Chapter 10: Allistar
The drive home was a study in forced calm. Caspian unclenched his jaw at every red light, practiced a neutral expression in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t let Julian see the seismic shift. The cage, for now, had to feel like a garden.
He found Julian at the kitchen table, a fortress of baking supplies around him. Flour dusted his nose and the front of his apron. Mrs. Gibbons was beaming. “He’s a natural, Mr. Blackwood! The cake is actually moist this time.”
“It tastes like sunshine and lemons,” Julian announced, proudly holding up a smeared spoon for Caspian to taste. The trust in his eyes was a physical weight.
“Perfect,” Caspian said, the sweetness of the icing ash in his mouth. He ruffled Julian’s hair, his touch lingering. “You’ve had a busy day.”
That night, he let Julian pick the movie, let him fall asleep sprawled across his lap again. He sat in the dark, the weight of the sleeping body on him a torture and a solace, planning. The plan was simple: make Alistair Vance reveal himself as the monster Caspian knew he must be. But first, Julian had to be prepared. The thought of delivering the news twisted something inside him.
The morning sun felt like an accusation. Caspian watched Julian push scrambled eggs around his plate, humming a tune from the movie. He couldn’t delay.
“Julian,” he began, his voice carefully light. “Ms. Leah is coming over today.”
Julian looked up, interested. “For more questions?”
“Not exactly. She’s… bringing someone with her. A man named Alistair.” Caspian kept his movements slow, reaching for his coffee. “He’s very interested in getting to know you. So we need to be on our best behavior, okay? Polite. Friendly.”
Julian’s brow furrowed, not with anxiety, but with simple curiosity. “A new friend?”
“Something like that,” Caspian said, the lie smooth as glass. “He might be a… a potential friend. So first impressions are important.”
The confusion cleared, replaced by a spark of excitement Julian hadn’t shown for an outside visitor before. A new person was an event. “I should wear something nice,” Julian declared, already sliding off his stool. “My blue dress! The sky one. With the stockings that stay up.”
Caspian’s throat tightened. “That’s a good choice.” It was Julian’s favorite. The dress was a soft, cottony blue, simple in cut, falling to mid-thigh. Julian felt pretty in it. The thought of Alistair’s eyes on it, on him, made a red haze threaten the edges of Caspian’s vision.
An hour later, Julian perched on the edge of the living room sofa, his hands folded neatly in his lap over the sky-blue fabric. The white thigh-highs contrasted sharply with the dark leather cushion. He had asked twice if his hair was okay. He was a picture of eager, innocent anticipation, a child waiting for a playdate.
The doorbell chimed, a sterile sound. Caspian’s whole body went wire-taut. He walked to the door, each step measured.
Leah stood there, her professional mask firmly in place. Beside her was Alistair Vance. He was older than Caspian had pictured—mid-thirties—with the kind of polished, weathered handsomeness that spoke of old money and constant scrutiny. His blond hair was swept back, his smile practiced and cool. His eyes, a pale grey, swept past Caspian into the house’s interior, assessing before landing back on his host.
“Caspian,” Leah said, a note of warning in her tone. “This is Alistair Vance. Alistair, Caspian Blackwood, Julian’s stepbrother and current guardian.”
“A pleasure,” Alistair said, his voice a smooth baritone. He extended a hand. His grip was firm, deliberate.
“Come in,” Caspian said, stepping back, his every instinct screaming to shut the door.
They moved into the living room. Julian, hearing the voices, bounced up from the couch. His movement was fluid, the dress swaying. He stopped a few feet from the group, his smile bright but suddenly hesitant under the weight of the stranger’s gaze.
Alistair’s eyes raked over him. It wasn’t a glance; it was an inventory. They started at the ribbon in Julian’s hair, dipped to the wide eyes, the soft mouth, traveled down the column of his throat, over the modest swell of his chest, lingered on the cinched waist, and then dragged slowly, palpably, down the length of his exposed thighs to his shiny Mary Janes. The smile on Alistair’s face didn’t change, but it hardened at the edges. It was the look of a man examining a vehicle he was considering purchasing, checking for flaws.
Julian shifted, the excitement dimming into discomfort. He glanced at Caspian, a flicker of uncertainty. But he remembered his instructions. Best behavior. Friendly.
