the back of the sofa. Nesta opens her mouth, ready to chew him out for such manhandling, but Cassian leaps over the back of the sofa himself, his body pressing against hers and his blown out hazel eyes flooding her vision.

"I need to be inside you right now."

His hands move to span across her thighs, pulling them apart and hooking them around his waist. Nesta isn't even sure when exactly he discarded his own clothes, but she's too keyed up to care. He drags the head of his cock over her, through the mess pooling between her thighs from the two orgasms he's already drawn out of her. Nesta throws her head back with a moan, her hips bucking up against his, but for once, Cassian doesn't make her beg. Instead, he snaps his hips forward, his cock sinking into her.

"Fuck me," Cassian groans when he bottoms out, dropping his forehead to Nesta's shoulder. "Always take me so well, sweetheart. Squeezing me so good."

He wastes no time building up a hard and brutal pace, hips rocking against hers with purpose. Nesta reaches her hands up above her head, fingers digging into the arm of the sofa to keep herself from sliding too much. She locks her legs tighter around his waist, lifting her hips to meet his every thrust with a moan.

"That's a good girl. Keep moaning my name and maybe I'll give you my knot."

His hands slide up under her ass, fingers digging in against her skin and lifting up her hips. It changes the angle in the best way, his cock driving deeper still, and Nesta cries out, toes curling with the pleasure. Her entire body feels alight, nerve endings sparking and sending pleasure ricocheting down her spine in time with every snap of his hips.

"Please," Nesta whines, hand reaching out and fingers burying in the dark strands of Cassian's hand, her nails dragging against his scalp. "Please."

"Are you close, Nes? Gods, listen to the way you beg. The way your cunt is clenching and keeping my cock right where it belongs."

Cassian's hand reaches down between their bodies, his fingers finding her swollen clit with ease. He traces tight circles against it, working in perfect tandem with his thrusts, and Nesta's back practically bows up against his body. He tips his head down, teeth sinking into her earlobe and tugging teasingly.

"Remember what I said earlier about orders?" Cassian breathes against her ear. "Follow this order: come all over your husband's cock."

It's at that exact moment that Cassian buries his knot, and Nesta screams. Her entire body convulses, spots dancing through her vision. Her cunt clenches down hard around his cock, his knot, as he sends her right over the edge for a third time. She hears Cassian's own answering groan echoing in her ears, feels the way his cock twitches and floods her with his release, and it has her moaning again, has her cunt fluttering with another round of aftershocks that milk his knot.

Nesta slumps back against the cushions, her entire body sore in the best way, that familiar ache and throb between her legs where Cassian's knot still keeps them locked together. There's a pleasant buzz in her head, and she lets her eyes fall closed, focusing on the warm pressure of Cassian's body on top of her, on the steady thump of their hearts, as she calms her breathing.

"I hope you didn't think this distraction was going to work, by the way. I still expect you to work until you have the waltz down."

Chapter Text

Cassian

"Will you quit it?"

Of course, Emerie doesn't stop. If anything, his words only seem to spur her on. With a smirk tugging up her lips, she continues to tug at Cassian's collar, continues to mess with the strands of his hair so they fall a certain way. Cassian smacks at her hand, trying to knock it away, but she merely smacks him right back. Soon, it turns into a playful fight of smacking hands and teasing shoves, Emerie even daring to shove her hand fully into Cassian's face, snapping his head back.

"If you two have finished…" Cresseida announces, stepping into the room.

"Just trying to keep our dear alpha humble," Emerie offers, patting Cassian's cheek, harder than necessary in his opinion.

"Oh, I'm already way ahead on that."

The smirk on Cresseida's face as she says the words has Cassian frowning, has niggling worry blooming in the back of his mind. Nothing good can come from that expression, especially when Cresseida and Emerie share some sort of knowing look between the two of them. Cassian opens his mouth, ready to demand exactly what his second and her wife are colluding about and planning, but before he can, his attention is drawn away.

Drawn toward Nesta.

She steps into the room, and for a moment, Cassian feels like he can't breathe, feels everyone else and the entire room melt away until there is only her. There's no other way to describe the dress Cresseida has designed for her, no other way to describe the woman before him, than beautiful.

The sweetheart neckline leaves the tantalizing skin of her collarbones exposed, the freckles dusted across her shoulders on full display. Paired with the tight bodice of the dress, it has the swell of her breasts looking amazing, has Cassian's mouth going dry and watering at the same time. The red fabric falls in soft drapes around her legs, a tall slit revealing even more tantalizing skin with each step closer she takes.

