Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 303: Passionate Kiss_Part 3

"If you are not angry, why did you leave without a word when you brought me back?" Viola whispered quietly. She would never have asked him this ordinarily, but he had told her once to always speak her feelings out and not keep them hidden, or it would cause misunderstandings, and he wasn’t a mind reader who could know her thoughts.

"The elders were demanding a meeting immediately and I had to make sure of something," he said after a long pause. "And I needed a moment to... breathe. Seeing you in that water—" He stopped. The spoon lowered slowly back into the bowl. "I felt your fear, and it almost paralyzed me. I am not angry at you. I am angry at the fact that my people don’t respect you as their Luna and made you go through all of that before even taking the crown from you."

Viola’s breath hitched. The raw edge in his voice clashed violently with the cold mask he had worn when he first brought her back, and she suddenly understood what had really happened. Being her mate and bonded to her, he must have felt every spike of anxiety inside her as though it were his own. A wave of relief washed through her that it wasn’t anger toward her that had driven him away.

"It’s not entirely their fault," she said softly. "Without the Supreme Alpha alive, I am no longer their Luna, not to mention that a Luna without a wolf is not something powerful werewolves can easily accept in the hierarchy." She paused, then added the last part quietly, looking down. "And they thought I killed Ember."

Sebastian’s silver eyes narrowed. He had heard the news spreading through Silver as he made his way back, had even seen it on the screens in the city, the accusations about how she had contacted sea creatures to kill Ember and struck her down with a silver substance.

To Sebastian, it had immediately read as a setup to frame her, and he didn’t believe those accusations for even a second. He knew well enough that sea creatures were not beings who would willingly show themselves to werewolves under any circumstances, and no sea creature could survive on land for long without access to water.

He reached out and lifted her chin so that she was looking at him. "I will make whoever framed you for Ember’s death pay for it, and everyone who agreed to the sentencing." He promised, his eyes holding hers steadily.

Viola became aware of something in that moment. He didn’t believe she had been associated with sea creatures at all, his immediate instinct had been that she was framed. She could correct him right now. She could tell him that she had indeed gripped Ember’s wrist and done something to her, even if it hadn’t been the silver substance they accused her of using. But she felt her tongue grow heavy in her mouth. The words refused to come out.

She had planned to tell him everything, about what had been happening to her, about the water and that creature, but after witnessing the reactions of everyone in Silver, and the sheer depth of hatred they carried for anything connected to the sea, Viola was afraid. She feared his rejection more than she had ever feared never having a wolf.

"What if I had really contacted a sea creature to kill Ember?" Viola asked carefully, testing the waters. "Would you punish me for it the way Javier wanted to?"

She watched as his expression softened and a smile came to his face for the first time today, though it was more of a humorless one.

"Sea creatures won’t show themselves to you, my love. They are cunning and naturally repellent to our kind. They hate us as much as we hate them. We could never coexist enough to contact each other for favors, and while my pack members might be foolish enough to believe that you contacted one, I can see exactly how that story was constructed, because I have spent my life studying books about them." He said it while grazing her cheek gently with his thumb.

Viola felt something tighten deep inside her. He had naturally included her in the word "us", "our kind", and had folded her into that shared hatred of sea creatures without a second thought. She didn’t want to be excluded from that. And though she still wasn’t certain what she even was, given that she had lived perfectly fine on land all her life and had always been terrified of water, Viola didn’t want to lay any claim to being one of those creatures.

"Do you hate them, sea creatures, I mean?" She asked quietly, watching his face.

She watched Sebastian’s expression shift.

"Anyone in my position would hate them, amor." He said with a heavy sigh. "I have never told you this before, but I think you should know. In the beginning, when Silver first rose to the highest seat of power and the Supreme Alpha bloodline was established, our curse began, because the first Supreme Alpha was cursed by the Water Goddess. The Goddess of the sea."

Viola was taken aback. She had never known any of this. All she had ever been told was that those born into the Supreme Alpha’s bloodline carried a curse, but not once had she known it had originated with the sea creatures.

They had three kinds of Goddesses: the Sea Goddess, the Moon Goddess, and the Sand Goddess. Of all of them, the Moon Goddess was theirs, the creator and guardian of the werewolves. Just as she watched over and guided her people, the Sea Goddess watched over the creatures of the sea and protected them.

"Why did she curse your bloodline?" Viola asked quietly.

Sebastian shrugged, though there was nothing casual about the weight behind it. "Because she wanted us to suffer. She couldn’t stand our kind and wanted us broken, wanted us to sacrifice our females to break the curse and pass it on to the next generation, over and over again, until the puzzle of finding the prophesied one was solved. No one has ever succeeded in finding her, and all my ancestors ever did was sacrifice. That is why we can never coexist with them, and that is why I don’t buy a single word of their story about you contacting creatures that are done for."

He looked into her eyes earnestly as he added, "And even if you had killed Ember, sunshine, I don’t give a fuck. I will not let them punish you for it by dressing it up as sea creature contact."

Viola felt her throat tighten. She was relieved to know she wouldn’t be accused of contacting sea creatures, but now she was more terrified than ever of being associated with them at all. And so, to keep his love and to keep him in her life, Viola made a quiet, private decision in that moment, she would never try to discover or explore that part of herself that had anything to do with water.

Sebastian hated them. She could not be one of them.

She smiled softly and placed her hand over his. "I am glad you are not angry with me," she confessed, her voice small and honest. "I hope I didn’t burden you or disturb your work. I really didn’t want to be a trouble to you."

Sebastian set the bowl aside on the nightstand. Then he turned fully toward her, one hand rising to cradle the side of her face with a gentleness that stole what little breath she had left. His thumb swept across her cheekbone, wiping away a tear she hadn’t even realized had fallen.

"You could never be a burden to me." His forehead rested against hers, their breath mingling together. "Never, my love."

The tension that had coiled tight in her chest began to unravel, thread by thread. She leaned into his palm, rubbing her cheek against it as her eyes fluttered closed for a heartbeat, then opened again when she felt him shift closer to her.

He fed her two more bites, each one slower than the last. Between them, his fingers traced the line of her jaw, the delicate shell of her ear, and the sensitive skin just beneath it, then down to her neck. Every touch left a trail of warmth on her cool skin that she had longed for, each one reassuring her of all her doubts without a single spoken word.

When the bowl was nearly empty, Sebastian set it aside. The air between them had thickened, charged with everything left unsaid. Viola’s trembling had eased, and she felt herself becoming steadier, more grounded than she had been when he wasn’t there.

Sebastian’s hand slid to the nape of her neck, careful of the burn, his calloused palm warm and slightly rough against her smooth skin. He tilted her face up gently.

Their noses brushed. For one endless heartbeat, they simply breathed each other in, the heavy longing that had lived in both of them since his return pressing into the space between them. His scent enveloped her. The heat of his body made her painfully aware of every inch between them.

Then he closed the distance and kissed her.