Page 5

CHAPTER 5

S ilas

The firelight caught her face, illuminating the lines of her jaw, the curve of her lips.

When I saw her eyes, I went utterly still.

They were a deep forest green, dark and untamed, the kind of color that belonged to the deepest parts of the wilderness, where the trees grew thick, and the light barely touched the ground. There was something else there, too; just beneath the surface burned a quiet fire, a relentless defiance that hadn’t been snuffed out, no matter what the world had thrown at her.

Even now, staring up at me, those dark green eyes were unreadable, calculating, as if she was already deciding whether I was an enemy, an ally… or something else entirely.

It was her.

My chest tightened, my pulse roaring in my ears.

Lia.

The girl I saved.

The girl I left behind.

The girl I’d just stripped, spanked, and fucked.

She blinked once, her gaze locked onto mine. She knew .

The fire crackled between us, and in that single, shattering moment, I understood one thing with perfect, brutal clarity: Lia wasn’t just alive, she was here, and she was mine.

Utterly and completely mine.

“You’ve grown up.”

The raspy words slipped out before I could stop them, scraping against the thick silence between us.

Lia stared up at me, her stunning green eyes reflecting our mutual shock, and I swore I could feel the weight of that look pressing into my skin, searching me, testing me. She wasn’t the fragile, dirty-faced child I had left behind in the mountains all those years ago.

She was a woman now.

And fuck, was I in trouble.

She didn’t say anything. She was simply staring at me and taking everything in. There was no mistaking her features. Those cheekbones, those lips. Her face was older, wiser, the soft roundedness of childhood replaced by sharper, more grownup edges.

And her hair… her hair was no longer the dark dirty blonde it used to be. It was a deep, rich brown, streaked with caramel and honey. It spilled around her shoulders, framing her beautiful, stubborn face, and for a moment, I couldn’t do anything but stare.

I had no idea how, but she was here, naked and sated, stretched out across my bed, her body pressed against mine.

A warm possessive feeling unfurled in my chest, and I reached for her without thinking, my fingers brushing over her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. The firelight flickered over her features, casting dark shadows under her highlighted cheekbones, the stubborn set of her mouth. She had always been defiant, even as a kid, but now? Now she carried herself like someone who had fought her way through life and won every time.

Her lips parted slightly, but she didn’t speak right away. Instead, she exhaled slowly, rolling her shoulders like she was shaking off invisible chains.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she croaked, her voice still hoarse from screaming.

I smiled. “No?”

She let out a little laugh. “I wanted to find you, but I had almost lost hope.”

I studied her, the wavering firelight catching the lighter streaks in her hair. She was no longer the little girl I had left behind all those years ago, but fuck , she was still my Lia.

And she had been looking for me!

“You almost lost hope?” I repeated. “And yet, here you are. In my bed.”

Her lips quirked, just slightly. “Lucky me.”

Something about the way she said it made my stomach flip just a bit. I reached for her again, watching as her lashes fluttered. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lean into it either. Always stubborn. Always guarded.

“What the hell are you doing out here, Lia?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

She exhaled, her breath warm against my skin. “I told you. I was looking for you.”

I arched a brow. “Why?”

Her fingers curled against the sheets, her body too still. “Because you might be the only person who can stop what’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” A tingle of dread inched up my back.

Lia had always been stoic, but right now, lying in my bed, bare and stretched out beside me, she looked tired. Not just physically—though I could see the exhaustion pulling at the edges of her face—but deep down, in her bones.

Something had happened to bring her here, something bad, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it.

“Tell me what’s coming, Lia,” I commanded.

She hesitated, just for a second.

Then she exhaled and met my gaze, her voice too controlled. “Something’s happening in the city. Something worse than anything we’ve ever faced before.”

I watched her carefully. “Go on.”

Her throat bobbed slightly as she swallowed, her fingers flexing. “The wolves,” she murmured. “They’ve always needed humans to reproduce, right? The natural born female shifters, most of them, they’re infertile, right? That’s why they take human women, why they breed them against their will.”

I clenched my jaw. I already knew this. It was the reason I had turned against my own kind, the reason I had formed my own pack and built a life out here in the mountains, far away from the corruption of the city. But her words, and the way she said them, the tightness in her voice, made a cold dread settle in my gut.

“Lia,” I said carefully, “tell me what’s going on.”

She licked her lips, hesitating once more. Then, finally, she spoke again.

“They’ve been working on a drug,” she said, her voice tight. “A way to force human females to carry shifter girls that are fertile. For a while, we thought it might actually work. We thought maybe—maybe—it would stop the forced breedings, that they’d stop stealing us to carry their children.”

My blood went cold.

She took a slow breath. “But it’s a lie.”

The words hung heavy in the air, sinking into my bones.

“What do you mean?” I asked quietly, trying to control my growing sense of alarm.

Lia’s fingers clenched into fists. “A shifter scientist—one of their own—came forward with proof. The drug does make the shifter female babies fertile, but there’s a cost. The pregnancy could kill the mother. Even if she survives the birth—and the chances are low—her lifespan would be significantly shortened.”