Her hair is styled up in her usual braided crown, but two front pieces have been curled, the strands kissing softly across her temples and cheeks. It only adds to the cutting angles of her face, and when she comes to a stop in front of him, all Cassian can do is stare at her eyes, the stormy blue color drawing him in and in and in.

He has to force air back into his lungs, has to will his mind to return to the moment, to find the teasing words and that familiar cocksure smirk as he holds out his arms. "What do you think, sweetheart?"

Nesta's eyes drag up and down his frame, Cassian's fingers twitching almost instinctively at the scrutiny. "This look reminds me of our wedding."

"So, good memories then."

"Disappointing memories."

"Really?" Cassian asks, leaning in close enough that the scent of vanilla and lilies floods his nose, that her hair brushes against his cheek. "Because I distinctly remember on our wedding night when you be—"

"Stop talking."

Cassian laughs easily, but he takes a step back. "Come on, sweetheart. Pay me a compliment. Tell me I clean up nicely."

"I think I prefer you the other way."

"You two are aware there are still other people standing in the room, right?" Emerie remarks dryly.

Cassian certainly forgot, but he has no intention of owning up to that. For a moment, it was only him and Nesta, and refuses to examine what that might means. So he clears his throat awkwardly, takes a moment to straighten out his jacket.

"We should get going, anyways. Hate to leave the Vanserras waiting."

If Cassian never sets foot in the Forest House of the Vanserra coven again, it will be too soon. As soon as those tall, tree-like spires, those autumn leaf shingles and stony facade, come into view, a persistent itch scrapes across his skin. An itch to avoid ever stepping into the estate again. An itch to turn the carriage around and go home.

He chances a glance toward Nesta, absently wondering if she feels it too, if she feels that same itch, but she looks as poised as ever, eyes cast out the window. With her back straight and her chin held high, she looks like a queen without a throne, a goddess waiting for someone to worship at her altar, to swear fealty at her feet.

The carriage jolts to a stop, jolting Cassian from his own thoughts, and he slips out, holding his hand out expectantly. It takes a moment, but Nesta slides her hand into his, fingers curling and palm pressing against his own as she steadies herself and steps down from the carriage. As soon as her feet are on solid ground, he uses the hold to slip her arm into his, settling her hand in the crook of his elbow. Her fingers flex against the fabric of his jacket, but she doesn't pull away. So Cassian leads them both up the stairs and inside the Forest House, inside the lavish ballroom.

The Vanserras have certainly gone all out, and Cassian swallows down a scoff at the unnecessary extravagance. The sparkling chandeliers glinting overhead, the music coming from the band in the corner, the large spread of food and drinks and desserts. Even the wall of sprawling windows have been opened, the nightly autumn breeze twisting through the gauzy white curtains and twining around the gathered bodies in the ballroom.

"Nesta Archeron."

Cassian and Nesta turn just in time to watch Eris Vanserra himself stride toward them. His jacket is form fitting and a dark green, embroidered in golden thread and the design resembling autumn leaves. His amber eyes are cool and his hands tucked behind his back as he approaches them, and Cassian tries no to bristle too much at the fact the coven leader's attention seems to be solely on Nesta, barely bothering to spare Cassian a glance.

"I'm so glad you were able to make it," Eris continues, a smug smirk tugging up the corner of his lips. "I was hoping you might do me the honor of the first dance of the night."

Rather than answer, Nesta turns her attention to Cassian, her expression almost expectant. Cassian is sure that this must be a test, but he doesn't know what the correct answer is. Is he meant to show he's not the brute he's sure everyone in this damned room views him and his wolves as? Not some crazed possessive male who growls at anyone who dares to even look at his wife?

"Your choice, sweetheart."

Nesta hums, tilting her head, but before Cassian can figure out what that means, Eris holds out his hand, waiting. One last glance toward Cassian, and Nesta settles her hand in Eris's, allowing the coven leader to guide her toward the other dancing couples, toward the center of the ballroom. They turn to face one another, Eris wrapping an arm around Nesta's waist and tugging her closer.

Too close, in Cassian's opinion, frowning at the way their bodies are now pressed together.

The band in the corner begins playing a new song, all moving strings and blaring brass and thrumming percussion. It builds and falls, a steady beat through the room and beneath Cassian's feet, demanding, but Cassian doesn't move. He keeps his feet firmly planted, his eyes glued to the center of the dance floor. To where Nesta has finally settled her own hand in Eris's, where they've started to dance.

