Chapter 12 Silas
The drive is as excruciating as I anticipated.
My skin is crawling. I flex my fingers out, let them shift into claws, then pull them back in. Again and again I do this, to keep me from shifting fully, from stealing my mate and escaping out the back window.
She sits between Grayson and Orion in the back seat. It’s less awkward in front, with Eli. We weren’t friends, exactly. He always disapproved of my behavior—shocker, everyone did—but we were friendly. I appreciate his militant intensity.
He nodded once, said something to the effect of, “Glad you’re back,” then started driving.
Grayson and Orion pepper Mona with questions. Can’t they see she’s overwhelmed? She needs space. Okay, maybe not space. Quiet, at least.
Eventually, her short answers—not clipped, exactly, but weary—say more than her words, and they stick to squeezing her arms, like they’re pulling a doll between them.
Not for the first time in the last few days, I wonder what their dynamic is like. I feel like she and I shared something deeper than a biological heat—we went through a lot together, and the guys can’t take that away from us.
I hate this. I don’t know how to fucking act around her.
She heard me, I know she did. Back at the cabin, when I said I just wanted to get her home to her mates. That I wanted to be as far from her as possible, that I didn’t want to mate with her.
Even when I said the words, I knew it wasn’t true. But I wanted it to be true.
She looks at me like I’m someone. And I’m not. I’m nothing.
Less than nothing.
And at some point, she’ll figure that out. Especially once we’re back in Silent Peak. All the people who knew me once, they’ll see me again and remember the fucking degenerate I was, and she won’t want to have anything to do with me.
I won’t make her choose. When it gets that far, I’ll let her go.
Until then…
I soak up all her omega energy. I’ve stopped pushing it away, it’s too much effort. She’s too strong. I let it seep inside me. My alpha drinks her scent up, basking in her warmth and closeness. Jasmine and honey. So perfect.
I never wanted to let her go, but I knew I’d have to, and it’s easier to push her away. But I didn’t expect her to overhear me. I thought she was out, from her heat. I hadn’t noticed the shift in her breathing.
I can’t even do that right. I’m such a fucking idiot.
“So… are we going to talk about your bond?” Grayson asks of me and Mona with an edge in his tone.
I grit my teeth. Looking out the windshield ahead of us, without turning around, I lie. “It was necessary to keep her safe since you fucking assholes didn’t bother.”
Mona flinches, visibly and through the bond.
She changes the subject, telling them about the house she was taken to by the witch, then the cabin in the woods, leaving out her heat.
She tells them what it felt like when Deidre commanded her, what it felt like to be forced to obey.
I tune it out. I don’t need to relive that again.
I see enough of it when I close my eyes.
I watch them in the mirror. Between nudges, rubbing her temple with his chin, Gray stays in alpha-mode, quietly making a plan. I don’t know how to help. If anything, when it comes to Deidre, I’m a liability. So I stay quiet.
Until Mona asks me a question, pulling me from my misery, and I sigh. “What?”
“Don’t snap at my mate,” Grayson snarls.
“Dude, chill, he didn’t snap at me. That’s just how he talks. He’s kind of a dick.” It should not warm my heart that she says it lovingly. I am a dick. Why does she like that?
Orion laughs, “God, I fucking missed you, firefly. Call Gray dude again, he loves that.”
“For fuck's sake, it’s a three-ringed circus back here. Apologies, Mona. But he shouldn’t talk to you like that.”
I growl, “All I said was what.”
“It was your tone.”
“Oh, this is fun. Were you guys like this growing up?”
“No.” “Yes.” Gray and I answer at the same time.
Orion and Mona laugh. Even Eli chuckles.
I take a deep breath. Their comfort with each other, their casual nature—it isn’t easy to digest. All the things I’ve lost, it’s never felt more obvious as it does in this moment. It makes me fucking angry.
“Why the fuck didn’t you two assholes bond her?” I spit at Gray and Orion.
Gray’s alpha pulses at me, his pheromones spilling out of him in rage. A little guilt, too, if I’m reading him right. I can’t help it. He grates on me, so I needle him further.
“She’s your fucking mate. You’re the Lune. And you let her get kidnapped right off our property, right out from under your fucking nose and—”
“Shut the fuck up, Silas!” he roars. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you weren’t there!”
