Chapter 10 WHAT THE SILENCE KEEPS

~Jenna~

I woke up to the smell of him.

Cedar. Something darker underneath — sandalwood, maybe, or just the particular scent of a man who has never had to be afraid of anything. I knew whose bed I was in before I even opened my eyes. I knew it the way you know a storm is coming: something in your chest shifts before the sky does anything at all.

A bandage wrapped tight around my throat. My skin. Human skin. The relief of that was small and immediate — I'd shifted back — but everything else came rushing in behind it, and relief didn't stand a chance.

I tried to roll off the bed.

Straps. He had strapped me down.

I felt my fangs drop before the thought was even finished. My claws came next, dragging shallow lines into the fitted sheet as I twisted against the restraints — and then the door opened, and he was already crossing the room.

"Don't, Jenna." He reached for the buckles without hesitation, working them loose with quick, practiced hands. "You'd have fallen."

As if that was the part I was angry about.

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought of waking up restrained in his bed, and nothing came out. Not words. Not even a growl. Just a thin, hollow wheeze — like air being pushed through something broken.

My hand flew to the bandage.

He sat at the foot of the bed. Didn't touch me, though something in the way he held himself said he wanted to. "Dr. Vivens said the chain cut through your vocal cords." He paused, letting that settle. "He said he was surprised you could still growl."

I tried to swallow. It felt like pushing glass.

My eyes were filling and I hated that — hated it with everything I had — but I couldn't stop it.

"The pack ceremony." He said it carefully, the way you say something you already know will land wrong. "My Beta thinks we should wait until you're healed. Then I present you. And mark you." His eyes dropped briefly to the side of my neck — just for a second — before coming back to mine.

I shook my head.

"Jenna—"

I shook it again, harder, and scooted back against the headboard. He sighed — not impatient, which somehow made it worse — and reached over to pull the blanket away.

The cool air hit me all at once. I looked down. Track shorts. A thin tank top. No bra.

I looked up.

His jaw was tight. His eyes had gone a shade darker, pupils wide and fighting to stay that way, and I watched him breathe through it — one slow inhale, eyes closed, the visible effort of a man holding something on a very short leash. When he opened them again, they were hazel. Just hazel. He looked at my face and nowhere else.

The deliberateness of it did something strange to my pulse.

"It will happen," he said quietly. "I won't disrespect my pack. You will be marked, Jenna — one way or another."

I showed him my teeth.

He let go of my ankle, stood, and walked out.

The bathroom mirror was honest in a way I wasn't ready for.

Bandage around my throat, blood beginning to bleed through in two thin lines. Hair half-fallen from a bun I didn't remember putting in. Eyes that were mine but looked like they belonged to someone who had been through something that didn't have a clean ending.

I pressed my fingers against the bandage and tried to make a sound. Any sound. A word, a hum, the first syllable of a scream.

Wheezes. Just wheezes.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and went downstairs.

I smelled it before I saw it — something rich and warm threading through the whole ground floor, pulling at a hunger I'd been ignoring for over a week. I turned the corner into the kitchen and stopped.

He hadn't heard me.

He was standing at the stove with his back to me, shirtless, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder, sweats sitting low enough on his hips to constitute a problem. Every time he stirred the pot, the muscles across his back moved in ways that were entirely unfair. I stood there a moment longer than I should have before I made myself walk to the island and sit down.

He turned when he caught my scent. Something crossed his face — surprise, then something quieter.

"I didn't hear you come down." He set the spoon on the counter and crossed his arms. "How long have you been standing there?"

I gave him a look that answered that for him.

He glanced at my throat. "Right." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry."

I flipped him off. He almost smiled.

"Chicken noodle soup," he said, turning back to the stove. "It's what my sister always made when my throat took a beating. Don't ask."

I was too hungry to argue with the logic. My stomach growled loud enough that we both heard it and I pressed a hand over it, glaring at him before he could say anything. He didn't. He just grabbed a bowl.

He slid the soup across the island with a spoon, then stayed where he was, watching. The steam rose and curled and smelled like the first good thing in nine days. I picked up the spoon, dipped it into the broth — and then tried to blow on it.

Wheezes.

I tried again, harder, and got the same hollow nothing.

The spoon disappeared from my hand. He had moved without me noticing, and now he was standing beside me, close enough that his arm nearly brushed mine, leaning over the bowl and blowing slow and steady across the broth. He looked at me while he did it. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world to stand there and do this one small thing.

He held the spoon out.

I hesitated — then took it. He stayed where he was.

The broth was warm and good and it hurt going down in a way that made me close my eyes and grip the edge of the island, but I kept going, kept swallowing, because it was the first real thing my body had been given in far too long. When I opened my eyes he was still watching, and there was something in his face that had no business being there — no business at all — something that looked too much like guilt dressed in the clothes of want.

"I'm sorry," he said. So low I nearly missed it.

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I loaded the spoon — chicken, a little broth — and held it up toward his mouth.

He stilled.

He let me hold it there. His eyes stayed on mine while he leaned forward slightly, and he blew across the spoon the way he had for me. Then he placed his hand over mine and turned it — slowly, carefully — back toward my lips.

I opened my mouth. He opened his a fraction at the same time, as if eating by proxy, and when I chewed he chewed with me, watching my throat work, the swallow that cost me — his jaw moving in quiet, absurd solidarity.

I don't know why that was the thing that broke me.

I set the spoon down, slid off the stool, and walked toward the stairs.

"Jenna. You haven't eaten enough—"

I shook my head without turning around.

I couldn't do this. I couldn't sit across from him in his kitchen while he looked at me like that, learning the sound of my silence, feeding me broth with hands that had also held the chain.

I couldn't want him to keep going.