Cassia | Too Many Eyes

The cafeteria. Stone walls and exposed beams. Still full of too many eyes.

I walk in with Leo and Nova flanking me like little shadows, heads down, steps tight. The buzz of conversation dims the second we enter. Not loud enough to be obvious.

But I hear it anyway.

"She brought kids?"

"Thought she was exiled…"

"Did you see how Kade looked at her?"

I keep walking.

The long wooden tables stretch from wall to wall, filled with soldiers and Omegas and every rank in between. They look cleaner than I remember. More structured. Less wild. Like everything has been buffed into place since I left.

Leo grips my hand tighter.

Nova sniffs. "They're talking about us."

"I know, baby," I say. "Let them."

We slide onto an empty bench near the far side of the room. I angle myself so I can watch all three exits. Old habit. Hard to break.

A server, young and jumpy places three plates down with a barely murmured greeting. Scrambled eggs, toast, fruit. Nothing fancy. I check it all anyway. Old habit. Harder to break.

Nova pokes her toast. "Do we have to stay here long?"

I brush her hair back from her face. "Just long enough."

A sharp click of heels echoes off the stone floor before I can say more.

Sasha.

She saunters up like she owns the room and everyone in it. Tight black leggings. A crop top that isn't regulation. Long legs and longer nails and a smile designed to draw blood without leaving a mark.

Kade's favourite, once. Or so the rumours said. The Beta's daughter. Trained for command. Raised to breed power. She'd always known exactly what she was doing and exactly who was watching.

She stops at the edge of our table, hands settling on her hips.

"Well, well. Look what the wolves dragged back."

I don't look up. "Still using that line? Thought you'd have better material by now."

Sasha's smile flickers just once before it resets.

"Cute pups," she says, leaning in closer, her eyes moving over Leo and Nova with the kind of appraisal that raises the hair on the back of my neck. "Who's the daddy? Or is it daddies, plural?"

Leo stiffens against my side.

"Careful," I say, quiet and very still. "You're talking about my children."

"Just making conversation." She straightens, smoothing a nail along the edge of the table. "Though I suppose some conversations are above your pay grade now. Exile does tend to simplify things."

She lets that land.

Then a new voice cuts in.

"Damn, Sasha. You always this charming before coffee, or is today special?"

A tall man slides into the seat across from me like he's been invited. Tan skin, messy dark blond hair, a grin like a slow-burning fire. Rhett. One of the pack's enforcers. I remember him, barely. He'd been younger when I left. All cocky smiles and quiet violence. Now he looks like trouble.

The good kind.

Sasha doesn't move. Her eyes cut to him with the flat patience of someone who has dealt with him before and found it beneath her. "Don't you have a patrol?"

"Not till noon." He props his chin on his fist. "Thought I'd enjoy the view."

His eyes drag across me. Not crude. Warm. Familiar and absolutely dangerous.

Sasha's gaze moves between us slowly, recalculating. Whatever she sees, she files it away with a smile that promises this isn't over. Then she turns on her heel and stalks off, each step a deliberate punctuation mark against the stone floor.

Nova giggles into her eggs.

Rhett winks at her. "She's been awful since you got here. Not that she was ever delightful."

I study him. "And you?"

"Delighted."

I snort. "You don't even know me."

"Sure I do." He reaches across and steals a piece of Nova's toast, utterly unbothered by her outraged look. "You're the one who left. Now you're back. With secrets."

My spine straightens. "Careful."

His grin widens. "That wasn't a threat. It was curiosity."

"Don't get curious."

"Too late."

The temperature in the room drops.

Not gradually. All at once, a hand closing around the throat of every conversation simultaneously. Wolves straighten. Cutlery stills. The Omegas nearest the door take one collective breath and hold it.

I don't turn around. I don't need to.

I feel him before I hear him. That particular pressure in the air that belongs only to Kade, the kind that doesn't announce itself so much as arrive, filling every inch of available space until there's nothing left that isn't aware of him.

The bond pulses once, low and involuntary.

I curl my fingers around the edge of the table.

Rhett glances up. "Alpha," he drawls, easy as anything.

Kade doesn't answer him.

He walks straight to our table, gaze fixed on mine, and his scent reaches me a half-second before he does. Cedar. Storm. Something underneath it that is purely, infuriatingly him.

"Cassia." His voice is flat and final. "We need to talk."

I stand slowly. Unhurried. I will not give him the satisfaction of looking rattled in front of a room full of witnesses.

I look at Rhett. He's already watching the twins with the relaxed attention of someone who has decided, without being asked, to be useful.

"I'll keep an eye on your pups," he says, the ghost of a smirk aimed somewhere past my shoulder. At Kade.

Kade's jaw ticks.

I follow him out.

The corridor is quieter but not quiet enough. Our footsteps echo against stone, his longer stride eating the distance while I keep pace beside him. The silence between us is the kind that has mass, solid, pressurised, full of things neither of us has said yet.

I wait for it.

Three steps. Four. Five.

"Stay away from Rhett."

I blink. Then, despite everything, I almost smile.

"Jealous, Alpha?"

"I don't trust him."

"Didn't ask you to."

He stops walking. I almost collide with his chest. He looks down at me, golden eye burning, the other a mirror of something I don't want to name.

"You're in my territory now," he says. "That means something."

"I know exactly what it means." I hold his gaze. "You think I forgot how this works?"

Something shifts in his expression, not anger, not quite. Something older than that. Something that has been waiting.

And then, barely above a whisper:

"They look like me."

The words land between us like something dropped from a great height.

I swallow. Keep my voice steady. "They don't."

But he isn't listening. He's staring through me, at something beginning to break loose from where he's buried it.

"One of them," he says slowly. "His eyes. I've seen them before."

He looks at me as if he already knows.

Like the denial isn't going to hold much longer.