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My head tilts. “What?”

“The brand.”

Heat prickles my skin. “No.”

He grabs my wrist, but it’s not harsh. It’s warm. Strong. Touch I’ve craved for weeks now. “Yes. Let me make sure it’s healing correctly.”

“It’s humiliating,” I confess. “It’s embarrassing to wear his mark like this.”

Silas’ sharp, angular, jaw clenches tight. “You think it’s not degrading to do the work he forces on me? Preparing the Fallen to be whored out to the depraved and perverted?”

“Silas—”

“We were raised to protect one another, Imogene. Community at all costs, but I spend my days and nights doing the opposite. I am a traitor to my brothers and sisters, and that has left me as marked as you are, mine is just under the flesh, burned into my soul.” His skin pales. “What he’s asked me to do to the Fallen—"

“And Banished,” I interject. He stops, worry drawing his eyebrows together. I see he’s afraid to say their names too. Elon. Levi. Rex.

“So,” he says, licking his lips, hand firm on my hip, just above the branding, “let me see it.”

I don’t fight as Silas reaches for the hem, lifting the gray jumper to my waist. He hooks a finger at the waist of my underclothes and pulls them down.

Again, I flinch, moving to cover it.

His hand stops mine, and when our eyes meet his are hard with determination. “Don’t hide yourself from me, Imogene.”

I relent and lean back against the hard door as his fingers gently explore the wound. I refuse to look at it, hating the damaged, burned skin, the red, never healing sore. Silas drops to his knees, and a low curse cuts through the quiet of the room. His fingers explore the edges of the brand.

“It’s fine,” I tell him, wincing as he touches a sensitive spot. “Hardly any pain left. The scabs are healing—”

“I’ll kill him for this.” I hear the promise in his words.

If only.

If only Anex wasn’t surrounded by armed followers. If only he didn’t have Rex guarded twenty-four hours a day. If only we knew how to find Levi and Elon. If only we’d left when we’d had the chance—when Rex asked us to. He knew. He knew and we fought him.

I touch Silas’ chin, lifting his gaze upward. “You’re not a killer.”

His jaw sets. “You don’t know what I’ve done or what I’m capable of, Imogene, especially when a man harms something so important to me.”

I see it now, that even in this short time, Silas has changed. That I’ve changed. We’re raw. Lost. Broken.

Desperate.

“I know you’re strong, but I also know you’re a good man. You care for people, and you can’t let him take that away, or allow him to use it against you.” I press my hand against his cheek. “We’re here to make a difference. To help those who can’t help themselves. The Fallen—the pregnant women out there. Someone has to, and if it’s not us, then who?”

“You’re too good for Serendee,” he says, still on his knees. “You’re too good forhim.”

He takes my hand, kissing my fingers before moving back to the brand. He kisses the skin around it gently, so soft I barely feel it, except for the siren of goosebumps rising across my flesh. My head falls back, sinking into the touch of the man that showed me a whole new way to view my body—opening me up to something besides what I’d been taught. That it’s okay to seek pleasure, to fulfill my desires.

Silas’s kisses move from the wound, down my legs, and to my inner thighs. His tongue lathes over the scars put there that forbidden night by Levi. His touch is feather light, soft sucking that sends sparks of heated want between my legs. It’s wrong to want this, to risk this, but it’s been weeks since I’ve seen my men—felt their touch. I crave something other than the cold sterility of this place.

The threat of what’s to come.

I crave him.

“Silas,” I whisper, tugging at his thick hair. “Please.”

“Please what?” he asks, breath hot on my pussy. A tremor runs up my spine.