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I scrub a hand over my face, exhaling sharp, and without thinking, I turn on my heel and yank the door open again.

Silas is still exactly where I left him—perched lazily on the steps, his chin tipped up to the grey morning sky, hummingsome tuneless melody like he hasn’t just spent the last ten minutes cataloging every shred of humiliation I dragged home with me.

The second he hears the door creak, he glances back over his shoulder, and that smile spreads across his face slow and wicked, all teeth.

“Changed your mind?” he asks, voice pitched light, knowing.

I step outside, letting the door shut firmly behind me. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut.”

Silas arches a brow like I’ve just handed him a gift. “About what?”

I grit my teeth. “You know damn well about what.”

He hums low in his throat, tapping his fingers against his knee like he’s cataloguing all the ways he can make me regret this conversation.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he says casually, his smile widening like he can taste blood in the air. “There are so many things this could allude to.”

I exhale slowly, counting to three, then five, because I know exactly what he’s doing—needling, provoking, peeling me open because that’s what Silas does best. And I’m too damn tired to play.

The grin he gives me is infuriating. Sharp-edged. Giddy.

I bite out a breath through my teeth, my pulse ticking hard behind my eyes. “About this,” I snap, waving a sharp hand vaguely in the air between us like I can carve the words out of it. “About last night.”

Silas taps a finger against his chin like he’s considering the weight of the entire world. “Last night,” he repeats slowly, deliberately. “See, the thing is… there were a lot of things happening last night. Elias fell off the roof again. Riven threatened to drown me for teaching the local kids how to lockpick. You’re going to have to narrow it down.”

“Silas,” I say, voice cold enough to cut. “Don’t fuck with me.”

His grin sharpens further, green eyes bright and infuriatingly pleased. “Oh, you mean the part where our cold, ruthless, emotionally stunted leader snuck out of Luna’s room looking like he’d been thoroughly fucked six ways from sunrise?”

My jaw ticks hard enough to crack. “Keep your mouth shut.”

He presses a hand over his heart like I’ve wounded him. “I’m wounded you’d think I’d gossip.”

“You gossip constantly.”

His smile is sharp enough to cut glass. “Not about you.”

I shake my head once, sharp, and start to turn back toward the door.

But his voice follows me, quieter now, almost thoughtful. “I won’t tell them.”

I glance over my shoulder.

Silas lifts a shoulder, gaze flicking away for the first time all morning. “Not because you told me to. Because she deserves to tell them herself.”

For a second, I don’t know what to do with that. So I don’t say anything at all. I just go back inside and close the door behind me like I’m shutting out a storm.

I take a breath I don’t need, scrub a hand over my face like I can scrape the last few hours off my skin. It doesn’t work. I can still smell her. Feel her. Every part of me aches in ways that have nothing to do with the walk home and everything to do with the woman I left tangled in her sheets, bare and soft and asleep—without promising me a godsdamn thing.

She didn’t say she’d move back in.

That’s what gnaws at me, sharp and incessant beneath my ribs like a blade pressed too close. She let me stay. Let me touch her. Let me fuck her so hard I forgot how to breathe.

But she didn’t say she’d come home.

She’s still at that godsdamn tavern, tucked away in a room down the street like she’s not already half mine, and I hate it. Hate the distance. Hate how much easier it was to keep her at arm’s length when she wasn’t under my roof, under my skin.

Because if she moves back in, she’ll be closer. Easier to reach. Easier to take. And gods, I want to take her. I want her in my house. In my bed. Where I can have her anytime I want. And I want. Every godsdamned second of every godsdamned day.