After Viola and Sebastian left the nightclub, the music stopped and Jaz angrily sent everyone out by announcing the club was closed for the night as she was in charge of the place and could decide when to close it up.

She had never in her life gotten beaten in her own club territory by some wolfless woman while nobody came to her rescue. She was livid, and the fact that the man she had been fighting over had actively helped his wife beat her made it sting twice as bad! The mother-fucker!

"Whoa, what happened to your face, Jaz?" Came the laughing voice of her current temporary boyfriend, who had been drinking himself into the floor in the club and was only just now noticing her swollen face in the slow process of healing.

"I got screwed over by some bitch with a fancy husband, that’s what happened. You should have been there to back me up the way her man backed her up!" She snapped, pressing ice against her face and grimacing at the sting of it. But if her boyfriend heard a word she said he gave no sign of it, too busy staring down at a poster in his hand with a smirk pulling at his mouth. It irritated her immediately.

"What is so interesting about that thing you are staring at, Nat?"

"Some poster being handed around town this evening." Nat remarked, turning it around to face her lazily.

Jaz’s eyes went wide. She dropped the ice on the counter and walked over to Nat, snatching the poster out of his hand to get a proper look at it. It was a portrait of two people printed clearly on the page. "Well fuck me, would you look at that. That is the bitch and her husband I was just telling you about. Who would have thought there was a reward on the man’s head."

Nat’s nonchalant expression shifted into something sharper and he yanked the poster back out of her hand. "You mean you actually saw these two tonight? Where are they now?"

All the men of Nightshade had gone hunting during the day and had returned that evening in disappointment, as there were no animals left to hunt around the territory of their pack anymore, and many of the pack men were still livid and in a bad mood.

However, some men had come through Nightshade earlier that evening, handing out posters which stated that the couple pictured were wanted.

Anyone who located them was directed to a specific meeting point where special weapons to kill the man would be provided. The woman was to be left completely unharmed. The reward printed at the bottom was the kind of number that would make whoever succeeded an overnight billionaire.

Jaz looked at Nat with a slow smirk spreading across her bruised face. "Why should I tell you anything? I am not sharing that information unless you promise me my cut of whatever that number says down there."

Nat had absolutely no intention of splitting anything with a woman like her, but he smiled and nodded without missing a beat. "Of course, my honey pie. Now where did you last see them?"

Jaz wasn’t a fool to give out that information without her involved in this plan. "They walked out that door not long ago. The woman is probably drunk by now so they wouldn’t have gone far. Let me come with you, I can help track her scent. The man has no scent on him, but a strong aura. I think he masked his scent."

Nat scrunched his face in displeasure at the fact that she would tag along but he said, "Sure, but first we need to locate the people who gave the posters to get the weapons before any attacks. Keep your eyes on them while I get my people prepared."

---

Sebastian held Viola until her cries quieted and then she suddenly pulled away from his embrace and began to walk, moving like an aimless drunken ghost drifting in no particular direction. Her cardigan slipped off her shoulders and dropped to the ground behind her without her noticing.

Sebastian picked it up and followed closely behind her, watching her sway gently and moving instinctively each time it looked like she might tip over, but she always caught herself at the last second.

"Be careful, babe." He whispered gently.

She turned her head over her shoulder and smiled at him, a drowsy lopsided thing, her blue eyes catching the light of the hotel lamp and sparkling underneath it. They had walked away from the nightclub at some point and he hadn’t even realized it because he was following her carefully behind.

She was clearly drunk and her eyes were still swollen from crying, but Sebastian was glad she was at least smiling and not telling him she wished she had never been born into this world. Even if it was the beer making her look at him with those soft kitten eyes, he smiled back at her and crossed his arms against his chest.

"Why are you smiling?" Sebastian asked as she continued looking between his face and the street lamp above them for some reason.

He was aware that what they had discovered at the orphanage might make her never be the same again, and that she might carry that guilt until he found out what they had done to her sister. And he would find it out, if only to make her happier than she was now, to bring back the spark to her blue eyes and take away the pain.

"I am smiling at you..." She pointed a finger directly at him as she turned and walked back in his direction.

"Why?" Sebastian asked softly, putting his arm around her waist before she could tip sideways from the swaying. The night air in Nightshade was warm and humid and a breeze moved through it, blowing her hair across her face, and he reached up with his other hand and tucked the strands behind her ear. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"Because you look almost as pretty as that moon." She pointed upward and Sebastian followed her finger, already knowing there was no moon in the sky tonight, and sure enough her finger was aimed squarely at the street lamp above them.

He chuckled softly. "That is a street lamp."

She looked genuinely stunned by this information for a moment and then smiled again. "Even so, you are almost as pretty as the lamp..." She turned her face into his chest and rested her head there, letting it steady her spinning vision. She breathed in his warm woody scent and then slowly lifted her hand up to curl around the back of his neck, tilting her face upward to look at him where he was already looking down at her.

Sebastian felt her fingers pull his collar down gently before they moved to trace the lines of his tattoo along his neck. "You once told me your tattoos were made with a potion to cure heartache and grief." She said quietly. "If I got one, would it make me feel better? I don’t want to carry this heaviness in my heart anymore, Sebastian...will you help me take it away?" She looked up at him with desperate eyes that still held all the pain she had been trying to drink down. "Please..."

Sebastian felt his heart twist hard in his chest at that expression coming back to her face. He touched his hand to her cheek and she leaned into it immediately, closing her eyes and letting the tears that had gathered roll silently down. He caressed her skin gently and whispered, "Anything you want, love. Anything." He leaned down and pressed a quiet kiss to her forehead and she let out a soft sigh against his chest.

"Thank you..."