Silas’s P.O.V
“And two, you seem to know your way around. Just now, you knew where I got the food from just by tasting it.”
Her voice turned thoughtful and she had this faraway look on her face that I could not read. But it was gone before I could think too much about it, and she snapped back to attention as if she did not just go somewhere else with her mind. “Is that enough psychoanalysis for you, Sam?”
She did not lie; she truly was adept at reading people, but she did not need to know that, or else she would only find herself pulling closer and closer toward me. “Yeah, that’s enough,” was all I said in response, ignoring the way she was clearly expecting me to either validate or refute what she just concluded about me.
“Well?” she prompted when I did not say anything else. “Was I right? How much of it was correct? Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Sam?”
I did not answer, hoping that she would let the topic go when she saw that I had no interest or intention to answer. Alas, she seemed determined to know about me.
“Why did you run away from… wherever you came from?” she questioned, insistent. “Why did you run away from your old life, Sam? What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” I said, turning away. “Nothing that you need to concern yourself with.”
She looked disheartened by my answer, and even though I rarely found myself affected by such expressions of disappointment, there was something about her that tugged adamantly at my heartstrings and demanded me to appease her in some way, and I knew full well what this feeling was; it was the effect of the mating bond.
“I would tell you if I could,” I said to her. “But to tell you the truth, my secrecy is more for your sake than mine. The more you know about me, the more you might be in trouble by mere association.”
She considered my words for a while, and as she did so, I prepared myself for all the possible questions she could pester me with, but she surprised me by nodding without any more queries. “Alright,” she relented. “I won’t push you if you don’t want to open up. A doctor knows their limits, always.”
That, I thought, and the fact that she was also a bit of a people pleaser. Even though she was very curious about me, she still accepted my half-assed explanation and agreed to my conditions despite not getting anything out of the whole ordeal. I tried to place myself in her shoes.
What would I do if a random, wounded stranger with the strength and build to potentially harm me suddenly appeared in my house and demanded that I let him stay here for the time being? I would be wary of him, no doubt, afraid even. But this woman… she was willing to help me even though I wasn’t the nicest to her, the complete opposite of what I would have done if I was in her position.
I felt sorry for her, against my own better judgment that kept trying to push her away. The wolf inside me protested against my sympathy toward her as well, knowing full well that involving myself with a human, even though she was my mate, would not bode well for either of us.
Then Lily’s face came to my mind, and a wave of guilt washed over me, as if I had betrayed her, even though my mind knew and understood very well that that was far from true. That was not the case at all, because Lily was not my mate, she was Ezra’s. I had no right, in the end, to feel this way.
Which was why, it was my mission, my main goal to find out who truly killed her, give her justice, clear my name, and regain my rightful place in the pack. And in order to do that, I needed to push this woman away, because I was a wolf, and she was a human, and humans did not know that the supernatural, people like me, even existed.