Nesta moves with a grace that's almost unfair to witness, that has Cassian unable to tear his eyes away, tracking the way her feet move across the floor as though she's floating, her arm extended as though gliding through water. But he's not the only one to take notice. He can see the feral delight that blazes through Eris's eyes as he turns with her, and it has Cassian grinding his teeth. Has his fingers curling into a fist until his nails bite into the skin of his palm.

And then she smiles.

Eris twirls her around, and Nesta smiles, glowing as though the music, this dance flows directly through her veins. And Cassian can't breathe. Every turn has his lungs squeezing, like a golden thread twisting tighter and tighter in time with each spin. She's breathtaking, and yet, Cassian feels like his chest has been pried open.

This was a mistake. It was a mistake to come to this ball, certainly a mistake to let her dance with Eris fucking Vanserra. That's his wife, dammit.

The song finally comes to a swelling ending, Nesta and Eris striking a triumphant pose. There's light applause from the crowd, but then the song is melting into another, a fresh melody floating through the air. Eris holds his hand out expectantly, clearly ready and intent on sweeping Nesta away into the next dance, and Cassian debates whether he's going to have to cut in or not, his own subpar dance skills be damned.

Luckily, he's spared from that when Nesta pulls away, but Eris is hot on her heels even as she turns and walks away. Clearly, the eldest Vanserra can't take a hint. Cassian wonders if it would truly be so bad for unity amongst the factions if he met them halfway and punched Eris in the face.

"You know, it's a shame," Eris's voice drifts toward Cassian, his wolf hearing picking it up despite the distance still between them. "The choice you made the night of that meeting. We could have been great together."

"Is that why you had my sister marry your brother rather than yourself?"

Eris scoffs softly. "Anyone with eyes could see that Elain was hoping for a love match, and she certainly wasn't going to get that from me. But you, Nesta, would marry for power."

Nesta rolls her eyes even as she keeps her chin held high, even as she keeps her steps even. "Is that so?"

"I'm only sorry that you won't find that with your dogs, but I'm sure you know that already. Brute strength? Sure. But we both know there's nothing going on inside their heads. But perhaps you've trained your husband well to sit and lie down."

"How dare you." Nesta whirls around on Eris, her spine and shoulders rigid straight, the silver flames of her magic sparking at her fingertips. "You're not fooling anyone. We all know the real reason you did not wish to marry Elain. Perhaps, you can lure him out of the shadows for the rest of the dances with you this evening."

Cassian can't see Nesta's expression with her back turned, but he doesn't miss the way the color drains from Eris's face. He can perfectly picture the small, victorious smirk he's sure has tilted up Nesta's lips at drawing such a reaction.

"Keep my husband's name out of your mouth."

Nesta turns back around again, continuing forward and striding toward him, and all Cassian can do is stare at her. Nesta has always been beautiful. He knew it from the first moment he saw her, knew she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He knew it even when he hated her, when he wanted to hate her. He knew it when he saw her in this dress and certainly while she was dancing. But now?

Now, it's like he's never seen her before. Now, the thought, those words, sit heavy in the back of his mind, heavy as the weight that builds and presses between his ribs. It burrows into his heart and floods through his veins, threatening to drag him down and under.

"Honestly, what were you thinking letting me dance with him?" Nesta asks when she reaches him. "We're meant to be demonstrating strength."

Her name sits heavy on his tongue. A song. A prayer. His salvation. His lips part, gaze trapped in the cool, cutting blues of her eyes.

"Nesta."

Cassian blinks in surprise, the voice not coming from his own throat. He turns to find a head of that same golden brown hair he's come to recognize, the same strands he's learned to enjoy threaded between his fingers. But it's a pair of wide, honey brown eyes that look between him and his wife.

"What is it?" Nesta asks, turning toward Elain and clasping her sister's hands in her own.

"I need to speak with you." Elain's eyes dart to Cassian again before returning her attention to Nesta. "Alone."

Nesta sighs softly, but she nods, turning to offer Cassian one of those teasing smirks of hers. "Don't do anything else foolish while I'm gone."

It's all she says before she's sweeping her sister away, vanishing across the ballroom and toward some sort of alcove tucked off to the side. Cassian almost wants to laugh as he watches her, watches the way the red fabric of her dress sways with her steps, the way her hair catches in the firelight of the chandelier high above, like her own golden crown.

He'd fallen in love with his wife. What could be more foolish than that?

