Chapter 11

The entire situation was utterly absurd.

I was so stunned that it took me a moment to process what was happening. By the time I snapped back to reality, Silas was already beating the living hell out of him.

"Stop!" I grabbed Silas, hauling him backward. "Stop hitting him! If he dies, you'll end up in prison!"

Silas stumbled back, his chest heaving and his knuckles coated in blood. "You piece of trash!" he spat. "You have no right to confess your feelings to someone else's owner! You're trying to steal her! I'll beat you into the ground every time I see you!"

Kaelen struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, wiping his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand. "Technically, I was here first," he rasped. "You're the one interfering in our relationship."

Silas let out a furious yell and kicked him hard in the ribs.

Kaelen went completely still.

Panic spiked in my chest, and I hurried over to check on him.

Kaelen gritted his teeth through the pain, gazing up at me with obvious, desperate hope. "You still care about me, don't you?"

Seeing that his injuries weren't life-threatening, I let out a heavy breath of relief. "I was just worried that if you died, it would ruin Silas's life."

Kaelen grabbed my wrist, his voice breaking as he pleaded. "I don't need a hospital. Clara, you heard me, right? I really like you. You said you wanted to form a bond with me. You wanted us to pick out matching rings. Can we go do that right now?"

"Kaelen," I said, calmly prying his fingers off my wrist. "Vivienne already promised she's going to buy you, so you aren't going to be sent back to work in the red-light district. You don't have to force yourself to be with me just because you're scared. Stop pretending to like me."

"No, no," Kaelen insisted, shrinking back into a submissive posture. "I really do like you. I'm not pretending, I swear. I've liked you since the very first day we met. You're kind, and you're hardworking. It's impossible for me not to have feelings for you."

As I listened to his desperate, broken assurances, my first and only reaction was pure amusement. How on earth could his past behavior pass for affection?

I tilted my head, genuinely curious. "So, your way of showing affection is calling me disgusting and dirty? Telling me to get out? Causing me physical and emotional pain, and then having the nerve to say I brought it all on myself?"

All the remaining color completely drained from Kaelen's face as I questioned him.

"If that's the case, Kaelen," I said softly, "then I don't want your affection. Besides, I honestly don't believe you actually like me at all. Stop lying to yourself."

Certain he wasn't going to die from his injuries, I stood up, grabbed Silas's hand, and led him out the front door.

I took Silas straight to the hospital.

We ended up with the same nurse as last time, and she eyed him with obvious disgust.

"Is this your werebeast?" she asked. "The one who let you get banged up three times last month without ever showing his face, but makes you drag him in the second he's the one injured?"

I shifted uncomfortably, quick to clear the air. "No, this is my new werebeast."

The nurse flushed and immediately apologized to him. "I'm so sorry. When my blood sugar dropped last time, Clara broke my fall so I wouldn't get hurt. She's a genuinely good person. I thought you were the werebeast mistreating her."

Silas looked right at me, his expression unreadable.

"Clara," he said, his voice quiet. "I am so sorry for what you went through."

I had always been good at just taking what life handed me. Whenever Kaelen treated me like garbage, I convinced myself I simply wasn't good enough for him, bending over backward to try and please him. It hurt, of course, but I used his anger as fuel to push myself and grow stronger.

I honestly thought I was numb to it all by now—the contempt from strangers, the abuse from the people closest to me.

But then Silas said he felt sorry for me.

He actually cared about my injuries and all the hard work I had put in, and he had told me he liked me more than anyone else. He truly saw me for who I was.

Out of nowhere, a massive wave of grief washed over me, and the tears just started falling.

I looked up, gently pushing his face away so he was looking straight ahead. "Just focus on getting patched up," I told him.

It hit me then that bad situations really do get better eventually. I didn't have any family, and I had wound up with Kaelen, a guy who never loved me. But all of that hell was just something I had to survive before finally meeting Silas.