CH 5 - Silas
1387 Words
SILAS POV
*Almost - Lewis Capaldi *
I woke with the same jolt that tore me out of sleep every single night, the kind that snapped my spine upright before I even realized I was awake. My breaths came fast, shallow. Sweat clung to my skin, dripping down my chest and soaking the sheets as if I had run a marathon through fire. For a moment the darkness around me dissolved and all I could see was her face, exactly the way it haunted me in my dreams. Eyes wide. Hurt. Betrayed. Staring at me like I had personally torn her apart.
I dragged a hand through my hair and squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t change anything. I still saw her. I still felt her. I still remembered the wrong pair of lips crushing against mine under the mistletoe while the only woman I had ever loved watched me from the snow.
Three years.
Three years and the image was still carved into my skull so deeply I could feel it even now, burning like a fresh wound.
I jolted again, clenching my fists, trying to shake off the lingering shock of the nightmare. It always played the same way, as if the universe enjoyed reminding me of the exact moment everything shattered. Helena looking at me with that broken expression. The she-wolf pressing her mouth against mine. My own body freezing in disbelief. The way Helena turned away like I had stabbed her. The way her car spun in the snow.
I let out a raw breath and pushed myself out of the bed.
I had stopped counting the nights I woke like this. It was pointless. They all blended together into the same suffocating loop.
The she-wolf had been punished within an inch of her life. She tried to defend herself by saying I had mindlinked her to meet me on the porch and she thought the mistletoe meant something, thought I wanted her too. A stupid lie brought on by desperation. I had never wanted her, never touched her, never even noticed her beyond the polite nod you offer to a pack member.
There had only ever been one woman for me.
And she was gone.
I ran the water in the shower and stepped under the spray, letting the heat wash over my skin, wash away the sweat, but nothing ever stripped away the ache in my chest. I pressed my forehead against the tile and breathed deeply, willing the nightmare to loosen its grip.
Helena had vanished three years ago and I still woke up every morning feeling like the ground had been ripped out from under me.
Her mother’s beasts had told everyone to stop searching, declaring she was safe and would return when the time was right. That single announcement almost made me tear apart every bond my pack shared with the Winter Pack. I wanted to scream, to demand how they could just accept that answer, how they could sit still while she was out there alone. But I didn’t sever the alliance, because if she ever came home I needed her brothers to still be my allies. I needed their loyalty in case they found out something before I did.
They never did.
No one did.
Helena Savage had disappeared as if the earth itself had swallowed her.
I searched North America pack by pack, territory by territory, dragging Seiryu through every forest and mountain and every border line we could cross without starting a political war. My dragon snarled and raged every time we returned empty handed. My chest ached like someone had split it open with claws. The emptiness in my arms felt unbearable each time I remembered the softness of her body pressed against mine that night, the heat of her breath on my throat, the way her voice trembled when she whispered my name.
I loved her. I still loved her. I always would.
The only woman I had ever wanted had destroyed me twice. She told me the most beautiful night of my life meant nothing. She told me she just needed a release. She told me I had a mate out there, as if I didn’t already know. And she made it sound like something shameful. Like wanting her, choosing her, was wrong.
I knew I had a mate.
Every dragon does.
But I had wished with everything I had that she was the one.
I had been ready to tell her.
I had been ready to tell Helena Savage that the moment I turned eighteen I planned to claim her, mark her, keep her. That I wanted her to be mine the right way. That I wanted to scent her for the first time with my dragon awake in my chest, to know without doubt that she was my chosen one.
But she told me she needed a morning after pill.
And if I had stayed beside her a second longer, Seiryu would have marked her on the spot. My dragon had pushed so hard that day I could barely breathe around him. And if he had marked her before we scented her fully, before the magic bound properly, it could have damaged her. Or broken her. Or trapped her in something she didn’t understand.
So I walked away to protect her.
And when she finally came to my pack and the border patrol linked me, telling me she was waiting for me at the porch, I thought she had changed her mind. I thought she had come to talk, to explain, maybe even to admit the pull I felt wasn’t one-sided. The moment I heard she was there I ran faster than I had in my life.
I mindlinked Justine, asked her to bring tea or coffee, anything Helena wanted. I planned to bring her to the little waterfall behind the packhouse, light a fire, sit beside her and kiss her until she understood that there was something between us worth fighting for. Something real. Something deep. Something that wasn’t going away no matter how stubborn she was.
But everything went wrong in one breath. One stupid, catastrophic breath.
One moment she was there on the snow, looking at me like she was finally ready to talk, and the next she was gone, her car fishtailing into the storm.
That memory lived inside me like poison.
I shut off the water, dried quickly, and pulled on fresh clothes. I had a meeting with the triplets in two hours to renew our alliance treaty, and I wasn’t going to be late. Winter Pack never changed, and stepping inside always felt like reopening a wound that never healed.
I walked through the packhouse halls, ignoring the whispers, the looks, the pity I had grown to despise. My heart tightened with every step, the pressure sharp and familiar, and I pushed it down the way I had learned to over the years.
When I reached the office I didn’t knock gently. I knocked like the door had insulted me. Harrison opened it, leaning against the frame the same way he did when we were sixteen. He greeted me almost exactly the same too, with that slight grin that never reached his eyes anymore.
Helena’s absence hit them hard as well.
No one talked about it, but everything in that pack felt dimmer since she vanished.
I stepped inside and inhaled slowly, wanting to get this over with. But the moment I breathed in, something snapped to attention inside me.
A scent.
Light, sweet, impossible.
Sunflowers. Honey. Fresh grass under warm sun.
Seiryu surged forward in my mind, roaring and sniffing wildly, and I moved before I could think. I circled Harrison, then Heat, then Hudson, ignoring their confusion, their frowns, their attempts to speak. I followed the scent like a starving animal.
Straight to their desk.
And there it was.
A letter.
A simple envelope laying on top of signed papers.
I reached out with a shaking hand.
I didn’t need to open it to know.
It was her.
My mate.
My fingers curled around the edge of the paper, and for the first time in three years, my heart didn’t ache anymore.
' Run if you want, sunshine. I am coming for you, and I will not stop this time.'
- Writer
