Silas’s P.O.V
I was shaken out of misery when something occurred to me. The scent… that mix of jasmine and roses and something else still lingered in the air! It was sweet and it scratched all the right itches in my brain, calling out to me. Whenever I smelled it, it was like I was reborn into a newer, better version of myself.
“What is that?” I grumbled to myself, taking a long whiff to try and trace it to its source. It did not smell distant, on the contrary, it was quite near. In fact, when I got up from the floor on unsteady feet, my nose led me to a locked bedroom door.
I stared at it, unsure of how to proceed. I looked out of the window. It was morning now, and even though I was a bit drowsy from my sleep and sore from the hours I spent passed out on the hard wooden floor, I knew well enough that I was still in the woods because I still recognized the scenery outside — the same familiar woods, just not in the territory I was accustomed to.
I turned back toward the door, my eyes boring holes into it. My senses were going haywire, and it was not because I woke up inside a house without knowing how the hell I had gotten here. It was because the wolf inside me was starting to drive me crazy; it was desperate, itching to know what the source of that enticing scent was.
In the cloudy haze of my wolf's desperation, I almost broke the door down, off its hinges so I could storm in without anything holding me back. It was a good thing the rational part of my brain managed to control the wolf, and in a compromise, I only broke the door knob so I could swing the door open in a more calm and civilized manner.
And there, on the other side of the door, atop a queen-sized bed was a sleeping woman. At the sight of her, there was this odd tugging in my gut that I did not recognize at first. It was accompanied by a loud buzzing in my ears, as well as a rush of blood into my head. I stumbled forward, light-headed.
And then I realized what this tugging sensation meant. I took a quick whiff of the room, and sure enough, there was that sweet, jasmine-rose-and-something scent.
This feeling… It was the pull of the mating bond, and it was pulling me toward this sleeping, woman.
I should have rejoiced. I should have been happy to have finally found my partner in life, after losing everything else. But I was not. Instead, I felt disgusted, devastated, and sick to my stomach. Not only did the mating bond appear the day after my first love died, making me feel like a traitor for betraying Lily like this. But there was also something off about her scent that I couldn’t quite point my finger to just yet.
I stepped closer, taking in a huge whiff of her scent. Trying to understand what it was that I was missing, or rather, she was missing.
And then…another realization dawned on me like a bolt of lightning. I knew now what that scent of something else was and why I could not quite pinpoint it before. That enticing scent that I had been smelling, that sweet mix of jasmine and roses. That undertone of something had been the scent of a human.
She did not have the distinguished scent of a werewolf on her.
It repulsed me to think that I found the scent of a human attractive. I was once an Alpha of a pack, now I was bound to a lesser being, an unwanted mate who was just as helpless as I was, if not more.
I was seriously starting to think that the Moon Goddess was playing a cruel joke on me.