I almost laugh. He’s right, I wasn’t there. Does he think I don’t wish, upon every-fucking-thing on this godforsaken planet, that I was there? That I wouldn’t have rather been there, safe and tucked away in Silent Peak with our mate, than literally anywhere else?
“She could have died!” I snarl. “Or worse! You want to know what worse means?” My fists clench, fingers shifting into claws, breaking the skin of my palms. The pain grounds me.
“Being Deidre’s possession? Being tortured by witch fire, having the entire coven watch on while they take turns—” My mouth snaps shut.
The shame crushes me when I see his rage dissolve into pity. It makes me nauseous.
He’s quiet, and it makes me want to smash everything in this car. As if he can sense how close I am to doing just that, he says gently, “We were waiting for the next moon to bond her. Or for her heat. We wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. Together, and when the Moon Goddess was nearest—”
“Old-fashioned,” I hiss, and shake my head in disappointment. “That’s the problem with wolves. You’re all so fucking stuck on tradition, you’ve lost sight of progress. The best thing for her wasn’t for you to wait. She could have died,” I say again, the words cracking.
It’s quiet in the cab. The alphas scents are bitter, almost sour. At least I’m not the only one feeling like shit. Sighing, because I don’t want Mona included in that, I ask, more softly this time, “What was your question, pet?”
Our bond is mostly shuttered again—from my end, anyway, but I can still feel her. And her omega, trying to reach through and soothe me, as if she can feel the turmoil boiling inside me.
She clears her throat. “Grayson was worried about the magic in my system. I told him it burned off. It’s gone, right? Ghost said so?”
Her heat burned it off. Memories of taking her, losing myself inside her, finding peace and quiet in her body, begin to flash in my mind.
More than all the wild positions and rutting—the last time, in the backseat of the car, holding her close while she sobbed into my shoulder, knowing through the bond that she was scared I was going to leave her—that was the most connected I’d felt to her, ever.
The strongest, most powerful moment between us.
She’s so easy to read, my mate, even without the bond. That was when I knew she’d overheard us. And her terror that I’d leave her, that she even wanted me to stay, it all became one fucked-up jumble in my head. She will push me away, right? When she learns who I am, what I’m really like?
“Yeah,” I agree, letting the memory fade. “The magic is gone.”
The old me would have added, it burned off in your heat. He would have rubbed it in Grayson’s face, gloated about all the ways I took our mate, how I alone kept up with her.
Grayson scratches his chin. “We’ll have Doc check you over, anyway. I want to be sure, Mona. No arguments.”
Annoyance rumbles up the bond through Mona, and I chuckle into my fist.
“I’m only agreeing because I want to see Doc. You said Joey’s okay? What about Kellen?”
Eli answers, “He’s doing fine, Mona. He’s upset you were taken under his watch, though.”
“As he should be.”
“Ughhh Grayson, don’t be an ass. It wasn’t Kellen’s fault.” She leans forward over the console and brushes Eli’s shoulder. “I’m glad he’s okay. Oh my god, what about Lily? What happened to her? Is she alright?”
I can’t help it, I spin around in my seat, eager for a scrap of information. “You got her out okay?”
Mona’s eyes widen. If I’m not mistaken, a thread of jealousy pinches through our bond, but she quickly squashes it.
My mouth opens to say something, to assure her Lily’s like a sister, but that feels stupid, so I say nothing.
“She’ll be alright. We haven’t seen her since she woke.”
“What do you mean since she woke? Is she okay?” I ask, worried, directing the question to Grayson.
But then Mona’s jealousy spikes again. Her cheeks are pink. She’s fidgeting with her hands, finding something interesting to look at on the ground. I don’t like hurting her. I try to send a small feeling through the bond, muted as it is—she’s like a sister, pet—but she doesn’t seem to feel it.
“She didn’t wake for a few days. She wasn’t healing fast enough, and… well, Silas, maybe you could tell us more? She was a delta, but now…”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain when we connect with Ghost. I don’t want to tell the story twice,” I say, turning again to look out at the trees blurring past. We’re back in familiar territory. Conversation helped ease my anxiety, but it’s creeping back again the closer we get to Silent Peak.
