I Rejected My Obsessive Werebeast novel Chapter 87

Chapter 87

He stopped as he passed me. The officers tugged at his arms, but he held his ground for one second longer than they expected, and the smile that spread across his face was the same smile he had worn in the warehouse. in the tunnel, every time he had looked at me like I was a puzzle he intended to solve.

“The story isn’t over, Aurora.”

Then they moved him on, and he was loaded into the back of a transport vehicle, and the doors closed, and the light from inside the vehicle went dark.

Kane arrived soon after. He moved through the scene with his usual efficiency–making sure the rescued beastmen were taken in for medical care, coordinating with the foundation’s relocation team, making calls and giving orders. By the time he reached us, he looked exhausted, but his back was still straight as ever.

“The foundation will take custody of the recovery process,” he said. “Medical treatment, psychological support, long–term placement for those who have no other options. It’s going to be a long road, but we’ll manage it.”

He looked at me, then at Silas, and gave a single nod that carried more weight than any words could have. Then he turned and walked back toward the tunnel.

The apartment was quiet when we got home. The kind of quiet that comes after days of noise and tension and adrenaline, when the body finally understands that the danger has passed and allows itself to feel the accumulated weight of everything it has been carrying.

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I sat on the couch and looked out the window. The city lights were scattered below, steady and indifferent, the same lights that had been there every night while all of this was happening. Silas sat down beside me, and I leaned into him, my head finding the familiar hollow of his shoulder, my arm draping across his chest.

He didn’t say anything. He just held me, his hand moving slowly up and down my back, his tail curling around my legs in a way that felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I thought about Connor, and the way his eyes had looked when they finally stopped asking me for something I couldn’t give. I thought about Phoebe, and the long, crooked path she had walked from jealousy to betrayal to a stretcher in the dark. I thought about Lucien, and his smile, and the certainty in his voice when he said the story wasn’t over. I thought about Kane, who had carried the weight of the foundation’s reputation without flinching, who had shown up at the tunnel when we needed him and asked for nothing in return.

And I thought about Silas, who had been here through every single piece of it, who had held me when I couldn’t hold myself, who had stood beside me without ever asking me to be anything other than what I was.

His hand tilted my chin up, and his amber eyes were serious, the pupils wide in the dim light of the apartment.

“It’s almost over,” he said. “Whatever comes next–the media storm, the hearing, whatever Jessica throws at us–I’m standing right here.”

I reached up and put my arms around his neck, and I pulled him toward me, and I kissed him. It wasn’t urgent. It wasn’t desperate. It was slow and deep and certain, the kind of kiss that comes after you’ve been afraid for a long time and finally, finally, you aren’t anymore.

When we pulled apart, his ears were faintly pink at the tips, and his tail was swaying in that slow, contented rhythm that always made me feel like

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the world had settled into its proper shape.

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