“Mona!” Silas is shouting from the front seat. The car swerves, then he slams on the brakes. Ghost is holding my head. His touch is cool against my warm skin, his eyes glowing with concern. I suck in breaths, needing to scent him, but all I can smell is the car and Silas’s earthy rain.
It takes me a minute to figure out what happened. The car door rips open behind me, and I nearly fall out, but land in Silas’s arms.
The muted bond between us is amplified. He actually let me through again. I’m getting whiplash from it. His fear for me is so loud, my omega tries to soothe him, reassure him I’m okay.
“Stop that!” he shouts, but it only makes me laugh.
“Calm down, then!” I yell back.
Silas sputters, then yanks me out of the car, only to take my seat and prop me in his lap. I can’t help it, I immediately curl into him. He’s holding me.
Five minutes ago he was rejecting me, and now he’s holding me.
“What the hell happened?” he asks more calmly, but I’m so distracted by his embrace, I barely notice his concern. “You were asleep, but then…” he looks over at Ghost, who just shakes his head.
“You started panicking. Your heart was racing, like you were having a panic attack. And you started thrashing and yelling.”
I glance at Ghost. Everything that happened in Silent Peak, when it came to my development as an omega—my dreams—was relayed to his boss, Kendrick. Everything Kendrick knew, Ghost must know.
I turn and look up at Silas.
“I dreamt of you,” I tell him.
“Just now?” he rasps. “What did you see?” Our bond is still wide open. Maybe he’s too distracted to mute it, or he’s still learning how to shut me out. But right now I can feel all of him.
He’s worried I’m scared of him, and that I saw something he wouldn’t have wanted me to see, and he almost pulls away, but I clutch him tighter, curling my fingers into his shirt. That he lets me feels fucking incredible.
“That’s why you were screaming?” he asks vulnerably.
“No, Silas, not just now. Before. I dreamt of you before. When you were… you were in the basement with Lily. I saw what happened.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, grits his teeth, and looks away. The muscle in his jaw bounces so fiercely, it’s a wonder I don’t hear a crack. His hands, resting on my legs, tighten. Shame colors the bond. I place my fingers against his chin. “Silas, what did Deidre do? What did she do to Lily?”
He’s quiet for a moment and swallows, so clearly uncomfortable that I wonder if he’ll brush me off and get back in the driver’s seat. We’re pulled over on the highway, cars whizzing past. But right here, in the back of this stolen car, we’re in our own little bubble.
“Is that what just happened in your dream? You saw her again?”
I shake my head.
He stares, waiting for me to elaborate. But I don’t.
When he speaks, his voice is deep. Barely more than a whisper. “Deidre spelled her to have a heat. Over and over again. For months. I don’t know how Lily survived it—” Silas’s voice cracks.
That’s what I saw, all those times Lily was throwing herself at him. A spelled heat.
Oh my god.
My omega wails. My heart fucking breaks, the pain so sharp I can barely stand it. Oh, Lily. That pain of an unmet heat is excruciating.
I don’t have to ask Silas if he helped her, I know he didn’t. I wouldn’t even be upset with him if he had, though—irrationally jealous, maybe—but I’d have forgiven him, because the pain she must have gone through, the agony, and formonths? It brings me back to those first few hours, like I can feel them all over again—before either of them would even touch me. The rejectionalone was stabbing. Then my body, burning from the inside out. The ferocious fuckingneed.
I start sobbing. Silas wraps his arms tightly around me.
And then he purrs.
Silaspurrs. It’s a little choppy and clearly unused.
And it makes me cry harder.