Nesta

Nesta follows behind Elain, weaving through all those dancing, drinking and eating, laughing. Through the lightness that seems to cling to the whole ballroom, like all those in attendance are desperate to grasp onto that feeling before what they all know is coming. Her sister leads her toward some sort of alcove, tucked away and off to the side. There's no light other than the soft silver of the moon filtering in through the open window on the far wall. And standing in front of it, watching the stars and bathed in that light, is Feyre.

Nesta frowns, her attention darting between her two sisters. "What's going on?"

Elain sighs softly through her nose, hugging her arms loosely around herself, but it's Feyre her attention stays on. "Show her."

Feyre rolls her eyes, but she steps away from the window and turns to face her sisters. She gathers her hair in her hands, pulling the long strands back and away from her shoulder. Away from her throat. With the darkness of the alcove, Nesta almost misses it, but then her jaw practically slackens when she sees. They're healed over, but unmistakable, the two small, red marks marring the skin.

Puncture wounds.

"Really, Feyre?" Nesta snaps, barely swallowing down a humorless laugh. "Is this why you were unable to help rescue Elain from Hybern? What you were so busy doing? I thought there were 'locked doors' involved."

Feyre at least has the decency to wince, glancing away from her eldest sister. "I mean technically there were… Rhys just happened to be locked in with me. The effects of the bonding were…" Feyre clears her throat, her fingers tracing almost absentmindedly over the puncture scars on her throat. "Strong."

Nesta gives in to the scoff pressing up her throat, crossing her arms and shaking her head. "I cannot believe you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

Feyre huffs, dropping her hands and curling them into fists. Defiance burns like a fire across her expression, that same defiance that's always bubbled and boiled through her youngest sister's veins, practically since the moment she was able to walk. There's something different about it now, something cooler in the pair of blue eyes that glare back at Nesta. Perhaps, it's the vampire that now lurks beneath Feyre's skin.

"Oh, come off it, Nesta," Feyre bites out. "He's my husband, remember? We're married."

"I know."

"Do you? It certainly doesn't sound it. We're married. All of us are married. And those marriages don't just end when the war does. Excuse me for actually wanting to try with my husband."

Nesta bristles at the clear accusation in her sister's tone. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means not all of us are interested in being cold heart bitches for the rest of our lives."

It's the last thing Feyre says before she storms past both her sisters and back out into the music and crowds of the ball, knocking her shoulder against Nesta's in the process. The words sting more than the jostle, but Nesta refuses to let it show. She swallows it down just like everything else, and instead focuses on straightening out the skirts of her dress, straightening her spine.

"She didn't mean that," Elain offers quietly.

"You're always saying that."

"Because it's true. You and Feyre… you're too similar. You were always butting heads, even when we were all young."

"So, do you agree with her?" Nesta asks instead, finally looking at her sister again, but Elain doesn't say anything. The slight pursing of her lips is the only indication that she even heard Nesta's question. "Of course. You and Lucien barely waited at all before tying your own selves together. Of course, you're on her side."

"It's not about sides, Nesta. I care about Lucien, and I'm not going to apologize for that. Especially because I thought you cared about Cassian."

Nesta scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Don't be stupid, Elain."

Elain's brown eyes flare at that. "You're angry. I get it. But that doesn't mean I have to stand here and let you take it out on me."

With a shake of her head, Elain gathers up the skirts of her own dress, vanishing back into the ball in a flash of purple fabric. For a moment, Nesta just stands there, blinking at the spot where her sisters once stood. The strings and the brass instruments of the band still thrum through the air, still reach her even in this alcove, but it all sounds hollow to Nesta's ears now. No longer does it offer the warm embrace she's come to love from music. Now, it's cold and discordant as it slinks across her skin.

She doesn't know why she's letting her sisters' words grate against her, letting them sink like a weight against her chest. She knows what she and Cassian are. And what they aren't. It's what they've always been and always will be. They've both made that perfectly clear. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what she may or may not have found tucked away in the wolf village. It doesn't matter what she may or may not have found tucked away between a cocksure smile. All that matters is Hybern and surviving the threat of the king and the Cauldron.

Allowing herself just one more moment of self pity, Nesta finally gathers up her own skirts, stepping out of the alcove. Her eyes sweep across the ballroom, but it's easy enough to locate Cassian's large frame, even with the way he seems determined to keep to the fringes of the room. It only takes a few strides to reach him, Cassian already turning to meet her gaze, as though sensing her approach, sensing wherever she is in the room.

