Page 6

Chapter 5

Silas

A thud echoed around the cabin as the clumsy man inside crashed to the floor. Silas could barely make out his features from the glow of his mask.

Was he so scared he collapsed in his panic? This is who she chose?

Silas marched into the space, taking up the lead, before coming to a stop right before her .

It was too dark, her face cast in shadows. He wanted to see the terror, wanted to watch as horror crawled its slimy tendrils along her skin, wanted to know the moment she recognized him.

The front door slammed shut, but Silas didn’t turn. His sole attention focused on the girl before him. The green glow from his mask sawing across her in a nauseating color.

“Turn the lights back on,” Silas commanded Hawk.

He couldn’t see her well enough.

A moment later they flickered on, but he didn’t remove his mask, he simply watched her.

Ashmine sank back into her chair, tipping her head up, jutting her chin forward.

Her nearly black eyes met his through the mask.

A memory hit Silas like a rocket, transporting him to a different moment entirely.

***

“I love you.” Ashmine shook as Silas held her in his embrace. “I want to create a life with you, a family . I don’t want to ever be apart.”

Silas was twenty years old now, he was taking night classes at the local community college, working towards a career. So that he could take care of her. Of Hawk. Of Ace.

“You’re too young, you don’t know what you want.”

“I’m eighteen!” She wrestled out of his arms, stepping back towards the bed.

They were at a house-party in the middle of the woods. It was one thrown by a classmate of hers for their graduation. Silas hadn’t wanted her to go, but she had insisted.

Both Hawk and Ace were downstairs, but Ashmine had dragged Silas up here under the guise of a secret she needed to share.

“Silas, I’m in love with you. I know what you have done for me. I know about the fire. I don’t care.”

Silas’s heart pitter-pattered in his chest, anxiety scraping across his skin. He froze before pushing her back on the bed. “Oh, you think you know everything? Do you, little girl?”

Ashmine landed flat on the bed, her hair was blonde now—she had changed the color recently—and it fluttered around her: a misshapen halo.

“Do you know what love even is? What it is to be in love with someone?” He pounced on top of her, his knees landing on each side of the mattress and his hard cock pressed down against her. His hands found her wrists, holding them above her head. “What it is to be taken by a man? To be fucked senseless?”

He expected her to cry out, to tell him off.

Not to buck up into him. Her cunt pushed into his cock.

He met her eyes. They were the same shade as the sky the night he had set the fire.

Black with just the smallest hint of light creeping through.

Ashmine was an enigma. Wrapped in the package of a small fragile teenager but tougher than he experienced most men to be.

“You think you know me,” she gritted out. “You all deem to protect me. But what if I don’t need it? What if I can hold my own if you just gave me the chance?”

She broke one of her wrists free from his hold, and in an impressive move, she yanked him by the hair, pulling his head downwards, his lips to hers.

Soft, warmth, comfort.

Home.

Family.

He wanted to rip away, but she was addicting. She opened for him and he plunged his tongue into her mouth. He attempted to retake control, but she fought him.

They were animals, hedonistic, vitriol.

As they devoured each other.

He poured years of pining, frustration, and need into her.

And she accepted every single drop.

Eventually he disconnected from her, both panting to catch their breaths. He used his free hand to stroke her cheek. It was flushed pink and hot to the touch, her silky skin smooth against the rough pads of his fingers.

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. You aren’t a diamond in the rough, but an opal that shines brightest in the moonlight. You never let your pain devour you. Never allowed the world’s cruelties to intimidate you. Can’t you see why we tried to protect you? Why I don’t want to corrupt you?” Silas tampered his feelings.

Hawk and Ace swirled through his mind.

He couldn’t do this to his family. Not to them.

“I choose you,” Ashmine murmured up at him through her eyelashes.

How did she know the only words that could possibly change his mind?

“Please Silas, I want you. I can handle you. I promise. Please.”

She rolled her hips against him again.

She chose him?

That changed things. If it was her choice…surely his brothers would understand.

His mind churned with a thousand excuses and scenarios as he imagined an entirely new future.

Maybe, just maybe, he could have everything he wanted.

One with Ashmine as his wife . The mother of his children.

He rolled to the side, lying next to her.

Mistaking his move as rejection, she reached for him and grumbled, “Silas.”

He clicked on the bedside lamp. “I want to see you better.” He shifted back, hovering over her fully. Watching her face. “You choose me?” he asked.

She rolled her lips between her teeth, her eyes shifting over his shoulder, before resettling on him. “Always.”

“Little girl, I need you to understand. That this will change everything. Once you are mine. I will never let you go. I won’t allow you out of my sight. And when it is time, I will breed you and leave you barefoot and pregnant for my brothers to come home to. There will be no mistake of whose you are.”

This time when she grabbed for him, he met her halfway, pressing his lips back to hers.

That night, she may have chosen him…but it wasn’t until later that he learned it had all been a lie.

That he wasn’t the only one she had been with.

In fact, Silas had been the last of them.

But that wasn’t even the worst of it.

***

Hawk shifting in his periphery brought Silas back to the here and now.

Hawk rolled a table into the room. An operation table. They had stuffed it away in a locked hallway closet in preparation for this night.

Ace had found out Ashmine was dating this professor and they had quickly formed a plan. Acquired a run down cabin, left brochures for the professor to find. All to lure Ashmine out here. To her demise.

Next, Hawk stepped to the man that was on the ground, nudging him with his foot. “He seems to be unconscious,” Hawk expelled hoarsely.

Silas’s lips curled cruelly. He couldn’t believe she chose such a useless partner.

But much to his chagrin, Ashmine hadn’t screamed or cried out. In fact, she was surprisingly silent and still.

As if she were resigned to her fate.

“Little girl, nothing left to say? Or did you speak all of your words when you were at the courthouse? When you condemned Ace to his fate?” Silas snarled out, losing his patience and reaching out to grab Ashmine by the shoulders.

She was smaller than he remembered.

His fingers dug into her bone as he shook her, but she paid him no mind, watching over his shoulder.

She was wearing a ridiculous sundress with bright purple flowers that didn’t belong here.

Silas hated it. Hated that she probably wore it for the man that didn’t deserve her.

“Look at me, when I speak to you,” he roared, the sound echoing around the cramped space.

Finally, her eyes glanced up to his.

Whatever he expected to see. The terror, anxiety, unease.

None of it was present.

“Hi Silas,” she murmured demurely. “I missed you.”

Red filtered through his vision as he lifted his mask, his lips finding hers, pushing against hers with as much force as he could muster, gripping into her shoulders as roughly as he could manage, his nails breaking her porcelain skin.

He had meant to hurt her, to startle her, but instead she moaned against him.

He jumped back, putting his mask back in place.

She doesn’t get to enjoy this.

“Put her on the table,” he told Ace, who was still standing behind him, before turning away.

Silas was determined to kill her. To destroy what had ruined his life.

He just needed to get the message to his cock as it tented uncomfortably in his pants.