My hand tightened around the beer bottle as tension filled the room.
“Her boss was an aware but nosy prick… with connections.” Silas’s voice was deceptively calm, but the darkness in his eyes revealed it all—the rage, the agony. “I’d just given her the Bite, when a team of twenty hunters barged into our home…Twenty. For a lone wolf and the fragile human whom hewould’vedied for… But humans like those are not only scared sacks of shit, they’re also liars.”
Silas didn’t need to relive what happened that day for my sake. I let him know with a small shake of my head, but the corners of his frown began to rise.
“They swore they’d spare her life if I didn’t resist… Then they made me watch. The way they made watching my wolf crumple inside of me a spectacle… until we tore their eyes from their heads.” Silas pulled down the collar of his shirt.
Scars sprawled across his skin like spiderwebs between rugged branches.
“Do you think less of me, Marcus?”
“Because you fell in love?”
He shrugged. “With a human. It’s pretty hypocritical, don’t you think?”
My jaw tightened. I looked down and picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on my sweater. “You’re the leader of our revolution… If anything, it validates the cause. Under the right circumstances, we can coexist.”
The wine glass clinked as he set it down on the coaster on his center table. “Well,thatwas too easy.”
My eyes darted up to meet his. “What do you mean?”
He raised his hands innocently. “I’m just saying, the wolves in my family normally have strong preconceived notions about humans. And one sad story wouldn’t change their minds.”
I remained quiet, holding his gaze the way he’d suggested a predator would.
“So, what’syoursad story, Marcus?” He plucked the bottle from my hand and placed it near his wine glass. “Tell me.” His voice lacked sympathy; instead, a bitter cold curiosity nipped at my emotional walls.
I remembered the night I asked Joanna if she’d let me turn her. She couldn’t run away while her hands were in mine. But they’d trembled as her breath caught in her lungs.
I’d rendered Joanna speechless. Tears welled in her eyes, but only raindrops caressed her flushed cheeks. Mere seconds had gone by, but her silence felt like an eternity—like she was listing off every mistake we’d made in our two weeks together.
“She got scared,” I finally answered.
Silas sat up straight. “Your… human?”
I hated this, but I sighed as I dipped my head. “She tried to separate the man from the wolf and… she couldn’t.” My heart quickened its pace, but thankfully Silas paid it no attention. “She would never accept the Bite… so I left.”
Silas stood up from the couch. “And now you hate humans.”
I massaged my temples… “I guess so.”
Silas walked over to his bottle of wine, re-corking it. “A few years ago, there was a wolf in my pack who forced the Bite on a human he was sleeping with.”
I pressed my lips into a straight line, wondering if he was referring to whom I believed he was.
“Normally, if the human is worthy, I wouldn’t intervene… but the idiot Bit her on a full moon.”
I grimaced. Even though Latoya was a no-good bitch who made her sister’s life hell, as an alpha, it wasn’t an easy thing to hear.
Silas noticed my reaction. “Trust me, I know. He didn’t deserve to live after that, and I dealt with him promptly, but the human… she survived. And she makes a remarkable wolf. She’s proof that humans can truly be worthy of our gift… even if we realize it before them.”
His silence bore an unspoken suggestion.
I thought about Joanna’s goodbye… and how my scent no longer marked her as mine. “I’ve already lost her,” I said, a decibel away from a whisper.
Silas nodded, his eyes softening for the first time since he’d spoken about his human love.
“Are your humans in the living roomworthy?” I couldn’t help but wonder.
