Lilith's POV

“Silas?” I called when I entered the room.

He sat at the edge of the bed, facing the wall amidst the darkness as though it displayed a movie. He didn't even hear the door creak open.

I got into the bathroom and came out covered with a towel, and still, Silas hadn't noticed my presence. The heavy torrent must have drained out every sound I made.

I patted his shoulder. “Lost in thoughts?”

He flinched. “Oh…”

A chuckle escaped my lips as I wrapped my arms around him. The towel slid off, exposing my body.

“You came in,” he muttered, ignoring the attention my body should have drawn from him, “and I didn't even notice.” His brows creased. “Were you sneaking on me?”

I rolled my eyes. “Hell no.”

I pinned him against the bed, and got my lips to almost touch his ears. “It’s cold outside, and I'm all yours.”

My exposed boobs rested on his chest.

“I’m becoming more like a werewolf.” My lips touched his ears. “Becoming more like you.”

He tried to let out a chuckle, but it faltered in the same instance. I heard him sigh. Our eyes met and with the faint light that came through the window, I could see the expression on his face. It was empty, had no brightness I used to see, just… damp?

My eyes trailed down his body, and I noticed his fingers were shaky.

“No other werewolf knows you're human…” His voice was so low that I could barely hear him. “... Except me…”

“Well, yes, but what's this look?” I touched his cheeks.

But he kept mute, like thinking through the words in his mind, or something was too heavy for him to say?

“Is it about your sick mum?”

“Hmm… yeah, of course. Her ill health is the start of all this.”

“It got worse, didn't it?” My hand fell to his chest. “We could sell maybe everything in this house… and I believe we would get that close to getting that cure.”

He shook his head. “We wouldn't have gotten close… but now…”

“What about now?” My brows furrowed.

“Now is about you.”

He got to the window, staring outside and holding the rods behind the net. Somehow, it felt as though he was watching out for something, or perhaps a person.

“How is your mum's health about me?”

“My mum needed a cure,” he continued. “And I couldn't afford it.” He turned to face me, and I found tiny streaks of tears flowing down his cheeks. “I had to do what I needed to do.”

Cold shivers crept up my spine.

His lips moved, but all I caught was “sorry”

“What… what did you do?”

“Get dressed.”

“Now?” I frowned. “Are we going out? Under this torrent?”

He pushed open the wardrobe door, brought out a dress I could never have worn to sleep, and dropped it on the bed.

“Just get dressed,” he said.

I did.

“It's almost time for them to come.”

“Silas?” My voice raised slightly. “What's all this about? Who's coming…”

A bang at the door to the sitting room cut me shut.

It was past midnight. Too late for visitors—if we ever had any.

I hurried into the sitting room, tugging on the gown Silas had dropped on the bed as he followed behind me.

The door slammed open before I could reach it.

“Silas!” A burly man, a werewolf, stormed in, his eyes burning. “Where's she? The human?”

His eyes were on me, scanning my skin as he waited for Silas to answer. Sweat formed on my skin because he mentioned “human”. No one else was human except me.

I felt his gaze grabbing me like sharp claws.

“Silas… what is…” I swallowed the lump I felt down my throat. “Did you tell…”

My heart started to beat as though to escape my chest.

“Sorry,” Silas muttered lifelessly, avoiding eye contact with me.

The room suddenly felt too small as though the space in the room was shrinking against me.

I was human.

But no one was supposed to know that except Silas.

Most groups of rogue wolves were always a danger to me, but at this moment…

“She's human,” Silas' voice was low.

The two other werewolves who stood outside in the pouring rain stormed in, and before I could move, they grabbed me—one by my arms, and the other by my legs.

“Silas! Silas!” I thrashed in their grip, struggling to pull them off me.

But all he did was watch.

He stepped outside, stood frozen in the rain, and in his eyes, I saw something I'd never seen in him. Not love. Not anger, but something like guilt or fear?

“Our Alpha gave him the elixir to cure his mum.” One of the werewolves snarled, grinning as his grip bit into my arm. “And of course, selling you out was the prize he had to pay.”

“Silas, look at me!” My scream was raw.

He stepped closer to the cart the werewolves forced me into. “Lilith… I had no choice… for the sake of my mother…” his voice cracked. “I needed Alpha Sebastian's price for her cure.”

Tears steamed down my jaws. “You… you betrayed me.”

Memories from five years ago clawed at me. The day he saved me from rogue wolves was like a new event in my mind, and after that, I became his lover. And all he needed to do was keep my identity a secret as I was a human among werewolves.

But he tore everything apart in just a moment? Or maybe this was all a dream?

***

The last thing I remembered before everything went dark against me was the werewolves’s laughter which reminded me of the rogues who had trapped me.

Then… a candlelight stung my eyes, followed with a strong smell of herbs almost ripping my nose apart.

“Ahh.” I jerked up with a heavy breath as though heavy hands pressed me against the bed.

“Lilith?” A woman's face swam into view. “You are awake?”

Her bulging eyes focused on me, scanning my skin as she left the chair she was seated on to sit on the bed, beside me. She touched my fingers, I flinched. Then she smiled… that kind of smile that seemed to hold too many meanings at once.

It sank into me, who was she?

“I'm Mira,” she said as though reading my mind.

Her fingers came to my neck, touched the necklace I'd always worn.

I yanked her hand off. “Mine…”

She just nodded. “It says a lot about your identity.”

My brows furrowed. “My… my identity…”

“Yeah, but never mind.”

“Where am I?” I tried to get my legs off the bed, but the weakness that stretched throughout my body betrayed me.

My gaze reached the door of the room, and even though the space was big enough to contain at least two hundred wolves, it still felt like a tiny prison.

“Silverbone pack,” Mira said. “Alpha Sebastian kept me in charge of you.”

“I was sold out… by Silas…” Tears threatened to escape my eyes.

Mira nodded. “Sometimes we don't have a choice.”

She poured a black substance from a jug on the table beside the bed into a mug, and passed it to me, gesturing I drank it up. The vapour sent the strong smell of herbs through my nostrils.

“This might help when the time comes.”

“Time for what?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Sometimes, fate gives us no choice.”

My breath hitched. “What fate are you talking about? What's all these about?”

The door creaked open, diverting my attention to the man who walked in. Mira rushed to kneel before him.

His scent of rust… it completely repelled against the scent of herbs lingering in my nostrils. I hated the smell of rust, but his seemed to have a subtle kind of flavor to it, like it wasn't the smell of rust after all.

“Is she the human?” His gaze lifted from Mira to be on me.

“Yes, yes she is.” Mira's words were rushed. “Lilith.”

He walked to the bed till his knee touched the frame.

“Lilith,” he called.

I froze.

His voice was like an old tune I'd heard from years ago, a tune I should never have forgotten. But his voice did try to dig into my mind for me to remember. But… All that came to my mind was my late parents' death.

But how was that connected to him?

His fingers came to my neck, and I rolled to the other end of the bed. “Don't…”

Just the tip of his fingers touched me, but it sent cold shivers through me like he almost made all my lost memories come to life.

I was certain I didn't know him, but why all these feelings if I didn't?