I Rejected My Obsessive Werebeast novel Chapter 81

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Chapter 81

At the mention of Connor, something complicated twisted in my chest. He had been invaluable–those encrypted messages, the shift schedules, the confirmation of what the warehouse was being used for. None of this would have been possible without him. But he had also been motivated, at least in part, by an obsession he refused to let go of, and that obsession was exactly what Lucien had exploited to lure us into the trap. I couldn’t fully forgive him for the things he’d done before he started helping us. But the idea of him dying in some underground passage, at the hands of a man who saw people as raw material for experiments, was something I couldn’t accept either.

Silas felt the shift in my mood. His hand found mine in the dark, his fingers closing around mine with a steady, deliberate pressure. There was no jealousy in his expression, no flicker of the possessiveness that sometimes surfaced when Connor’s name came up. What I saw instead was something calmer. something that had been earned through every crisis we’d navigated together.

“I understand the conflict,” he said, his voice quiet but clear. “But wanting to save someone and wanting to be with them are two completely different things. We can’t let that boundary blur.”

His words cut through the fog in my head. He was right. Wanting Connor rescued was a matter of conscience, not a matter of the past reaching for me. The two things had nothing to do with each other, and I needed to keep them that way.

Kane’s phone rang before I could respond. He pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and his expression hardened.

“It’s the foundation,” he said, answering. He listened for about thirty

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seconds, his face unreadable, then ended the call with a single word. !e slipped the phone back into his jacket and looked at us.

“The online reaction has escalated. There are new posts circulating, claiming I used foundation resources for a personal operation tonight. Jessica is actively amplifying the narrative, framing it as me prioritizing a personal connection over my institutional responsibilities.” His tone was flat, as if he were reading a weather report. “The board is concerned.”

“Kane, you don’t have to-” I started.

He held up a hand. “The reputation of the foundation is secondary to the lives of the beastmen we pulled out of that warehouse tonight. I’ll handle the??. You focus on whatever comes next.”

There was no room for argument in his voice. He had already made his decision, and the weight of it sat on his shoulders with the same practiced ease he carried everything else.

The drive home was quiet. Silas drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the center console, and I kept my hand there so he could feel that I was present, that I was here, that the night was over and we were going home. The city streets were empty at this hour, the traffic lights cycling through their colors for no one, the occasional car passing us in the opposite direction with its headlights cutting brief white arcs through the darkness.

When we got back to the apartment, I closed the door behind us and leaned against it for a moment, letting the silence of the apartment wash over me. The adrenaline that had carried me through the warehouse, the statement, the conversation outside, was draining out of me now, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion that settled into my bones.

Silas didn’t say anything. He just opened his arms, and I stepped into them, my forehead pressing against his chest, my hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt. I could hear his heartbeat, steady and sure, and for a

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