I stared at her, my entire body going rigid.

“How do you know this?”

She let out a slow, shaky breath. “Because I saw the research myself.”

My stomach twisted. “Lia?—”

“I escaped,” she cut in, her voice urgent. “I saw what they were doing. I saw what would happen if the drug gets distributed. If the wolves start using it, it’s only a matter of time before the human population is completely wiped out. Either we die in childbirth, bear them as many children as they demand, or we die years—decades—before we’re supposed to. And they don’t care, Silas. They don’t care if it kills us as long as they get what they want.”

My hands clenched into fists now, too. My wolf snarled inside me, rage twisting deep in my chest.

She reached for me, her fingers gripping my wrist. “Girls are kept ‘pure’ until eighteen. That’s the law. And then they’re taken and bred. I was designated to bear three shifter children— three , Silas. And after that, once they’ve drained everything they can from our bodies, we’re released back into the human population. Like it’s a gift. Like they’re giving us our lives back.” Her laugh was hollow, bitter. “They say, if we survive the breeding cycle, we’re free to have families of our own. Human partners. Human babies. Most of us don’t even live long enough to get that far.” Her voice dropped. “And with the drug, it’s only going to get worse. I had to run. I had to get out. I barely made it. Now I need your help. They’re going to start using the drug soon; it’s in the testing stages now, but once that’s over, it’ll be the end for humanity in that city.”

I forced myself to breathe, my mind racing.

I met her gaze, my voice rough. “And you think I’m the only one who can stop this?”

Her lips parted slightly, her pulse hammering against my fingertips.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”

She was looking at me like I was the answer, like I was the one person in this world who could fix what was coming, who could stop it. The truth was I wasn’t sure I could.

I had spent years building this life, this sanctuary, for the wolves who had broken away from the corruption of the city, for those who had chosen to fight against what they were making us be. Out here, we had rules. We had control. But we didn’t have numbers.

Now Lia was sitting in my bed, bare and beautiful, looking at me with those pretty, desperate green eyes, asking me to fight a war I wasn’t sure I could win.

For years, I had told myself that staying away was the only way to survive. That the city, the politics, the war for control over humans—none of it was my fight anymore. I had done my part: I had left.

But Lia?

She had never left it behind.

She had clawed her way through hell, fought her way out of the city with the kind of reckless, brutal survival instinct that I had always known was inside of her. Now she was here, asking me to go back, asking me to help.

I wanted to. Fuck, I wanted to.

But could I?

Would my pack follow me? Would my wolves, many of whom had already sacrificed everything to escape the city, be willing to march back into the same nightmare we had bled to escape? And if they wouldn’t, if I had to do this alone, was I strong enough to stand against the wolves who ruled that city?

There was no way to answer that.

“When?” I asked softly. “When are they going to start using the drug on the human women?”

“In just a few more months. They’re finishing up some last-minute testing over the coming weeks, but once the clinical trials are complete, it’s only a matter of time before they start using it in mass quantities,” she replied.

I didn’t answer right away. I let the silence settle between us for a moment before I wound my arms around her, just enough to test her reaction. She didn’t flinch, didn’t retreat, but I caught the way her breath quickened, the way her fingers twitched slightly at her sides, like she was deciding whether to fight me or not.

Good.

She should be on edge.

Because I sure as hell was.

“Tell me,” I said, my voice quiet now. “Where have you been, Lia? What happened to you all those years ago?”

She hesitated just long enough for me to notice.

“After you left me behind,” she said softly, “I stayed with the humans in the mountains for a while. They taught me how to survive, how to hunt, how to fight.”

Her voice was steady, but there was something underneath it, something I wasn’t sure even she realized was there.

A wound.

A scar.

One I had given her.

I exhaled through my nose and said nothing, just let her continue.

“For a few years, that was my life,” she said, gaze flitting past me, like she was looking backward. “I foraged, set traps, learned the land better than the back of my own hand. One day, when I was twelve, I went too far from camp.”

My stomach twisted.

“I was out in the woods, focused on tracking a deer,” she went on, voice flat now. “Didn’t even hear them coming. A wolf patrol caught me. Dragged me out of the mountains and straight back to the city.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry, Lia.”

Lia’s jaw tightened, her shoulders squaring as if she was bracing for a fight. “The city was hell,” she said, voice sharp now, like broken glass. “I thought the mountains were dangerous, but at least out there, you had a chance. At least there, you could fight. In the city, you were nothing. Just another body. Just another human girl waiting to be bred.”

My back stiffened, but I stayed silent, letting her talk.

“When they first brought me back to the city, they dumped me at a holding center—basically a glorified cage for orphaned kids. No records, no family? They don’t waste time trying to find someone for you. You either get folded into a state dorm, or you slip through the cracks. Guess which one I did?” She laughed bitterly, shaking her head again. “I ran. Thought I’d rather be on my own than stuck in some overcrowded facility just waiting for my number to be called.”