He took a small step forward, his voice a soft, childlike chime. “Hello. I’m Julian.”
Alistair didn’t acknowledge the introduction. His pale eyes remained fixed, analytical, stripping the pretty fabric away. The silence stretched for two beats too long.
Then, without a word, Alistair’s hand flicked out. It wasn’t a grab. It was a sharp, contemptuous jerk. His fingers caught the hem of the sky-blue dress at Julian’s thigh and yanked it upward, flipping the fabric roughly over Julian’s waist.
Julian cried out—a short, sharp sound of shock and violation. The room telescoped. The soft cotton bunched at his midsection, exposing the white lace-top of the thigh-high stockings, the bare, vulnerable skin of his upper thighs, and the simple, pale silk of his underwear.
“Wha—stop!” Julian gasped, his hands flying down to claw at the fabric, trying to pull it from Alistair’s grip. He tried to jerk back, but Alistair held fast, his knuckles white. There was no give. Julian was forced to stand there, pinned by the hand fisted in his dress, his lower body on brutal display. He trembled violently, his face flushing a deep, mortified scarlet, eyes wide with panic and incomprehension as Alistair coldly inspected his almost completely nude form.
“Adequate bone structure,” Alistair remarked, his voice detached, as if commenting on a breed standard. His gaze was clinical, impersonal. “Hips could be broader for optimal bearing, but serviceable. The innocence is… pronounced. Just as described.”
Leah stood frozen, her pen poised over her clipboard, her professional detachment shattered into pure horror.
Caspian saw it all through a roaring tunnel. He saw Julian’s trembling knees, the tear that escaped and traced a hot path down his cheek, the way his small fingers desperately pried at Alistair’s immovable hand. He heard the choked sob trapped in Julian’s throat.
Every cell in his body erupted. The careful plan, the need to behave, the mandated supervision—it vaporized in the white-hot fury of a protective instinct so profound it was territorial. This was his. His to cherish, his to corrupt, his to protect. Not this cold-eyed stranger’s to appraise.
He crossed the space in two strides. His hand, large and capable, closed over Alistair’s wrist. He didn’t pull it away. He squeezed. The sound of grinding tendons was a faint, wet pop in the sudden silence.
Alistair’s head snapped toward him, his grey eyes flaring with surprise and immediate, intense pain.
“Take your hand,” Caspian said, his voice a low, guttural vibration that didn’t sound human, “off my brother.”
The pressure was immense, a vise of pure force threatening to splinter the delicate bones in Alistair’s wrist. A sharp, pained hiss escaped his lips, and his fingers spasmed open, releasing the crumpled blue fabric. Julian stumbled backwards, the dress falling back into place with a soft rustle that sounded violently loud. He scrambled until his back hit the arm of the sofa, his chest heaving.
Tears streaked his flushed cheeks. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a shaky, childish gesture. His wide, wounded eyes fixed on Alistair, and his voice, when it came, was a warbling, honest thing. “I don’t like you.”
It was petulant. It was simple. It was the unfiltered truth of a mind that categorized the world in bright colors and sharp fears.
Alistair cradled his aching wrist, his cool composure cracking into something sneering and dismissive. “The childishness will be trained out of you soon enough,” he snapped, his gaze sweeping over Julian’s trembling form. “Once we’re mated, you’ll learn to act like an adult. The Omega of someone like me doesn’t sulk.”
He took a step forward, ignoring Caspian who stood like a triggered guard dog, fists clenched at his sides. Alistair’s voice dropped, taking on a tone of obscene certainty. “You’ll learn your purpose. I’ll keep you properly knotted. Full of pups. You’ll understand then.”
Julian flinched as if struck. The words—knotted, pups—were just sounds, frightening and alien. They held no concrete meaning, only the cruel weight of the voice that delivered them. He understood the meanness. That was all. His lower lip trembled violently.
Alistair turned then, his attention shifting to Leah as if the matter were settled. He gestured vaguely toward Julian with his uninjured hand, his tone switching to one of practical inquiry. “So, does the sampling happen now, or must I wait for the third visit? Can I fuck him today, or is there a procedural delay?”
The clinical vulgarity of it hung in the air. Leah had been a statue, her clipboard held tight against her chest. Her professional detachment, the careful mask she wore to navigate these fraught spaces, shattered.
