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When I got back to my room after the shower, Ember was gone, but Cassian sat on my bed, waiting for me.
“Hey, I just wanted to check in on you. Ember told me about your discovery,” he said with a smile.
I took a seat on the bed beside him, pulling out my brush from the nightstand to brush through the tangles. It’d been a few days since I brushed my hair, and it desperately needed it before the knots took over my head.
“Can you believe it?”
“Shocked the hell out of me,” he said, taking the brush from my hand and motioning for me to turn around. With gentle strokes, he brushed through the tangles. “But it makes sense. You guys have been pretty close since day one. You probably sensed it or something.”
Cassian and I headed to his room after he finished brushing my hair. We sat on his bed, snuggling and kissing, talking and bonding. It was a nice moment—a moment of peace.
Griffin knocked on the door, looking for Cassian. But when he saw me there, he hopped onto the large, king-size mattress, snuggling up to my other side.
And that was how we spent the next hour. Just enjoying one another’s company. Kissing. Talking about the future. Kissing. Daydreaming about what we wanted in life. Oh, and did I mention kissing?
A blood-curdling scream stopped us in our tracks. Eyes wide, we looked at one another, fear written on our faces.
What was that? Iwanted to ask, but fear had gripped me by the throat, constricting and preventing my voice from coming through. I hopped off the bed, straightening my shirt, when we heard a knock on the door, immediately followed by, “I’m coming in.”
Sam opened the door, shielding his eyes—not that it mattered because we weren’t naked or anything. Just what did he think we were doing in here? After a few seconds, he looked back, his face drained of color, a look of absolute terror in his eyes.
“We need you,” he said to Cassian, urgency and panic in his tone. “Now.”
“What happened?” we asked in sync as we followed Sam down the hall.
He didn’t answer, but Cassian asked him again, authority in his voice. “It’s Silas,” Sam answered with a quiver in his voice. “He’s dead.”
We didn’t even make it to the end of the hall by the guest rooms when we heard loud sobs and screaming, absolute chaos. Pushing through the crowd of wolves that had gathered in the hallway, we stepped into what I could only call the grizzliest scene I’d ever witnessed.
A bloody trail led from the door to the crimson pool of blood that claimed the bed. Splatters on the wall, smears on the headboard and carpet… blood was everywhere. In the center of the bed, Silas had been propped up. Carved into his face were the words Give Up Hope.
Cassian placed his hand on Silas’s shoulder, a single tear running down the length of his cheek. “He’s still warm.” His eyes held a feeling of despair when he looked up, glancing to everyone around the room. And for the first time, I could see it—the crack in his armor. The weight of his burden as alpha. He’d grown close to Silas on the drive back, and now he had to push aside his grieving to allow everyone else to grieve.
It wasn’t right. He deserved to feel it, too. He deserved to grieve like the rest of them.
“What happened?” was all he could ask.
Cove, who was sobbing too hard to speak, simply handed Cassian a letter. “What is this?” he asked, but Cove choked on her words.
“It was pinned to his chest,” Alpha Radolph answered for Cove. Although he’d been incredibly close to Silas, and was probably torn inside, he held a stoic expression on his face, no tears in his eyes. Years of practice as alpha must’ve made him hard as stone.
The red wax emblem seal had already been broken, the letter read by the eyes of the Ash Hounds before anyone else. And it was only right that they did. I looked at Cassian and asked what it said.
But before he could answer, Thoran pushed past the crowd, screaming at Cassian. “This is your fault!” Red with rage, his eyes had a look of malice as if he could kill Cassian with a glare. Hulking over to him, ready to attack, Alpha Radolph had to hold him back. But because the man was a giant, it took Niko and Rohan to help keep him from pummeling us.
“If you’d have left her alone, she wouldn’t have done this to Silas! It’s your fault! My elder was slaughtered like a fucking pig because of you!”
Cassian remained speechless, clutching the letter that looked like it came from the High Council. The chaos had reached unseen levels, as shouting and screaming came from every corner, pack members ready to attack the warrior for their alpha.
Things were getting out of control. If we didn’t stop it soon, the entire warehouse would erupt into a massive brawl.
“Enough!” I shouted, though my words weren’t heard above all else, so I shouted, “Silentium!”
Instantly, silence fell about the room, everyone looking around in confusion as to why their mouths were moving, but no words came out.
I turned to Cassian and asked, “What does the letter say?”
The focus in the room shifted to Cassian. My silence spell had basically slapped the panic from them, and they were ready to listen.
He looked up, a hopeless expression on his face. But it was his words that brought a chill to my spine, as he held up the note that was scrawled in blood—Silas’s blood. My legs almost collapsed from under me, my stomach dropping, and a queasiness deep in my gut.
“The High Council has fallen, she is coming.”
