Page 5 of Snarl First, Kiss Later (Alpha’s Prophecy #2)

FIVE

AVA

T he world flipped sideways as Ava’s boots left solid ground.

Branches lashed her arms, air tore at her jacket, and Silas’s grip crushed hers like a lifeline. Then there was impact. Sharp, rolling, painful. They tumbled hard down the slope, bark scraping skin, roots catching limbs, until earth slammed flat beneath her again.

Ava groaned, blinking against dirt and pain. Her breath wheezed out in bursts, lungs catching up to the fact that they weren’t dead.

“Fuck,” she muttered.

Silas stirred beside her, rising into a crouch with that unnatural quiet shifters had no right to possess. His hand dropped from hers like he hadn’t just dragged her off a cliff.

“You alright?” His voice came low, gravel-coated.

Ava pushed herself up, flexing fingers that burned. “Landed on something sharp. Might’ve been my pride.”

He didn’t smile. Just scanned the treeline like predators still loomed.

They didn’t speak as they moved. The Sons wouldn’t have risked the descent, not without backup. Still, Silas’s tension screamed louder than any growl.

They hiked another mile through brambles and ferns before he stopped at the jagged mouth of a low cave, barely visible beneath twisted roots and stone. Silas stepped in first, ducking low. Ava followed, wincing at the brush of rock against her bruised shoulder.

Inside, the air was damp and cool. Earthy. The ceiling sloped overhead like a hunched spine. Far enough in, they found dry ground, and Silas dropped his pack, tugging out supplies with methodical hands.

“You been stashing shit all across the woods?” she asked, voice quieter now. Her body ached in new ways, but adrenaline still hummed sharp in her veins.

“Only in caves I’m willing to bleed in,” he replied.

Her eyes narrowed. “Comforting.”

Silas pulled out a single bedroll and a tattered blanket, tossing them near the wall. “It’s this or stone.”

Ava exhaled hard. “You’re lucky I’m exhausted.”

He didn’t respond. Just started a small fire with kindling and a flint striker, his hands fast but controlled. The light flickered over his features—tight jaw, hollow cheeks, the deep groove between his brows like it’d been carved there years ago.

Once the flames caught, Ava sank down on the bedroll, legs stretched out, jacket folded behind her head. Silas stayed across from her, watching the fire.

Silence stretched long between them.

“You were gonna leave me,” she said at last, tone flat.

He didn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

She pushed upright. “Because you think this is some suicide mission and I’m not worth the risk? Or because you still think I’ll turn you in if things go sideways?”

He looked at her then meeting her eyes.

“It’s not about trust, Ava,” he said, voice low. “It’s about cost. I know what it’s like to lose someone who didn’t sign up for the fallout?”

Her throat tightened before she could stop it. “You think I didn’t sign up?”

“You chased a convoy,” he said. “You didn’t chase me.”

“I pulled your bleeding ass out of the woods.”

“You should’ve left me.”

“And yet here you are.”

“I didn’t ask to be saved.”

She stared into the fire, anger roiling somewhere deep but unfocused. “Neither did my dad. He still died for a cause he didn’t pick.”

Silas didn’t answer, but the look in his eyes shifted, less guarded, more weighted.

Ava blew out a shaky breath, leaning back again. “You got people after you with silver and blades and more hate than sense. I don’t care what your noble intentions were. You try to ditch me again, you better run faster than I shoot.”

A beat passed. Then, finally, Silas murmured, “Understood.”

They didn’t talk for a while after that.

Later, after they’d eaten a cold dinner of jerky and half-squished protein bars, the fire shrank to glowing coals. Ava curled on one side of the bedroll, half her body chilled by open air. Silas sat near the mouth of the cave, half-shadowed, his back to the stone.

“You planning to take watch all night?” she mumbled, not opening her eyes.

“Habit.”

“You planning to keep treating me like glass?”

“Only if you keep throwing yourself at death.”

She opened one eye. “Funny. Thought that was your specialty.”

Silas finally looked at her, eyes catching the dying light. “You’re not what I expected,” he said.

She blinked. “What’d you expect?”

“A coward,” he said, shrugging like it wasn’t a personal insult. “Or a fanatic. Someone itching to prove humans still run the show.”

She laughed once, dry and soft. “Yeah, well. You’re not exactly the growl-and-bite beast I expected either.”

“Don’t give me ideas.”

They stared at each other a second too long. Then Ava turned her back, tugging the blanket higher.

“You want a corner of this thing, you better ask nice.”

Silas lay down next to her, body heat rolling like a shield.

“I don’t ask nice,” he said.

She smirked into the dark.

The quiet returned, but not cold this time. Just calm. Hard-won and tentative.

Ava listened to his breathing even out. Hers followed soon after, though the ache in her ribs reminded her that trust wasn’t something you fell into. It was earned. Sharp-edged. Like everything else that mattered in the Borderlands.

And Silas Wren? He was complicated, bruised, and just dangerous enough to matter and possibly, not beyond saving.