They Called Me A Defective Copy Of My Sister Chapter 07

They Called Me A Defective Copy Of My Sister Chapter 07

After dinner, I told him the bath was ready. He almost said no I could see it right there on

his lips but Vance wouldn’t refuse, so neither could he.

He disappeared into the bathroom, but I could hear him moving around behind the frosted

glass. He didn’t get in the water.

Through the blurred glass, I could make out his silhouette standing at the mirror, rehearsing.

A blank stare. Then trying to force Vance’s quiet, measured smile onto his face.

The boy I remembered used to flip off the crowd mid-fight with blood running down his face.

This version – standing in my bathroom, trying to learn how to smile gently – stirred a raw

ache in my chest.

He came out twenty minutes later, a towel around his waist. Wet hair fell across his

forehead, half-hiding the sharpness in his eyes.

Water trailed down his chest – broader than Vance’s, harder, carved from something rougher

than tailored suits and easy living.

Years of fighting had made him. Every line of muscle looked coiled and ready.

But it was the scar that stopped me – a thick, pale ridge of healed tissue cutting across his

collarbone.

07’s scar. I knew it the way I knew my own hands. Silas caught me staring and tugged the

towel higher, covering it.

He cleared his throat, reaching for Vance’s cool detachment and missing it by a mile.

“Why aren’t you asleep?”

His voice came out rough, nothing like Vance’s polished calm. I looked away and nodded

toward the bedroom.

“I was waiting for you.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Silas’s ears went red – not just the tips this time, all the

way to the roots, the flush spreading right before my eyes.

His tail – calm a second ago – bristled, fluffing up to twice its size, and then clamped tight

between his legs, like he was trying to physically hold himself together.

Neither of us was going to sleep that night. The act required him to take the master bed

Vance’s side.

–

He stayed on his side like the mattress ended there curled tight, careful not to let even his

sleeve brush mine. The gap between us could’ve held an ocean.

I lay with my back to him, listening. Every breath he took sounded controlled, deliberate –

nothing like Vance.

Vance slept the way people sleep when they’ve never had a reason to be afraid – deep, easy, boneless. Silas kept his guard up even unconscious, every muscle still wound up tight.

Always ready. Always braced for something waiting in the dark.

Sometime deep in the night, the cold woke me halfway up. Or maybe it was him – drifting

closer while he slept.

Warm breath against the back of my neck. Then something soft and heavy settled across my

waist – his tail.

Sleep had stripped away the act. He’d curled toward warmth on pure instinct – and so had I. My arms wrapped around that ridiculous, warm tail before my brain caught up.

—

I pressed my face into the fur and let out a sound I didn’t plan something small and content. Behind me, his entire body turned to stone.

He didn’t pull away. In the dark, slow enough that I might not notice, his arm reached out.

His arm came to rest against my side – not holding me, just there. If I didn’t think too hard about what any of this meant, it was the safest I’d felt since the night I married Vance.

In the dream, there was no arrangement, no Ruby, no lie. Just a boy in a dark cage, grinning at

me like the whole world was a joke only he understood.

“And whoever breaks it is a pathetic little mutt.”