“I need a shower,” I counter. “Badly.” I’m almost as bad as I was the last time I showed up in Silent Peak, only this time, I’m pretty sure there’s still dried cum on my legs. I wonder if they can smell Silas on me. Or if it’s overpowered by our bond.
“Is… are the others here?” I ask tentatively.
Orion’s smile tightens, and my heart sinks. “Silas wanted to check in on Lily, and they needed to report to Kendrick.”
I nod, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from overreacting. From showing that I feel sad for no reason at all. Of course he needed to check on Lily. After everything they’ve been through together.
Holding Orion’s hand, with Grayson at my back, I follow him in. Down the hallway, into the kitchen, we find a half-empty pot of coffee and Silas’s lingering scent.
The guys talk around me, likely trying to ease my anxiety, even if they only partly understand it. This is enough. They are enough. I love them.
Orion makes food, and Grayson brings me upstairs to my bedroom. I get undressed and shower. Gray waits beside me the entire time, and when I climb out, wraps me in a towel. He doesn’t push for anything more, but suddenly, I’m ravenous for him.
His mouth meets mine, teeth grazing my lower lip, and I dig my nails into his shoulders, my breath hitching as the pressure builds. Frantic hands rip off my towel, and we both exhale with deep relief as he enters me. It’s fast and desperate, and I’m nearly brought to tears before my first climax.
Orion’s shadow falls across us. When Grayson’s knot finally releases me and he pulls away, I’m left empty for only a moment before Orion fills the space, his skin fever-hot against mine. My legs tremble around him.
My omega whimpers urgently as we come together. Later, I drift to sleep between them, steadied by their uneven breaths. Grayson’s arm drapes across my waist, Orion’s leg entangled with mine.
I fall asleep in their arms, feeling so much relief having them close, being home—but the hole in my heart, missing something essential, yawns wider.
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Chapter 14: Ghost
Silas anxiously taps his fingers against his thigh as we walk to the hospital, nearly as relentlessly as when we were in the car with Deidre, just before he came face to face with his mate.
Only this time, it’s the opposite. He walked away from her. The invisible bond between them practically vibrates in the air—a taut, screaming wire threatening to snap and yank him back toward the cabin where she’s waiting for him.
Where she’s waiting forus. Something in my chest ticks, but I ignore it.
“Get yourself under control,” I growl.
He whips toward me with a feral snarl, but I slam my arm across his chest hard enough to crack ribs if he were human, forcing him back a step.
“Is this about Lily or Mona?” I ask.
“What do you care?”
“I—” Explaining that I care would mean I’d have to explain it to myself first. I shake my head. “Forget it.”
We enter the hospital, following the voices echoing from down the hall. Low murmurs tell us the patient is awake. Silas pushes into the room without knocking. The second he steps inside, he freezes.
Sitting up in the hospital bed, Lily gapes at him. A beat passes. And then Silas rushes forward, wrapping her in a hug. She throws her arms around him and begins sobbing.
Kendrick’s power explodes through the room like a detonation, his alpha rage at seeing another wolf holding his mate slams into us with the force of a thunderclap. My eardrums threaten to rupture, and I reach out to steady myself against the wall. But then Lily whimpers—one small, frightened sound—and Kendrick’s fury vanishes.
“Apologies, mate,” he says gently, caressing the side of her face with his fingertips. She smiles up at him like he’s both the sun and the moon, and I watch Kendrick soften in a way I’ve never seen. He and his wolf soothe their mate as she snuggles deeper into his touch.
It’s a private moment. It makes me uncomfortable. I should look away.
A memory flashes to the front of my mind. Mona writhing in the throes of her heat, her skin scorching beneath my fingertips as I pressed a cold, wet cloth to her forehead. The trusting way she parted her lips as I hand-fed her pieces of meat I hunted for her, how her throat worked as she swallowed water from the cup I held steady against her mouth. In those stolen moments when she and Silas lay delirious, still knotted together, I hovered over her, drinking in her scent, brushing her hair from her face, whispering promises I had no right to make. In those quiet, private moments she’ll never remember, no one else witnessed how my hands shook with the effort not to claim what every cell in my body screamed was mine.
The pull toward her isn’t just a feeling—it’s a leash around my throat, choking me every time I deny her.
But she has three other mates to take care of her. She’ll be fine without me.
Silas can lie to himself all he wants about leaving her, but the bond between them is already branded into him. He’d sooner give himself back to Deidre than leave her. He’s got shit he needs to work out, but he’ll never let her go.