She stepped forward, placing herself physically between Alistair and Julian. Her voice was low, but it crackled with a finality that carved through the room.
“Mr. Vance, you will leave this residence immediately.” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. “You are no longer being considered as a potential mate for Julian Thorne. This evaluation is terminated.”
Alistair blinked, genuine astonishment flashing across his face. “On what grounds? His mother approved—”
“On the grounds that you are intellectually and emotionally incapable of handling an Omega with Julian’s specific, delicate needs,” Leah interrupted, her words sharp and precise as surgical tools. “You have just demonstrated a profound lack of empathy, respect, and basic understanding. The visit is over. Now. Get out.”
She didn’t look at Caspian. Her authority was a wall, and she made it clear this was her call, her judgment. Alistair’s jaw worked, his gaze darting from Leah’s hardened face to Caspian’s simmering rage, then to Julian, who was now crying in earnest, soft, hopeless sniffles muffled against his own sleeve.
With a final, contemptuous shake of his head, Alistair Vance turned and walked out. The front door closed with a solid, echoing thud.
The silence he left behind was thick and fragile. Julian’s sniffles were the only sound. Leah let out a long, slow breath, her shoulders slumping a fraction before she straightened, turning to face the room. Her eyes met Caspian’s, a silent communication passing between them—a warning, an acknowledgment.
Then Julian pushed off from the sofa. He didn’t run to Caspian. He shuffled, his Mary Janes scuffing the hardwood, his head bowed. When he reached Caspian, he simply leaned forward, pressing his damp face into Caspian’s stomach, his small hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt. His whole body shuddered with the aftershocks of humiliation and fear.
Caspian’s hands came up, one cradling the back of Julian’s head, the other wrapping around his shoulder. He held him there, his own breath coming hard. He looked over Julian’s head at Leah, his blue eyes a storm of gratitude and vicious, unsettled fury.
Leah gave a tight, almost imperceptible nod. Her job was done here, for now. But the war wasn’t over. Eleanor would be informed. There would be fallout. Caspian tightened his hold, feeling the frantic beat of Julian’s heart against his own, a frantic bird trapped in a sky-blue cage.
Caspian tightened his hold, feeling the frantic beat of Julian’s heart against his own, a frantic bird trapped in a sky-blue cage.
Leah cleared her throat, the sound brittle in the heavy quiet. She looked from Julian’s shaking form to Caspian’s rigid face. Her own professional composure was reassembling, piece by fractured piece, but her eyes held a raw shame. “Caspian. I need to make my report. It will be definitive.” She paused, choosing her words with evident care. “I will be recommending the court award you permanent guardianship, effective immediately, with no further visitation attempts. What happened here… it was a profound failure of the process. Of my oversight.”
Julian, his face still buried, mumbled something into Caspian’s shirt.
“What was that, sweetheart?” Caspian asked, his voice dropping into that private, soft register it only ever held for Julian.
Julian lifted his head, his cheeks blotchy and wet. He looked directly at Leah, his expression heartbreakingly earnest. “He was a mean man. I’m glad he’s gone.” He then tilted his head back to look up at Caspian, repeating it with more force. “I’m really glad he’s gone, Cas.”
That simple, unvarnished truth seemed to land on Leah with more weight than any legal jargon. She nodded, a tight motion. “I know, Julian. I’m so sorry you had to meet him at all.” She turned her gaze back to Caspian, holding it. “I am apologizing to you, too. I should have… I didn’t anticipate that level of…” She trailed off, unable to find a clean word for the violation they’d all witnessed.
“Just make it stick,” Caspian said, the words clipped. His hand was still moving in slow circles on Julian’s back.
“It will.” Leah gathered her coat and bag. She gave Julian one last, sorrowful look before she left, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt like the first true breath Caspian had taken in hours.
The house was theirs again, but the air felt different, stained.
“Can we… can we not be in this room?” Julian whispered, his fingers twisting in Caspian’s shirt.
“Of course not,” Caspian said, guiding him away from the leather sofa, from the ghost of the flipped hem. He led him to the oversized armchair in the corner of the library, a nest of worn fabric. Julian crawled into it and then immediately reached out, pulling Caspian down to sit on the thick rug beside him, their hands linked.
