4

~Faye 

“Are you okay?” Cal questioned again. And again. 

I’m staring straight ahead, right at the wall. It’s the next day. Last night, after the incident, I didn’t sleep. Not because I was stressed about being attacked, but because I had Guards posted in my room. In my room.

Cal has been beating himself up over this all morning. Dawn may have just broken, but we’ve been up for hours. I may not know the Huntsman, my new Personal Guard, very well, but I have noticed his selflessness. He hates himself for not being there the moment the Silent went into my room. 

“I told you, I’m fine,” I snap. “He didn’t hurt me.”

I can’t take my mind off the Silent, and not for the reasons everyone assumes. He spoke to me. It may have been a single word, but he spoke, and he woke Cal to find him threatening me. He wants to be here. That’s the frightening part. 

Cal crouches in front of me. I’ve taken a place up against the wall, sitting on the hard floor with my knees drawn to my chest. I’m still, unable to move anything aside from my head, which tilts up at Cal. His gentle brown eyes are withdrawn, in another world. I want to ask him how he is, but I can’t get the words out.

“He’s being held in the cell below this floor, and won’t be let out until his trial which is being scheduled,” Cal exclaims, attempting to sound reassuring. 

I glance down at the floor. He’s right below us, doing who knows what. 

“He didn’t hurt me,” I repeat. I can still feel him, even though he never touched me. The whisper of his gloves on my neck, my shoulder and my arm. His voice in my ear. I never imagined someone to affect me so much in that regard, with their knife pressed against my neck. 

“It’s not about what he didn’t do, Alpha, it’s about what he intended to do,” Cal warns. “Trust me, I’ve come across many Silent’s in my life.”

I wanted to explain everything to him. The fact that he talked to me. The fact that he listened to me explain the law. The fact that he didn’t kill me, that instead, he opted to wake Cal who he knew was there, to come to my rescue. 

He wouldn’t understand….Because I don’t.

“I want to see him,” I say softly.

The look on Cal’s face is immediate disagreement. He shakes his head to dismiss my wild claim, knowing it's not an option. That's the reaction I expected from him. He's been given the order to guard my life with his own, and now that I'm wanting to put myself in a cell with my potential killer himself, there's suddenly more on the line. His job. My life. 

“Apologies, Alpha, but I can't allow you to do that,” he exclaims uneasily, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. 

“Fine,” I mutter, using the wall as leverage to get to my feet. “I don’t want to hear about any of this for the rest of the day. And I don’t want to talk to my mother either.”

Cal doesn’t say a word as I swiftly make my way out of the room. He waits only a few seconds before he follows. 

***

Coming down here at night is a terrible decision. 

But so is trying to get down here when there are people mulling around. Especially Cal, who’s tea I drugged, so he would sleep soundly through the night. I didn’t even have to tiptoe through my room to avoid being heard. The rest of the Guards I make it past don’t question my authority.

There’s always the risk of coming down here, with some of the Guards blessings, to be attacked by another Silent. I can’t imagine after this failure, they would risk it. 

The cells down here are all unoccupied. Aside from the Silent, of course. 

My bare feet slap softly against the smooth concrete floor, ice cold, but I pass it off. I’m on a mission right now. A single key is pressed tightly against my palm, I glance around, my gaze passing along each cell that is empty. The Silent will be the only prisoner here, as I usually don’t condone such extreme measures of captivity. 

He’s the exception.

I haven’t decided how I’m going to go about this meeting. All I know, is that I want to look into those dark eyes again, and find out the true meaning behind them. Plus, he’s been stripped of his facial mask, so I can see the real person behind the duty. 

I’m curious too. They ran his face throughout a database and found no match, in any Pack, anywhere. No prints. Nothing. In every single Pack, it’s mandatory law to have your identification updated every year, along with your prints. 

So it has me begging the questions, who is he? Where did he come from?

I found his cell right in the middle. There are no Guards here, luckily. No one to pry in on our conversation, and let my mother know what we are discussing.

