Sebastian reached out and grabbed her wrist firmly but she fought against his hold, trying to pull free. He tightened his grip and put his arm around her waist and hauled her up off the ground.

"Let go of me you bastard! I will not turn my back on my sister again, I will find her before I leave! Let go of me!" Viola cried, pinching and hitting at his arm around her waist but no matter how hard she fought him he didn’t release her until he carried her outside to the car and put her down in the seat.

She immediately tried to get out but he locked her in with the seatbelt and grabbed her shoulders, gritting out, "Calm down and hear me out."

"How can I calm down when they are lying to my face?" She cried, a sob of pure anguish rolling out of her, the hand that had been hitting at his chest stopping there as she looked into his eyes in the dim light of the car. "They have gone so far to hide my sister, why would they do that? She hasn’t done anything to anyone. I left her once already, I can’t leave her again... please let me go back inside..."

Sebastian let out a slow breath and took her hand into his. "I am not telling you to leave her. You saw how none of them are willing to give out the truth. Nothing we do tonight will make them confess. We need to go back and I will send my men here to investigate everything about that orphanage. If your sister was really there with you—"

"She was!" Viola exclaimed and Sebastian gave a quiet nod, raising his free hand and using his thumb to wipe gently at her wet cheeks.

"Then I will find her for you. Right now it is too dangerous for us to stay here any longer."

The truth was, if it weren’t for the fact that she was with him, Sebastian would have used his own methods to make them confess long before now if they were lying. But the last thing he needed was to expose himself as the Supreme Alpha with her beside him, because if trouble broke out, she would be caught in the middle of it.

Nightshade was one of the packs that would grab any chance to kill the Supreme Alpha because they didn’t live under his rules and despised everything that had to do with Silver. The Gammas and Deltas were not around now, including the Alpha; the last thing he needed was for them to come back and find him tearing down their orphanage.

The right move was to take her back to safety and return here himself with his men.

Viola didn’t nod or acknowledge his words. She turned away from him, biting down hard on her lower lip and trying to hold her emotions down inside her chest where they were burning like lava. The backs of her eyes burned just as badly when she thought about what they might have done to her sister and the fact that Sebastian most likely didn’t believe her enough to let her stay and find Ivy herself.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to rage. She kept all of it pressed down.

If she were in his position, he would have no real reason to believe her either when Miss Lara, the one woman she would never have expected to lie to her like this, was standing there looking so painfully convincing.

It hurt her to think she was leaving here again without her sister when she had imagined and envisioned herself finally meeting her today.

And what hurt even deeper, the thing that made her want to fall apart completely, was the realization that it was Serena’s identity that had been erased from the records. Her identity. Because they believed Ivy had been adopted and that her sister had kept on living as Serena. She had caused her sister’s disappearance the day she had walked out of those doors wearing Ivy’s name.

She had caused this.

Sebastian got into the driver’s seat and looked over at her with visible worry as she kept her face turned away, biting down so hard on her bottom lip that he could smell the faint trace of blood, and he fought the urge to reach over and coax it free from between her teeth.

He hated seeing her like this. He had hoped she would leave this place with her sister beside her, completely happy for the first time in a long time, and instead she was leaving more broken than she had arrived.

Sebastian started the car and as it pulled away from the orphanage grounds, inside the building Miss Lara crept to the window and watched the car until it disappeared from sight. She turned to find Julia standing behind her, brown eyes clouded with concern.

"Do you think they suspect anything?"

Miss Lara pressed her fingers to her temple. "I don’t know. That man unsettles me. There is something about him I cannot put my finger on, something that made me feel like he could see straight through us. If it ever comes out what happened to her sister, we will all die."

"Miss Lara." Julia called quietly, and when the woman looked at her she fidgeted and said, "When she first came in here with the man, she said something about being Serena. I don’t know if she had it mixed up, but if she didn’t, then I think there will be trouble. Because it would mean she isn’t Ivy at all, and that the other one..."

Miss Lara’s face drained of color. She reached out and gripped Julia’s hand hard and pulled her close. "Keep your mouth shut if you don’t want to end up the same way. Get the children back to their rooms and put them to sleep. Now."

Julia nodded quickly and hurried off, herding the children along with her and pulling the door shut behind them. Miss Lara wiped the back of her hand across her damp forehead before looking once more at the empty road where the car had long since gone, and then she turned and walked briskly to her room inside the building.

She went into her bathroom and locked the fragile door behind her. Then she crossed to kneel in front of the old bathtub that had once been white and was now the color of rust, the water inside it still and dark, reflecting her face back at her as she leaned over it and called out.

"If you can hear me, I have done what you asked. I have made them believe she was the only one."

Silence held the bathroom for a long twenty seconds before the water in the tub began to swirl and churn and then slowly rise, taking shape. It formed the outline of a figure, impossible to tell if it were male or female, shifting and reforming each time she tried to look at it directly.

"Good. You are a very smart woman." Came the strange voice of the water as it changed shape again, becoming something snake-like and fluid and began to circle around Miss Lara, who held herself very still even as terror moved through every bone in her body.

She had always heard stories of things from the ancient times, creatures that belonged to a world that once predated the werewolves and everything that came after them, but she had never believed they were real until the day it came for the twins. And unfortunately, by then only one of them was left.

"Why do you want one of the twins dead?" Miss Lara whispered before she could stop herself.

The water coiled around her throat instantly, tightening and cutting off her air. "Didn’t we agree there would be no questions? I promised to take care of Mrs. Agustin and in return you would do everything I say. Now you are going back on that by asking questions. Bad little woman. Do you want me to feed you to the sharks? You would make a very nice meal for them, just like that fat Mrs. Agustin who used to sell the meat of my kind to yours. Che. Don’t ask questions again."

Miss Lara nodded frantically and the water released her throat. "I am sorry...I won’t ask again..."

"Mhmm. Now make sure they never find out what happened to the other twin. Without her, this one will never succeed in breaking the curse. The werewolves need to suffer for what they have done to our kind. You should count yourself lucky that I still have use for you. I will find you again, wolf."

With that the water crashed back into the tub and a flash of light burst from the surface before it went completely dark and still. Miss Lara didn’t need to wonder where it had gone. She already knew the creature had returned to the ocean to take its true form.

Her hands were shaking as she reached over and pulled the drain from the tub. She didn’t know what curse the sea creature was speaking of, but she had known from the night those twins were first brought to the orphanage that they were not ordinary werewolf children. Something about them had been different in a way she could feel but never explain.

The note left with them had said one was cursed, and none of them had known what to make of it except to assume it referred to the difficult one, the stubborn one who caused trouble. Serena.

As much as Mrs. Agustin had run her dark side business out of this orphanage, sometimes housing the hybrids of werewolves and those sea creatures whose meat was among the most expensive and sought after in their world, Miss Lara had never wanted any part of it. But now that she was in it up to her throat, she had no choice but to carry the secret of what happened to the other twin to her grave, or every child left in this building would pay the price.

"Forgive me, moon goddess, for swearing upon your name." She whispered into the empty bathroom. "But I need to keep the rest of them safe."