Julian didn’t let go. Not through the bland, easy dinner Caspian microwaved. Not through the mindless cartoon Caspian put on for background noise. Julian simply transferred his grip from Caspian’s hand to the sleeve of his sweater, a constant, tactile anchor. He was quiet, not his usual humming self, but the desperate tremors had subsided into an exhausted heaviness.
“Tired?” Caspian asked softly, around eight o’clock.
Julian nodded, his eyelids already at half-mast. He allowed himself to be led upstairs, but balked at the doorway to his own bedroom, a fresh panic dilating his pupils. Caspian didn’t force it. He just changed direction and took him to the master bedroom instead. Julian climbed into the vast bed and immediately curled onto Caspian’s side, his head a solid weight on his chest, one leg thrown over Caspian’s thighs as if to pin him there.
Caspian lay still, listening to Julian’s breathing deepen and slow into the rhythmic cadence of sleep. The victory was his. Permanent guardianship. The war was won. But he knew his stepmother. Eleanor’s ambition was a patient, venomous thing. She would not take this laying down. This wasn’t an end; it was a new, more treacherous battlefield. His mind, usually so sharp with strategy, felt frayed, overrun by the image of Alistair’s hand on blue cotton.
He waited a full hour after Julian’s grip went slack before attempting to extract himself. He slid from the bed with practiced care, replacing his body with a bundled-up duvet. Julian sighed in his sleep but didn’t wake.
Downstairs, the silent house felt watchful. He poured a finger of whiskey, not drinking it, just rolling the glass in his palm. The knock on the front door was so soft he almost missed it, but in the deep quiet it was a gunshot.
He rushed to open it before the sound could travel upstairs. Mrs. Gibbons stood on the step, wrapped in a sensible coat, her face etched with an unusual gravity under the porch light.
“Mrs. Gibbons? Did you forget something yesterday?” he asked, his voice low, confused. She usually left with military tidiness.
She shook her head, her eyes not meeting his, looking past him into the dim hall. “No, dear. But I need to come in. It’s important.” Her tone brooked no argument, that old-grandma sternness layered over something steely.
Baffled, Caspian moved aside. She swept past him, not towards the kitchen, but with a purposeful stride deeper into the house. Her sensible shoes made precise clicks on the hardwood. He followed, the whiskey glass forgotten in his hand.
She went straight to his father’s old study, a room Caspian used for storage now, all cold masculine legacy and dust. She stopped in the center of the worn Persian rug and turned to face him. The light from the hallway cut across her worried face.
“I thought long and hard about this,” she began, her hands wringing together. “All day, after I left. That sweet boy, his little cakes… and that… that man she brought here.” Her mouth tightened. “Julian is such a sweet, innocent little one. The kind of innocent that doesn’t wear off. It’s just him. And I know, deep in my bones, only you will do right by him after Eleanor’s way of raising him. The childishness is never going away. It needs protecting, not punishing.”
Caspian stared, utterly lost. “What are you talking about?”
Instead of answering, Mrs. Gibbons turned. She walked to the large, grim portrait of Caspian’s father that dominated the far wall. With a strength that belied her age, she reached up, grasped the heavy gilt frame, and lifted it cleanly off its hook.
She set it carefully against the wainscoting. Revealed in the wall behind, where the portrait had hung for decades, was a small, dull metal door with a combination dial. A safe. Caspian had never even known it existed.
Caspian stared at the dark metal door set seamlessly into the plaster. His whiskey glass felt suddenly slippery in his hand. “What is this?” His voice was a dry rasp in the silent study.
Mrs. Gibbons didn’t look at him. Her knobby fingers, precise as ever, went to the dial. “I’d hoped the guardianship would be enough,” she said, mostly to herself. The tumblers clicked with muffled, solid sounds. “I thought it would deter her. Keep you both safe in this arrangement.”
She paused, her hand on the cold lever. She finally turned her head, and her eyes in the dim light were fierce, resolute. “After today, I see she won’t stop. Ever. Permanent guardianship?” She shook her head, a short, sharp movement. “That’s a piece of paper. She’s still his mother. She can still parade potential Alphas past him, arranging introductions, applying pressure. She’ll find one eventually who knows all the right things to say, to pretend. One who seems gentle enough to get a ‘yes’ from Julian before he understands what it means.”
