36. Silas
Charm of Defiance:
Knot black ribbon; wear near heart. Words cannot cage you.
Iwake up in her bed.
It takes a second to place myself. The ceiling is unfamiliar, the light coming through the curtains is wrong, and there’s a warm body pressed against my left side.
Caroline. Her back is against my chest, her knees drawn up, her breathing deep and even.
Griffin is on her other side, one arm draped over her waist, his face half-buried in a pillow. And at the foot of the bed, wedged between the mattress and the wall, Damon is sprawled on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes.
We migrated here sometime after midnight.
I remember the movie—something with a dog and a cross-country trip—playing on the laptop propped on the nightstand.
I remember Caroline falling asleep against my shoulder and Damon muttering about carrying her to bed.
I remember all of us climbing in after her like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe it was. Maybe that’s the strangest part.
I slide out of bed carefully, inch by inch, testing the mattress with each movement. Caroline shifts but doesn’t wake. Griffin doesn’t stir at all. Damon’s arm stays over his eyes. The floor is cold under my bare feet, and I pad out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen.
The house is dark. The storm is gone completely now, replaced by a stillness that feels almost unnatural after days of rain and wind. I find a glass in the cabinet by touch and fill it at the sink, drinking half of it in one long pull.
My phone is on the counter where I left it yesterday. I tap the screen and the notifications pile up—emails, mostly, from accounts I’ve been ignoring since the night of the storm.
Seven from the Council’s regional office. Subject lines like Weekly Status Report – Overdue and Follow-up: Willowbrook Assessment Timeline and URGENT: Response Required Regarding Rift Data. Three from Helena. Two from the office of High Chancellor Whitlock.
I scroll through them without reading. The words blur together—expectations, deadlines, protocol. All of it feels distant now, like it belongs to someone else. A man who showed up in this town with a clipboard and a mission and a carefully constructed idea of what he’d find.
That man is gone. I’m not sure who replaced him.
I tap Helena’s latest email. It’s short, clipped, written in the efficient tone she uses when she’s annoyed.
Silas. I’ve received inquiries from the Chancellor’s office regarding your silence. Your reports have stopped. If you’re compromised in any way, I need to know. This isn’t a game. Call me.
I stare at it for a long moment. Then I open my phone and dial her number.
It rings four times and goes to voicemail. Her voice is cool and professional on the recording—the same voice she uses in Council chambers, the one that’s performing rather than speaking.
I hang up without leaving a message.
What am I missing?
The question has been circling for days, growing louder with each piece of information we uncover.
Victor Ash’s hidden wards. The sealed family records.
The bonding failures that started years ago and haven’t stopped.
Berrick’s findings, buried by the Council.
My own mother’s death, locked behind a wall in my memory that I didn’t know existed until yesterday.
The Council sent me here to assess a problem. But the problem isn’t the Rift. The problem isn’t the unbonded Omegas. The problem is whatever created the Rift in the first place, whatever has been feeding it for decades, and whoever is working to keep it all hidden.
And the Council either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know.
My phone buzzes in my hand. Another email. I silence it without looking.
Footsteps in the hallway. Soft, tentative.
I look up as Caroline appears in the kitchen doorway, wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt that hangs halfway to her knees.
Her hair is a mess, her eyes half-open, and she’s pulling the hem of the shirt down in a way that’s more habitual than self-conscious.
“Silas?”
“Hey.”
She shuffles to the counter and leans against it beside me. “You okay?”
“Fine. Why are you up?”
“Needed water.”
I hand her my glass. She takes it and drinks, her throat working, a drop escaping down her chin. She wipes it with the back of her hand.
“You’re a bad liar,” she says.
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“You’re standing in a dark kitchen at five in the morning, staring at your phone like it personally offended you. That’s not fine.”
I almost smile. “I’m checking emails. Work stuff.”
“Work stuff that can’t wait until morning?”
“No. It can’t.”
She doesn’t push. She sets the glass down and looks at me, and in the dim light from the window above the sink, her face is all soft edges and sleep-warm skin. My chest does something uncomfortable.
The thought I’ve been avoiding surfaces anyway. If no pack bond has successfully formed in this town in ten years—if whatever is affecting the Rift is also preventing Omegas from bonding—then where does that leave me? Leave us?
I came here to assess a problem, and instead I found a woman who makes me question everything I’ve been taught, and two other Alphas who feel less like rivals and more like something I don’t have a word for.
And none of it matters if the thing that’s broken in this town won’t let any of us bond with her.
I push the thought away. Not now. Not at five in the morning in her kitchen when she’s standing in front of me in a T-shirt and bare feet, looking at me like she actually cares about the answer.
“Ready to go back to bed?” I ask.
She nods. I take the glass from the counter, set it in the sink, and follow her down the hall.
Back in the bedroom, the scene hasn’t changed much. Griffin has rolled onto his stomach, one arm hanging off the mattress. Damon has shifted, now turned on his side, facing the center of the bed. Caroline climbs in first, settling into the middle, and I follow, sliding in behind her.
She fits against me like she was made to be there. Her shoulders align with my chest, her hips cradle against mine, her hair smells like sleep and something floral. I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her closer.
She turns her head. Our faces are inches apart. I can see the freckles on her nose, the faint scar above her eyebrow, the way her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks in the thin light.
I kiss her. Soft. Just a press of my mouth against hers, unhurried, exploratory. She responds immediately, her lips parting, her hand coming up to rest on my jaw. I deepen the kiss, my tongue sliding against hers, tasting the remnants of the water she just drank.
Behind her, Griffin stirs. I feel him shift, the mattress dipping, and then his hand lands on her hip. Not possessive. Just present. Like he’s grounding himself to her.
Caroline breaks the kiss and turns her head the other way. Griffin is awake now, watching us with heavy-lidded eyes. She leans in and kisses him too, and something about the sight of it—her mouth on his, his hand tightening on her hip—makes my chest ache in a way that isn’t painful.
Damon reaches out, his fingers brushing Caroline's ankle.
We stay like that for a long moment, no one speaking. The only sound is breathing. Caroline’s is the shallowest, quickest. Griffin’s is deep and even. Damon’s matches mine, slow and measured.
Then Caroline reaches out. Her hand finds mine where it rests on her stomach, and she pulls it to her mouth and kisses my knuckles. Griffin shifts closer and presses his lips to the back of her neck. She turns to him.
No one is rushing. No one is grabbing or grinding into her or chasing release. This isn’t the heat. This isn’t biology or pheromones or the frantic need that drove us for four days. This is something else. Something quieter. Something that feels like choosing.
Caroline turns back to me and kisses me again.
Across from us, Griffin's mouth finds her shoulder.
Damon shifts up from the foot of the bed, climbing onto the mattress until he's beside us.
He braces himself over Caroline, one hand cupping her cheek as she turns toward him, and the four of us move together in a rhythm that doesn't have a name.
I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what to call it or where it’s going or whether any of it will survive when the sun comes up, and the world outside this bedroom demands answers we don’t have.
But in this moment, none of that matters.
I kiss her deeper, and she sighs into my mouth, and the room holds us like it doesn’t want to let go.