Nesta bristles all over again at the way his hazel eyes narrow, the way they sweep over her frame accessingly. He always seems to do that, always seems to look at her in that way, like he's picking every carefully laid thread until it unravels, like he's noticing every minuscule detail she's worked so hard to hide, categorizing and cataloguing and tucking it all away. It's unfair how one look can leave her feeling so splayed open.

"Everything alright?" Cassian asks once she's close enough.

"I believe we've overstayed our welcome. We should leave."

"That's a no, then. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Since when do you care?" Nesta snaps.

She waits for him to back down, for her harsh tone and words to send him stalking away just as they did Elain. She waits for his own fire to rise and meet her own, for them both to fall back into the easy, cutting words. But instead, Cassian merely tilts his head, those damned eyes of his seeing right through her. Seeing through her biting attempts, through her every wall and distraction. He doesn't run or even balk. He merely steps closer still, one of his hands reaching up toward her face.

"Nesta," Cassian begins, but there's something different in his voice, in the almost breathless quality to it. Something that flickers across his expression that has Nesta's heart skipping and seizing at the same time.

"So, are we leaving or not?" Nesta asks before Cassian can say anything more.

Another quiet moment passes between them, but then Cassian turns, holding out his arm expectantly. Nesta lets out a soft breath of relief. She settles her hand in the crook of his elbow and allows Cassian to lead her out of the ballroom, out of the Vanserra home all together and into their carriage back to the village.

Nesta doesn't know how much time passes, how long they sit in silence, how long she stares out the carriage window at the darkness just beyond. If she squints, she can just barely make out the dark lines of the trees and leaves, the streaks of stars hiding between the canopy.

"It seems Feyre and Rhysand have bonded their lives together," Nesta says, finally turning her head to face Cassian across the carriage. "He's given her the vampire bite."

Cassian is quiet for a moment, folding his arms across his chest. "And that's a bad thing?"

"Really? You're on their side?"

"Didn't realize there were sides, Nes."

Nesta scoffs, shaking her head. "I'd have thought you all of people would understand. After all, what was it you said on our wedding night, again? When you refused to bite and claim me?"

"That's not fair," Cassian sighs, shifting slightly in his seat. "That was before."

"Before what?"

"Before… Before…" Cassian never finishes the thought, his voice trailing off. He drags a hand up and through his hair, that nervous tick of his. "Before I knew who you really were. Back then, you were just some witch I had to make an alliance with for the sake of the Pack."

"And what am I now, Cassian?"

It's close, too close, teetering toward a line they've never even dared to toe. She can see it in the almost pained expression spilling across Cassian's face, the struggle plain behind his eyes. She can feel it in the weight spreading between her ribs, twisting tighter and tighter and threatening to consume her.

Blessedly, she's spared from it all when the carriage pulls to a jerking halt, and Nesta is quick to push open the door and step down, taking a deep, heaving breath of the cool night air. It prickles across her skin, almost leaves the hairs standing on end, but she only makes it a few steps before that prickle turns into claws dragging into her skin. Before everything goes eerily quiet, too quiet. Before everything slows down.

"Nesta…"

It sounds like a song, but it's all wrong. A siren's lure. A trick. It beckons her. It tugs at that well of magic beneath her skin, drawing it dangerously toward the surface. It fogs over her mind, leaving the whole world blurry and a ringing blaring in her ears, that ominous presence taunting and threatening just out of reach.

And then everything tilts.

"Nesta! Nes. Sweetheart. Hey, look at me."

Nesta tries to focus on the warmth and sound of that voice, on the hands now framing her face, on the cool ground she can now feel beneath her body. She tries to will her eyes to open and her mind to center again. But just as she feels like she can push air through her lungs again, a piercing growl rips through the air, and Nesta's eyes snap open in surprise. But she quickly frowns in confusion when she finds herself staring at the backs of Cassian's legs.

"Rhys sent me. To check."

It takes a moment for Nesta to place the voice, to recognize who Cassian must be blocking from her view, must be shielding her from. The vampire's shadowsinger.

"Feyre and Elain are the same. It's all three sisters."

Cassian spins back around again and drops down to his knees. His touch is warm as his hands return to cradle Nesta's face, his fingers soft as they brush her hair back behind her ear. His eyes trace over Nesta's whole frame, as though he's checking her for some unseen injury. Nesta opens her mouth to reassure him, but she can't quite find her voice.

"You know what this mean," Azriel continues.

"I know. The Cauldron," Cassian sighs softly, glancing back over his shoulder. "It means the war is here."