For a moment, I have to wonder if he’s sleeping. It’s past midnight, so I assume so. Too bad, I think, as I douse the shadows within the small cell with light, the switch by the lock giving off a mellow illumination. Sitting on his bed roll, back against the wall, sits the Silent. His legs are stretched in front of his, his hands clasped over his stomach. 

He doesn’t look at me once.

I’m stuck for words. They let him keep his clothes, which are dark, leather in places, and managed to cover most parts of him, aside from his neck and face.

Taking a deep breath, I murmur under my breath, “don’t make me regret this.”

With careful precision, I slide the key into the lock, and turn until it clicks. My eyes remain on the Silent who doesn’t say a word, or move an inch. The door slides to my left, open the door widely. He doesn’t move. He remains sitting there, testing my trust, trying to see if there is a chance to escape. 

I close the door after me, as I step inside. I’m not scared, for some unknown reason. Instead, I’m only left with one emotion. Curiosity. 

He watches me sit against the other wall and slide down to sit down opposite him. 

Nothing about him is familiar. He’s otherworldly, like some kind of God. That might be an over exaggeration, but when I hear about a face carved from the Moon itself, I imagine this man. There’s something so angelic and pure about his facial features, that don’t match his reasons for being here at all. To the straight cut jawline, to the sharp cheekbones. I...don’t know what to say to him.

His eyes are exactly what haunted me for the five minutes of sleep I got last night. Nothing is there, but darkness. Almost like a reflection of myself…

I mustn’t have seen his hair last night, because I would have remembered. It’s obsidian black and wavy, as if his head had been dunked in water and left to dry out in a thick, curly mess that looks so foreign to me. But beautiful. Irritatingly beautiful.

“I understand you’re about to sit here and not speak to me,” I say flatly, attempting to match the intensity of his gaze.

His doesn’t move.

“Did they make you wash?” I question, referring to his hair. Now that I look closer, it seem damp. “Your hair...I mean.”

No movement. Just staring.

“I’m risking my life right now, trying to talk to you. Otherwise, you’re going to go to trial, which you will not get out of alive, trust me,” I say firmly, raising my eyebrows at him. He inhales softly, which is the only movement I’ve noticed. I refuse to look too long at his chest, under his fighting leathers. 

“I heard you lose your name when you accept these missions, so I’m going to have to give you one, if you don’t speak up,” I say coyly, trying to lure him to saying something. Any word, so I can get into the real questions I’m desperate to ask. 

No words. More staring. 

“Fine,” I say adamantly. “How does Brian sound?”

His eye twitches. 

I chuckle. “Not that...Something easy. Something you can correct if you ever decide you do want to speak again. Like a single letter - not to be too original.”

He makes his first movement. With a forward lean, he places the tip of his gloved finger to the ground, and draws something in the thin layer of dust we both sit in. I watch his straight movements. Three to be exact. 

The capital letter T.

“You want me to call you T?” I ask breathily. Even as I say the single letter, a chill runs down my bare arms. Not from the cool of the night either..

There’s a sharp nod in response. 

“Alright, T, why can’t you talk? I mean, you’ve broken your code already, and you can understand how I want answers,” I say. “Answers to which you will answer, and then, I will let you free.”

I’ve thought about it, and I will follow through with this. I’m that genuinely interested in his story, and why he spared my life, when it would have taken no effort at all to end my life. Even now, I sit here, no Guards near, completely unarmed and at his mercy. He can kill me right now, take the key, and escape. 

Like the other night, he doesn’t touch me.

I watch his gaze silently. He glances up at the corner of the room, right by the ceiling. When I turn to see the hint he is giving me, I see a camera mounted there, recording everything. Oh, that’s why.

“You won’t speak to me until no one is around?”

He nods again. 

I may be an Alpha, but when it comes to things like this, I should never be trusted. Because without a flicker of doubt, I’m on my feet, at the door, to unlock it.

As it swings open, I turn around to his face. 

“Alright then, let’s us go.”