Mama (Lyra's POV)

His tone was too casual — the kind of casual that sounds like he's stating something unremarkable — but the moment the words landed, they carried a precision that cut.

I didn't answer right away.

Alistair pulled his gaze from my face and turned it back toward the window. A beat of silence passed before he spoke, his voice even, nearly drained of inflection. "If I'd known you were seeing someone, I wouldn't have brought up marriage. I wouldn't have asked you to stay tonight, either." He paused. "That was out of line. I apologize."

He had misread everything — Gideon's place in my life, the meaning behind that call, the way my voice had gone soft without my noticing.

I should have corrected him.

The thought stayed with me for about two seconds. Then I let it go.

Because this misunderstanding had done something I hadn't expected: it had handed me a way out of a conversation I didn't know how to have. If he believed Gideon was my boyfriend, then the question he'd asked — that question, the one I still didn't have an honest answer to — had a clean exit. I wouldn't have to reach for reasons I wasn't sure of, or hold his gaze while saying things I only half believed.

So I didn't correct him. I stepped around it instead.

"I turned you down because we're not a fit," I said, setting my glass back on the low table. "That's all. Not because of anything else. And I agreed to stay tonight because of Cassian — only because of him."

Alistair didn't respond immediately. He set down his glass, then turned to look at me — the kind of look that feels like an assessment, like he's running the numbers on something. Then it was gone. His expression settled back into that controlled, unreadable composure, except this time it had a colder edge to it.

"Understood," he said.

He stood and walked into the bedroom without looking at me again.

I thought he was just going to check on Cassian. But then I heard it — the quiet, careful sounds of someone gathering things. The small backpack. Cassian's jacket. The thin blanket folded on the nightstand.

I got up and moved to the doorway. "What are you doing."

"Leaving," he said, back still turned, pressing the blanket into the bag. "Sorry for the intrusion."

"Now?" I kept my voice low. "He just fell asleep."

"He can sleep in the car."

"You'll wake him." I stepped inside, putting myself between him and the bed. "Alistair. Wait until he wakes up on his own. That's all I'm asking."

He turned, and gathered Cassian into his arms in one smooth motion. The boy stirred slightly — a small furrow of the brow, then nothing, his cheek settling back against Alistair's shoulder, breathing slow and even. Alistair looked down at him, and for just a moment something in his face went soft. Then it closed again, smooth and unreadable.

"You were clear about your position," he said, meeting my eyes. The warmth that had been there earlier was gone. What remained was a clean, deliberate distance. "You stayed for Cassian — not because there's anything between us. Which is exactly why I can't let him keep reaching for something that isn't going to be there. Taking him home is better for everyone."

I stood there, trying to find the right words and coming up empty.

He wasn't wrong. Taken at face value, nothing he said was wrong.

But I looked at Cassian's face — that slight crease between his brows, even in sleep — and felt that pull again, the one I couldn't name, settling heavy in my chest.

Alistair moved past me toward the door.

I didn't stop him.

I had no ground to stand on. This was his child. He got to decide when to leave, where to go, and how. There was no version of me — no role I held, no claim I had — that gave me the right to plant myself in front of that door and tell him he was making a mistake.

So I stayed where I was and watched. Cassian's small hand rested on Alistair's shoulder, rising and falling with each step.

Alistair reached for the door handle.

Then a sound — small and indistinct, somewhere between a murmur and a moan. Cassian. Not crying, just that particular noise a child makes when sleep releases them before they're ready, confused and not quite here yet.

Alistair went still.

Cassian opened his eyes. They were heavy with sleep, drifting blankly around the room — and then they found me.

The moment they did, something shifted. The confusion drained out of his face, and what replaced it made my chest tighten: pure, unguarded need. He reached for me with both arms, his whole small body leaning toward me, already trying to pull free of his father's hold.

I stepped forward without thinking, my arms coming open.

Then Alistair turned, just slightly — barely a movement at all — and it was enough. Cassian's hands found only air.

I stopped, arms still half-raised, and met Alistair's gaze. His expression gave me nothing. No explanation, no apology — just a quiet, immovable certainty. There was a line here. He had drawn it, and he wasn't going to move it.

Cassian understood.

He always understood. That had been clear from the first moment I saw him — the way he read the currents running beneath adult conversations, the way he absorbed what wasn't said. He might not speak, but he was always watching, always translating.

He lowered his arms and turned toward his father instead, then brought his palm down on Alistair's shoulder. Once. Twice. A third time, with more force behind it — the closest thing he had to an argument.

Alistair looked down at him. "Cassian."

Just his name. No rebuke in it, but something else — a quiet, immovable tenderness that was also, unmistakably, a refusal.

Cassian's hand went still.

He looked up at his father, and I couldn't see his face from where I stood — only those small hands as they slowly dropped to Alistair's collar, fingers loosely curling around the fabric. Holding on. The way a child holds on when there's nothing else to do.

My throat tightened.

I had no right to say a word. I was a stranger — someone he'd met for the second time today, someone who had stayed out of softness and would be gone by tomorrow, someone who had no place in the shape of his life and no power to change it.

Alistair turned back to the door.

I watched them go — Cassian held against his father's chest, those small fingers still wrapped around that bit of collar, his eyes open, no longer looking at me.

And then —

The soft drag of fabric.

Stumbling footsteps, sudden and unsteady, followed by the muffled thud of a small body meeting the floor.

My eyes snapped over.

Cassian had thrown himself free. Alistair hadn't been ready for it — the boy had dropped, caught himself on his palms, pushed upright, and now he was moving, unsteady on legs that weren't quite steady enough, crossing the room toward me at something between a run and a controlled fall.

I was already crouching before I'd made the decision, arms open.

He hit me harder than I expected. I rocked back, one knee dropping to the floor, and then his arms were locked around my neck, his face buried in the curve of my shoulder, his breath coming fast and ragged and burning warm against my skin — like he'd spent everything he had to get here.

I pulled him in and held on.

And then I heard it.

It came from somewhere deep in his throat — thin, trembling, like something that had been sealed away for a very long time had finally found the crack it needed —

"Mama."

The room went silent.