Chapter 5
1158 Words
“Just a reminder, lurking around Selene is fine, but don't get so deep into the role that you actually start believing you’re the Alpha's daughter’s dog.”
The voice, dripping with contempt, reached Silas from over the wall.
Silas recognized the speaker: the secretary to the family head who had molded him into an assassin. The coded calls of the cuckoo bird were the signal for every mission since he’d been placed at Selene’s side.
“Reminding me of my place is above your pay grade,” Silas shot back, his voice an ice shard. “Just give me the mission.”
“Oh, you think you’re so tough now, don't you? But remember this, boy: you will never be free of the family’s leash.”
“A fact I am more intimately aware of than you.”
A heavy silence followed. Then, the man delivered the devastating news. “We hear Selene has a biological brother returning. Find a way to kill him.”
Silas’s head snapped up. His sharp gaze felt like it could bore straight through the stone wall. He’d just seen the depth of Selene’s longing for her brother. He knew what this meant to her.
Silas clenched his fists, offering no reply.
The secretary's voice hardened, flat and lethal. “The family’s goal is this pack’s Alpha title. If Selene’s brother is here, the elders will support him, and the throne will be stabilized. You will complete this mission. You know what happens if you fail.”
The secretary was long gone, the mission delivered, the threat hanging heavy in the air. But Silas remained motionless, staring at the empty space where the man had stood.
This was the mission he had slaughtered his own kind for—a chance to be near Selene.
He had expected their paths to clash, but not so soon.
Silas was a man of the shadows, an orphan like the others the family trained to be ruthless, weaponized children. They fought without fear because they had nothing to lose and nowhere to return.
His talent was undeniable. He was silent, efficient, and had a cold streak of savagery that ensured every impossible mission was completed. He was the perfect, emotionless blade in the family head's hands.
But the assignment to guard Selene’s side—that was the only thing he had ever fought for.
His superiors were always suspicious, always asking why he had insisted on this post. Was it hatred? Revenge? A tie to her family?
Silas kept his silence. They never guessed.
Selene wouldn't remember either. It was from their childhood, a time before the family found him, when he was just a street rat fighting to eat, surviving on scams and scraps...
“Silas, did you send that reply yet?” A voice cut through the stillness. It was Selene, who had pushed open the study window on the second floor. Rain poured down, drenching Silas, yet he hadn't moved.
“If my brother is delayed by even a single day because of your incompetence, you’re finished as my butler.”
A torrent of roses, controlled by Selene, slammed the window shut with a violent shudder. Silas blinked, finally moving. He tilted his head back, his eyes fixed on the window like a devotee looking upon a deity, and a faint, almost secret smile touched his lips.
Ignoring the fact that he was soaked to the bone, he raced inside. He scribbled Selene’s dictated reply to Adrian Blackthorn, included the manor’s address and the requested meeting time, and thrust the letter into the hands of the waiting postman. Only then did he allow himself a shower and a change of clothes.
The letter, carrying Selene’s desperate hope, vanished into the gloomy distance.
Once composed, Silas summoned all the staff under his command for an urgent meeting.
He needed to be ready before the so-called Adrian arrived.
If the man was a fraud, or if Miss Selene grew too dependent on him, Silas would not hesitate to complete his secret mission.
Far away, in the desolate North, the biting cold of deep winter made travel miserable.
A bleak road stretched out, mostly empty except for a trio barely visible in the heavy snow.
Elena glared, her voice full of complaint. “Caius, how much longer?”
“Remember, you call me Adrian from now on. Don’t make me correct you again.”
Caius glanced back, his tall frame cutting through the wind, shielding Elena. He looked dangerously charming in his vest and trench coat, his handsome face bearing the fading bruises of a recent prison fight.
“She’s right, Elena,” Marco chimed in, launching into a lecture. “You’ll be in that manor with Caius—Adrian. I can forget, but you must remember…”
Elena clamped her mouth shut. Normally, she’d fire a cynical retort back at Caius; she was usually his equal.
But seeing what Caius had just been through, she kept silent.
Caius was a career gambler, a wild card who lived fast. Marco, Adrian, Elena, and Caius grew up together in the same orphanage and had always been his crew.
But the gambling life is cruel. Caius hit a massive cold streak and racked up crushing debts. He’d made a deal with a mob boss: go to prison for the boss and his woman, and the debt would be wiped clean.
The nightmare began the day he was released. The mob boss had double-crossed him, demanding double the debt and putting a hit out on his head.
In the ensuing chaos, Adrian was ambushed and killed by the assassins while helping Caius escape.
Adrian had been talking about his half-sister, Selene—the heiress of the powerful Blackthorn Pack—who he’d been separated from since childhood.
The Blackthorn Pack was known for its insane wealth and power, constantly topping the lists of the world’s elite families.
To escape the hit and pay off his mountain of debt, Caius led his remaining crew south. He was going to become Adrian.
Even before, people had always said that Caius and Adrian looked alike from certain angles.
Caius had seen the news: the tragedy that had struck the Blackthorn family. Selene was blind.
Behind him, Marco was still droning on at Elena.
Caius ignored them. He looked up, silently addressing the deceased Adrian. I have no choice. I’m cornered.
He promised himself that if he did secure the Alpha title and the Blackthorn fortune, he would leave Selene enough to live on.
Adrian would understand my mercy, wouldn't he?
After all, at the card table, Caius never left anyone alive. Pleading, begging—it was all useless. When it came to survival, kids raised in the orphanage didn't know the meaning of the word "mercy."
Heading south, the snow eased.
Caius looked at the road sign and finally smiled—a dangerous, predatory smile. They had reached the Blackthorn Pack’s territory.
- Writer