She exhaled through her nose, shaking her head slightly, like she was shaking off the weight of old ghosts. “I didn’t last long on my own. I was barely thirteen, fresh out of the woods, and I didn’t know the rules yet. Didn’t know which streets were safe, and which ones were not. Didn’t know how to keep my head down when the wolves came through.”

She paused, her eyes closing for a moment. “The first time I got caught stealing food, they broke two of my ribs. Didn’t even ask questions. Just beat the shit out of me in the middle of the street and left me there.”

A low growl rumbled in my throat. Her eyes flicked to mine, calm and assessing, but she didn’t comment on it.

“I should’ve died right then and there. I sometimes wish I had. The Black Sickness was spreading through the lower sectors. I must’ve caught it a few days after that. At first, I thought it was just hunger, but then the fever came. The shakes. The—” She swallowed hard. “The coughing. Couldn’t even stand up without my vision going black. By the time I collapsed and couldn’t get up again, I figured that was it. I was done.”

My jaw clenched and I ground my teeth together to stay in control. The image of her—thirteen years old, burning up with fever, ribs cracked from a beating—clawed through my brain like a cruel wildfire.

Lia lifted her chin slightly. “But I wasn’t alone. Two girls found me. Dragged me out of the street, hid me, fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself. They begged, bartered, and stole to get me medicine. The kind you could only find in the underground.” Her lips quirked into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “They nearly got themselves killed for it, and I wasn’t even conscious to thank them.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing my voice steady. “But they saved you.”

Her gaze darkened. “Yeah,” she said. “They did. And for the first time since I lost everything, I had people who gave a damn. People who didn’t just look at me like I was another lost cause.”

I didn’t miss the unspoken part of that sentence.

Not like you did.

The words weren’t said, but they might as well have been carved into my goddamn skin.

“You weren’t there, Silas,” she said, quieter this time, her voice holding the weight of every year we had been apart. “You didn’t see what it was like.”

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak. “No,” I said, the admission rough on my tongue. “I didn’t.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

My hands curled into fists, my jaw tightening again. I wanted to tell her that I had done what I thought was best. That leaving her behind had been the only way to keep her safe. But she wasn’t a child anymore. And I wasn’t the man she had known back then.

So instead, I just licked my lips and kept my voice even. “And now you’re here.”

Her eyes drilled into mine. “And now I’m here. Asking for your help.”

I didn’t move.

Neither did she.

The tension between us was thick, electric, everything unspoken crackling in the air, stretching tight. The fire in the hearth popped behind her as embers rose up into the air, highlighting the strength in her features.

She had survived without me. Had built a life out of nothing. Had bled, fought, and crawled her way through hell while I sat in these mountains, wondering if she had died.

Yet, she was here . Fate had brought her back to me. The question was—what the hell was I supposed to do with that?

Before I could decide, the world exploded.

A thunderous boom rocked the cabin, rattling the windows in their frames. A half-second later, a chorus of howls split the night.

Then came the gunfire.

Lia spun toward the sound even as I lunged for the door, flinging it open. The freezing air hit me like a slap to the face, dense with the scent of sweat and blood.

The camp was in chaos.

Dark shapes moved through the trees, swift and deadly, striking with precision.

And they weren’t mine.

I knew my pack; I knew the way my wolves moved, how they fought, how they scented. The ones slipping through the tree line now weren’t just unfamiliar, they were wrong. Their movements were too coordinated, too precise, not the chaotic, blood-hungry swipes of desperate rogues or scavengers looking for easy kills.

No, these wolves had training.

Their bodies were sleek and powerful, larger than most natural-born shifters. Their fur was darker, almost unnatural in the moonlight, blending seamlessly with the shadows between the trees. They flowed through the battlefield like ghosts, their strikes measured and devastating, each movement calculated.

Elite. Disciplined.

Fucking soldiers .

The kind trained to take down anything in their path.

A deep, guttural snarl ripped through the night as Jax shifted mid-stride, his clothes shredding from his body as he lunged at one of them. More of my wolves followed suit, their bodies warping and twisting, fur bursting along their limbs as they gave themselves over to the fight.

A volley of gunfire erupted from the eastern ridge, cutting through the chaos. The humans were holding the line, their resistance fighters already pushing forward.

At the center of them strode Sorin.

The human commander stood tall, her long coat whipping around her as she fired shot after shot with brutal efficiency. She shouted orders over the fray, her people moving in sync, covering each other’s backs as the battle raged.

My gut twisted. If this was an attack—not just a raid or some stray skirmish—then it meant one thing.

My camp, my safe haven, had been found.

A flash of movement at my side. Lia .

She was already dressed and moving, shoving past me before I could grab her.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” I barked, reaching for her arm.

She twisted out of my grasp. “What does it look like? I’m fighting.”

“Like hell you are!” I snapped. “You’re staying inside, where it’s safe!”

She barked a laugh, the sound loud and humorless. “Safe? Out here? That’s cute, Alpha. I’ve been fighting my whole life. I’m not about to sit this one out.”

I bared my teeth, my wolf rising just beneath my skin. “You’ll just get in the way.”

She shot me a look so full of fire, it could have burned down the whole goddamn forest. “Then try to keep up.”