Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 309: Caring for husband

The soft glow of dawn was just beginning to creep through the heavy curtains of the bedroom when Viola stirred awake, and she immediately looked to her side.

The bed beside her was empty. Her brows furrowed together in concern. Sebastian had not come back last night. She had waited for him even when he had told her not to, she had decided to wait not only because she had hoped he would return and continue where they had left off, but because she had genuinely been worried about the outcome of his meeting.

So many things had happened within the pack during his days of absence, and she had been the cause of at least one particular problem. But no matter how long she had waited, and even out of sheer boredom at some point, she had found herself drifting into the bathroom and filling the tub with water, trying to coax that creature out to see if she could get anything from it, but it hadn’t come. It hadn’t shown itself at all.

That worried her almost as much as Sebastian’s absence did, because she had no way of knowing when it would next decide to appear, and the last thing she wanted was for it to surface when Sebastian or anyone else was nearby.

She had waited for hours until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and now it was morning, and from the absence of his warmth and his scent beside her, she knew he had not come back at all. Had work kept him? She reached instinctively for her phone to call him, then remembered, it wasn’t here. It was still back at Zoe’s place.

Viola bit the inside of her cheek, thinking, before she slipped out of bed and pulled a silk robe over her nightdress, her bare feet padding quietly across the floor as she hunted for something to put on her feet.

She needed to check on him. If he wasn’t in his office, she would come straight back, she wasn’t entirely sure it was safe for her to be moving freely through the pack after everything that had happened yesterday, with so many people still harbouring hatred toward her.

The worry gnawed at her all the way out of the penthouse and into the elevator. When Viola reached his floor using the special key card, she stopped in front of the office door and hesitated, second-guessing herself. Was she even supposed to be here? What if he was in the middle of something important and she walked in and disturbed him?

It wasn’t unusual for Alphas to need time alone, to get buried in work through the night, and coming here uninvited... Viola took a slow, deep breath and shut down her overactive mind, the one that always seemed to come alive at the worst possible moments, talking her out of reaching for Sebastian first. If she let it run, it would drag her in circles until she had convinced herself of every worst-case scenario and backed herself into a corner.

Right now, this wasn’t about her. It was about her husband. What if something had gone wrong in the elders’ meeting? What if Javier’s case had taken a turn she didn’t know about?

She swiped the key card and pushed the door open gently.

Her eyes went immediately to his desk, but he wasn’t there. He was standing before the massive wall of glass that overlooked the pack city, his back to her.

However, he wasn’t looking out. He looked to have drifted somewhere far inside his own head, lost enough that he hadn’t even noticed her come in.

His broad shoulders were rigid, his hands tucked deep into his trouser pockets. Days’ worth of dark stubble shadowed his strong jaw, making him look rougher and more feral than usual. She had never seen him with even a single day’s growth until yesterday, and now it had thickened further.

His silver hair was tousled and his dark circles had deepened, and she stood quietly watching him from the side, taking in the papers scattered across his desk, the half-empty glass of whiskey sitting forgotten among them. He looked every inch the burdened leader who had carried the weight of an entire pack on his shoulders through the night while she had slept on peacefully.

Guilt tugged at her heartstrings.

"Sebastian?" she called out softly.

He turned quickly, blinking as though surfacing from a deep fog. Those silver eyes found her immediately. A look of momentary surprise crossed his face before it softened, just a fraction at the sight of her standing there in nothing but her silk robe. When had she gotten here? He hadn’t even sensed her come in, which was so usual of him.

"Sunshine..." He straightened with a faint smile, though the tired lines carved around his mouth didn’t shift. "What are you doing up? I told you not to wait for me and to get some rest." He scolded her, but the tenderness beneath it gave him away as he stepped closer to her.

"I rested all through the night. But you never came back to bed and I was worried." She said as he came to stand before her, leaning down to press his lips briefly to her forehead before his gaze moved to the clock on the wall, and his expression shifted into genuine surprise.

"It’s already morning..." He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled heavily. "I lost track of time entirely. There was so much to work through and the elders’ meeting alone had taken hours." He hadn’t kept any track of time at all, and even though he had been standing before that wall of glass, Sebastian had somehow failed to notice that the day had already broken, not until she walked in and brought the world back into focus.

He had spent the entire night worrying more than he had actually worked. Things were changing faster than even he could keep up with. He had to protect his wife through all of it, and on top of that there was still the matter of his twin, and now Javier’s death, and the guilt of having broken yet another promise to yet another person.

Everything was pressing in on him at once, making him feel like a completely wrecked and hollow version of himself, someone no one should trust with anything of value.

He was the Supreme Alpha. He was supposed to have everything figured out. But things were piling up in ways that were beginning to make him quietly wish he wasn’t the ruler of the largest pack in existence.

He had to put his people first, and yet he found he could not put his wife behind them, and the more he placed her before anyone else, the more hatred and enemies he accumulated in return.

Of course, Sebastian could end all of it by sending Viola to the human world, far away from his chaotic life and world, away from all of it, and never seeing her again, never having her near him or in his arms. But that would be like taking a blade and driving it straight through his own chest and carving out his heart with his bare hands.

He couldn’t bring himself to send her away to protect her, not when he had already fallen this deeply, not when they had already come this far together. Had this been months ago, when she first came into his life, Sebastian wouldn’t have hesitated, he might have done exactly what Matt had once suggested, drugged her and had her quietly removed from silver before any of this could have taken root.

But that version of himself felt like a stranger now.