Deidre might come here. We need to fortify the grounds.
I survey the mountain's perimeter in my mind. The deeper woods are protected by enforcers. Mona explained how the witches were able to get through, how they used Stance, one of Gray’s enforcers, to sneak onto our land.
They don’t have him anymore, and now that Gray knows the witches were using the rogue wolves, he’ll have changed tactics.
So it’s unlikely she’ll come in through the mountains again.
A show of force, right through the front gate, maybe?
No… getting her hands dirty isn’t Deidre’s style. She always attacks quietly. In ways you don’t expect.
The more I consider it, the less likely an attack on Silent Peak seems. She has Mona’s blood. She could still use it to track her, but now that she’s lost me, too, will she even bother coming here? I just wish I knew what she wanted.
That’s the one thing I never understood. She wants more power, sure. But why? To what end? She’s already incredibly powerful.
Being the leader of all the witches isn’t enough of a reason. And involving the wolves, making enemies of the shifters, would only hurt her cause. What does Deidre want?
“Kendrick will want to be there,” Grayson says, interrupting my thoughts as he types into his phone.
“He’s still in Silent Peak?” I ask, surprised. I’ve met the man before, a few times, but it’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen him.
Orion nods cautiously. “Kendrick is… Lily’s mate. They are Moon Goddess blessed.”
I can’t hide my shock. I definitely didn’t see that one coming. I’m happy for her, though. She deserves something good, a strong protector, after what happened to her.
Through the open window, I hear Ghost’s bird call from above.
I watch him swoop toward the trees, then shoot high into the sky as he follows us.
Mona can’t see him, stuck between her two alphas, but she can hear him.
I wonder what Mona thinks of his shifted form.
I've definitely never seen anything like him before.
The drive is mostly quiet as we make our way closer to Silent Peak.
My nerves are drawn tighter. It’s only been five years, and I spent my whole life on this mountain.
I traveled some, but mostly, this is where I lived and breathed.
Hunted, laughed, played, fucked around. We pass a human bar, then a shifter-owned diner and bakery, and I recall the deltas who owned the place. Lily’s family, I think.
We turn, then rumble up the mountain, and my heart begins to race. Mona tries to soothe me over the bond, but I shut her out.
I don’t want her to see me like this. She makes a hurt sound, but the guys don’t know why. They fuss and she brushes them off.
And just as I start to spiral, as we move deeper into clan lands, closer to the heart, Grayson finally does something fucking useful.
He takes Mona’s attention off me.
“Eli, swing back down after you drop us off and let Andrea out.”
“Out of where?” Mona asks. Orion groans, dropping his head into his hands.
“Jail.”
“Why the hell is Andrea in jail?” Mona shrieks and glares at her mate in outrage.
Her eyes bore into Grayson, who just lifts one shoulder. “Because she’s a traitor—”
“Maybe we should—” Orion starts, trying to intervene, but I’d rather he not. Watching Gray get his ass handed to him by his tiny omega mate is seriously soothing to my anxiety.
Besides, Mona is having none of it. I’m grinning ear to ear for the first time this whole trip.
“Take me to her. Right. Now. Eli, pull over the fucking car!”
Grayson sighs. “Mona, she was with you when you were taken. After what she did to you—and we heard about the fight you two had in the kitchen—we had every reason to believe she was involved in your abduction with the witches.”
“Grayson, she tried to save me! They chained her in silver! How could you do this?”
Eli pulls over in front of the jail. I debate going with them, if only to spend more time in Mona’s presence before I have to leave. But I see Ghost overhead, and can sense his request. I turn to Orion.
“Eli can bring us to the cabin, Ghost will meet us there,” I tell my pack mate.
Grayson’s already out of the car. Mona follows him, but before she heads toward the jail, she turns to face me. Her expression fucking guts me. She presses her lips together and fidgets awkwardly.
“You won’t leave, right? Not… Not yet, I mean?” She won’t look at me. Her eyes are glued to the ground. Her voice is small.
I shake my head once. I say nothing, because if I opened my mouth I’d likely beg her to hold on and never let go.
My smile fades as I watch her stomp toward the jail. But it doesn’t fade completely with Grayson following along with his head hanging low.
I chuckle. Okay, that was fun to watch.