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“Have you even looked for the alpha that claims that my mate hurt Nathan?” I asked, facing Armand now.
Armand’s jaw tensed.
“No, we cannot find him. He seems to have vanished.”
“And yet you still think it was my mate who did this? Yet you can’t find his accuser.” I was seething.
Armand crossed his arms over his expansive chest. “If you and your mate had come forward when you first found him, we would not be in this mess.”
I hated how right he was.
“I agree with you,” Silas said.
Armand’s gaze settled on Silas. He studied him carefully.
It was my turn to glare at Silas, and he shrank back.
“I did tell you that I wanted to turn myself in.”
“The first time we met, I wanted to take you back to Asilo, and you said no.”
Great. And now my mate and I were fighting. That was the last thing either of us needed.
“I was a little delirious at that point.” He had no idea how truly bad of a shape he’d been in. Me bringing up the things he said then was a low blow. I needed to pull myself together and be the mate Silas deserved. “Either way, I trust that I will be out of here soon. We didn’t intend to hide away. Until this morning, I couldn’t even walk on this leg. I wasn’t running away from you all.”
He wasn’t lying.
Thomas’s phone rang. He jumped at the noise. “Sorry,” he said, pulling it out of his pocket. “It’s Morgan.” He answered it and then handed the phone to Armand.
Armand listened for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “That changes a lot.” He ended the call and handed the phone back to Thomas. “Nathan has awoken. He says that Silas stopped the Alpha from attacking him. And that Jerome beat Silas because of his actions. It seems that you are right, and Silas is free to go.”
Chapter 15
Silas
“I just don’t think that it’s safe for you to travel. They have spare rooms, we can stay here,” Pol insisted.
And while he made a solid argument, he wasn’t the one who’d been a prisoner here. I was fine never being in this place again. They weren’t evil people or anything, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t made any mistakes. They had, the first of which was falling for the phony lines Jerome had fed them. They were so blatantly problematic. I still didn’t understand how a group of shifters as well trained as they were had messed up so royally.
I knew the work that Steelwick did was important and that they operated in the best interest of omegas everywhere—hell, for shifter kind everywhere—but being wrongfully accused, arrested, being made to sit inside a cell while I waited for them to question me... it was all humiliating.
They treated me well. I was never beaten or abused or anything like that. Sure, Beckett had been a bit rough with me, but in hindsight, he’d thought I was faking and an abuser. It didn’t make it right, but some grace was needed.
My biggest issue was they hadn’t trusted me. They jumped straight to the awful before even having met me. They never took their eyes off me, as if I was going to treat them the way Jerome had treated me.
I supposed if I was a bad guy that it would be a good thing. Or not. Everyone deserved a chance to prove themselves innocent, right? And now Nathan was awake, able to tell the truth that I had been saying for days now. I was ready to be gone.
Squeezing Pol’s hand, I shook my head. I was so happy that I was free now to touch him, my hands no longer bound by the shackles they had put on me.
“I can’t stay here,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
He pulled me into a hug.
“I just want to be home with you. I want to put this behind me. Am I allowed to go to Asilo? To stay with you? I will even return to the cave if that is necessary.”
Pol nodded. I was sure there were conditions and negotiations to be made. But for the moment I was going to accept that as the gift that it was.
“You’re free to go,” Armand said. He held out his hand, and I shook it. “I’m sorry things happened the way they did. I’ll be debriefing my pack and looking at where we went wrong so that we can do better next time.”
