I hurl the pillow at the wall. It bounces off with a pathetic thud.
I have ten pillows. Who needs this many pillows?
I do.
Because deep down, I love pillows. I missed them so much out in the woods. I groan and flop onto my back. I’m getting complacent. Tame. Even the food won me over, and I’d be lying if I said it took more than that first dinner.
Lily is sweet. Some of the pack members aren’t the complete assholes I assumed they’d be. They’re like the pack of my childhood, before the new alphas took over and turned our home into a prison camp.
“Get it together, Mo,” I mutter. “They’re still your captors.”
But even as I say it, the word doesn’t fit the way it used to. Captors don’t cook you mashed potatoes. Captors don’t let their sister give you a coat. Captors don’t introduce you to their grandmother and bring you hot chocolate.
Archer has started smiling at me, which is weird as hell from a guy whose resting face could curdle milk. Elias told me straight up he wants to court me, whatever that means. And Silas. My thoughts always seem to drift back to him. There’s something about his calm, quiet that draws me in. He just watches, but it’s not creepy. He’s the one I trust the most, the big, mute giant with the sad eyes and the gentle hands.
I save my biggest sigh for Darius. The broodiest of the brood. He keeps to himself, but his eyes are always on me. He looks like he’s one bad day away from ripping someone’s throat out, but he doesn’t order the others around the way I’ve grown to expect.If anything, he seems reluctant about the whole leader thing, like the weight of it is crushing him, and he just keeps walking, anyway.
A knock at the door jolts me upright. I open it, and Silas fills the doorway. He holds out one huge hand.
“Don’t look at me with your big, wounded woodland-creature eyes. It’s manipulative.”
He doesn’t move, just keeps his arm outstretched.
I hesitate. Then I put my much smaller hand in his. His skin is warm and calloused, and his grip is careful, like he’s measuring his own strength and dialling it back.
He tugs me forward. I dig in my heels. “Where are we going?”
He cocks his head toward the dining room. I narrow my eyes but let him lead me. On the table sits a huge, jagged rock. Grey and ugly and rough all over, about the size of a melon.
Despite myself, excitement bubbles up.
I love rocks.
“Is this for me?” I ask.
Silas nods. There’s a hint of something on his face. Not quite a smile. More like the suggestion of one, held back, waiting for permission.
Then he picks up a hammer.
My eyes widen. “Wait, what are you—”
CRACK.
The hammer comes down, and the rock splits in two, and I scream.
“Why would you do that?!” Tears sting my eyes, hot and fast. “Why would you hurt it?”
It’s stupid to cry over a rock. I know that. But rocks are solid. Unchanging. Dependable. This one had a history, a story, and now it’s broken in two pieces on the table because this enormous alpha just took a hammer to it.
Silas doesn’t react to my outburst. He reaches out and touches my shoulder, and I shrug him off.
“Don’t.”
He waits. Patient. Unhurried. His dark eyes hold mine, and there’s no pity in them, no confusion about why I’m crying over a rock. Just patience. Just this quiet willingness to stand there until I’m ready.
After a moment, he picks up one half of the rock and holds it out to me.
I take it, turn it over in my hands.