Viola knew she was asking for a lot but a deal was a deal. She had saved her second wish specifically for Ivy, and now that they were approaching the pack she wanted him to know exactly what she wanted from it. In this second chance at life, Ivy would be everything. She would lay down her own life for her sister if it meant earning her forgiveness, and she would give her every bit of the wealth and power she held as a Luna if she had to.

Sebastian turned to look at Viola and saw the seriousness sitting deep in her blue eyes. "You don’t have to use your wish to ask for a home for your sister. She will be welcome in Silver." He assured her.

"It’s not her being welcomed that concerns me most, Sebastian. It’s her safety. I want her to be happy and safe, to have everything and anything she wants. You gave me those words and I want to reserve them for her." Viola said quietly, looking at him with something close to desperation in her eyes, silently willing him to simply agree. But Sebastian only frowned at her.

Was she asking him to put her twin sister before herself? Sebastian wondered. He wasn’t married to her sister, he was married to her, and though he wanted to tell her she would always come first in his pack and in his protection, he held the words back and gave her a nod instead.

Viola’s shoulders relaxed visibly. "Thank you."

Now that Ivy’s future felt more secure, all that remained was finding her. Viola hoped she hadn’t been cast out of the orphanage. Some of the children got turned away after growing up without being adopted, while others were put to work in the pack that had been on the brink of collapse even years ago. Though Viola wished with everything in her that Ivy had been taken in by a family who loved her, she doubted it deeply.

Viola tightened her fingers around her seat. She had left the orphanage by disguising herself as her twin, but the woman in charge of the place had looked her in the eyes once and said with complete certainty,

’Little devils like you don’t get adopted, girl. Get ready to spend the rest of your life as a breeder for the packless. I will make sure of it.’

Those words had been the push behind everything she had done. She had been genuinely terrified of that fate, of becoming a breeder, a place no she-wolf wanted to end up, where no mate could ever claim you and packless men used you without consequence or care until you gave birth to countless pups without a home.

If Ivy had stayed behind in her own identity, Viola could only hope she had been kept safe.

The moment they crossed into Nightshade, Viola felt it even before she looked out the window. The sky in this part of the world carried a tinge of red in it, just like everything else, from the muddy roads to the crumbling buildings and the dead trees that barely held any leaves on their branches.

Viola felt her heart sink as she noticed people peering at their car through broken windows. Skinny, shirtless children stood in the doorways of their muddy homes and stared at them with open curiosity. A car like this one clearly hadn’t come down this road in a very long time.

"Remind me why Silver doesn’t support this pack?" Viola asked quietly, watching as wary mothers came out to drag their children back inside and pull their screen doors shut behind them.

Even the air smelled different here. Dusty and humid in a way that sat heavy in the lungs.

"From the very beginning, some packs didn’t take kindly to submitting to a supreme Alpha or adhering to the pack hierarchy and chose to stay apart. Many of the packs without resources either rebelled against Silver or refused to accept any form of help, calling it charity and wanting no part of it. They believed the supreme Alpha position was biased and cut themselves away from the hierarchy entirely. My authority does not extend to this part of the territory. It is all under their own Alpha."

No wonder Nightshade was barely better than being packless. And no wonder they had gotten away with killing innocent children and dropping them into empty wells. Viola shuddered at the memory of it.

Viola grabbed the bag of snacks Sebastian had bought from the convenience store and rolled her window down. She tossed it across the road toward the hungry children watching them from the roadside and turned to watch them scramble toward it, tearing it open between them.

Sebastian slowed the car as he watched her grab the pack of soda cans and hold them out through the window. The children were wary at first, hanging back and watching her hand with wide uncertain eyes, but one of them gathered the courage to step forward and snatched the pack, darting back quickly.

When Sebastian looked over at his wife he found tears sitting in her eyes, but she wiped them away quickly with the back of her hand before they could fall.

"I used to be like them." She said quietly. "We barely got fed in the orphanage. One meal a day, that was all they gave us, and when we were allowed outside we could only hope a passing stranger might be generous enough to give us something. I used to hate that life so much." She paused, her voice going softer. "But my sister...she never complained. Not once. She would go and fight to get a snack and then bring it back to me while she went without. She wouldn’t eat and just hand it over to me. She used to have scratch marks from fighting the other kids just to bring back a single piece of chocolate for me..."

She stopped and pressed her lips together for a moment.

"She is brave. I miss her so much. Please hurry. I can’t wait to see her. We should have brought more food from the store, I should have thought of that. I bet she will be hungry." Viola said, her voice shaking slightly as she wiped the last of her tears away with the back of her hand.

Sebastian wanted to say something to comfort her but he pressed down on the accelerator instead, knowing that only her sister’s presence could give her what she needed right now.

°°°

A/N

Hey guys,

I totally forgot to share last month’s redeem code because I’ve been dealing with some personal matters. So before I forget again this month, here it is:

Code: ABDHYN3SCTCBLGCRA

For those who don’t know, this is a code you can redeem in the app by going to Profile-Redeem, and it will give you ten Fast Passes. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Just a heads-up: it’s only available for the first ten people who redeem it.

Enjoy!