Her voice dropped, infused with a bitterness that spoke of things seen and never forgotten. “And then it changes. The mask comes off. It always does.”
She turned the lever. The safe door opened with a soft, hydraulic sigh. Inside, on the bare metal shelf, lay a single, slim stack of papers. She pulled them out as if handling a holy text and turned to Caspian, thrusting them into his free hand.
“You are Julian’s chance,” she said, her voice trembling with conviction now. “I’ve watched you these weeks. However you feel, however complicated it is…” She searched his face, and whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her. “You’ve been good to him. You know how to care for him. I see it.”
She patted his cheek, a sudden, startling gesture of maternal benediction. Then, without another word, she turned and walked out of the study. Her footsteps retreated down the hall, the front door opened and closed quietly, and she was gone.
Caspian stood alone, the cold papers in one hand, the forgotten drink in the other. He set the glass down on his father’s dusty desk with a dull click. He moved under the light of the green-shaded lamp.
The top page was heavy bond paper. The heading was simple: Last Testament and Directive of Alistair Blackwood. It was dated over a year before his father’s death. The signature at the bottom was unmistakable—the aggressive slash of ink, the pronounced flourish on the ‘B’ he’d seen a thousand times on company documents.
This was not the will filed with the courts. That one, signed just months before the sudden heart attack, had named Caspian only as guardian. This was different.
His eyes scanned the dense, legal paragraphs. His breath locked in his chest. The language was cold, direct, utterly unambiguous. It stipulated that in the event of Alistair Blackwood’s demise occurring prior to the formal mating of Julian Thorne, legal and biological guardianship of said Omega would transfer immediately and irrevocably to his son, Caspian Blackwood.
It went further.
Caspian’s vision tunneled. The words swam and then solidified, carved into the page. …and the said Caspian Blackwood shall be recognized as said Omega’s fated and bonded Alpha, with all accompanying rights, privileges, and responsibilities, in perpetuity. This directive supersedes any prior maternal or familial claim.
A soft noise escaped him. He traced the line with his finger. The ink was real. It was notarized. It was a direct order.
It was all there, in his father’s own impatient hand. A different hand from the later will. This handwriting was stronger, the letters more aggressive, written before the sickness had begun its subtle work. He is yours. You know what he needs. You are the only suitable choice. The subtext screamed from between the lines: Fix what I have broken. Clean up my mess.
His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. This changed everything. This wasn’t just guarding. This was a claim, legally enshrined, waiting in the dark for over a year. A claim his father had seen fit to hide, perhaps from Eleanor, perhaps from a world that would frown, perhaps from Caspian himself until the right moment. Mrs. Gibbons had been the keeper of the key.
This was his way to Julian. Forever. Not as a brother-guardian, but as his Alpha. His.
But the card had to be played perfectly. Now.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen bleached his face in the dark room. He found Leah’s number. It was late, almost eleven. He pressed call.
It rang four times before she answered, her voice thick with sleep and wariness. “Caspian? What’s wrong? Is Julian okay?”
“He’s asleep. But I need you to come over. Now.” He let a tremor enter his voice, the frayed edges of a man pushed past his limit. “It’s urgent. I found something. In my father’s study. I don’t… I don’t know what to do with it.”
The silence on the line was profound. He could imagine her sitting up in bed, the social worker’s alarm bells clanging. “Found what?”
“Papers. A… a will. Or something. It’s about Julian. It changes things.” He choked the words out, layering confusion over searing panic. “Please, Leah. I have no one else to call.”
Another pause. Then the sound of sheets rustling. “I’m on my way. Twenty minutes. Don’t do anything. Just wait.”
The line went dead. Caspian lowered the phone. He looked down at the papers in his hand, then at the empty safe yawning open in the wall. He carefully placed the will on the desk, aligning the edges neatly. He walked to the window, staring out at the black shapes of the trees.
He rehearsed his face in the dark glass: wide-eyed shock, dawning horror, a brother’s protective fury morphing into a desperate, reluctant hope. He had to be the man who stumbled upon a shocking solution, not the man who had craved it all along.
He heard a car engine purr to a stop outside, saw headlights wash over the driveway. He took one last, steadying breath, the cold, lawful promise of the papers burning a hole in the quiet room behind him.
The doorbell rang. His performance began.