In Kasa Land, a black private jet sat landed on the open stretch of land with tall and powerful Silver Pack warriors positioned around it, all of them dressed in black as they waited for their Alpha’s arrival.

Among them was Matt, who was pacing the ground with his hands in his pockets and his jaw tight. He wasn’t supposed to have come here with the warriors at all, but he had lost all contact with Sebastian since the day before and hadn’t been able to sit still in Silver knowing his friend was out there in Nightshade with no word coming through the link.

He had told himself he was coming to make sure Sebastian returned to Silver before pushing deeper into whatever plans he had about finding his wife’s twin, but the truth was the silence had unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. Why would he lock his link? That was so usual.

It was now well over four hours since he and the warriors had landed here and there was no sign of the Alpha, no car on the road, and no response through the mind link no matter how many times Matt reached for it.

They had agreed to meet here by dawn, and it was becoming very clear that dawn had come and gone and afternoon was settling in around them, with the sun blazingly hot and scorchingly annoying as it made him keep adjusting his buttons.

This was exactly why Matt hadn’t wanted Sebastian coming out here alone with only his wife beside him. On more than one occasion during his travels there had always been some mischief played by his enemies that had never succeeded, largely because most weapons simply couldn’t kill a man carrying supreme Alpha blood in his veins, and that fact gave Sebastian a confidence in his own survival that Matt had always thought bordered on recklessness sometimes.

But a delay this long without so much as a word through the link was something different. Sebastian would never go this quiet without a reason, and the reasons Matt’s mind kept producing were not ones he wanted to sit with.

"Bring the car out." Matt ordered, and in no time the rear compartment of the jet opened at the press of a button and a sleek black car was driven out by one of the warriors onto the open ground.

"Four of you with me. The rest stay here and keep the link open. Contact me the moment the Alpha shows up or you hear anything." Matt said, already moving toward the car.

It was better to drive into Nightshade himself and see what was causing this delay than to stand here and worry himself into an early grave. Matt briefly thought to himself that he had no idea why so many people spent their lives fighting for an Alpha seat when he himself could barely manage the head Beta position without aging ten years from stress. It was perhaps time he drafted a retirement letter and find himself a restaurant to work as a top chef, that would be better than constantly worrying himself to old age!

He was stepping into the car when something on the road ahead made him stop. He straightened and took his sunglasses off, narrowing his eyes at the distant movement.

A red car was coming down the road at a speed that suggested whoever was driving it had a very good reason to be going that fast. And behind it, closing the distance with the focused and coordinated movement of a hunting pack, were wolves.

"Well I’ll be fucking damned." Matt muttered under his breath, the relief at seeing the car arriving already tangled up with the cold anger of seeing what was chasing it. "The audacity of these wolves." He raised his voice and turned to the warriors. "Take position and deal with them. Now."

Four warriors shifted immediately into massive wolves and ran ahead at full speed to intercept the approaching car and cut off the wolves behind it.

In no time, a fight broke out between the Silver Pack warriors and the malnourished-looking Nightshade wolves, who had come bearing no weapons to kill the Alpha, confident that he was already weakened. It didn’t take the Silver Pack warriors long to chase the wolves back the way they had come, some of them crying out in pain as they get caught.

Inside the red car, Viola felt the relief of seeing the black jet and the figures waiting around it wash over her, but alongside it came the terrifying realization that she could no longer feel her limbs properly. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She had used all of her energy to keep the car from falling off the bridge and to drive the tilted car back onto the bridge before jerking it and hitting one of the wolves into the water. Thankfully, she had almost reached the other side, and she made it before another attempt could be made to knock her into the water, but now her energy was seeping away.

The dizziness had climbed past the point of fighting it. The road ahead of her kept splitting and the figures standing around the jet blurred and doubled and she wasn’t entirely certain she could stop the car the way she needed to.

Everything in her wanted to give in. To close her eyes and let the darkness take over and be done with the pain and the fear and the exhaustion pressing down on every part of her.

But Sebastian was still in that room in the orphanage and these men didn’t know it, and so she gripped the last thread of consciousness she had and used it to drag her foot to the brake and bring the car shuddering to a stop just short of the jet before it could crash into it.

Matt was already approaching the car, his sharp eyes reading that something was wrong even before the door opened. The vehicle itself told a story, Sebastian’s once sleek and expensive red car now looking closer to scrap metal than something that belonged to the supreme Alpha, dented and scraped and missing parts it had left behind somewhere on the roads of Nightshade.

Then the door opened and Viola half fell out of it, her dress soaked through with blood front and back, her face the color of someone who had given most of their blood away, her entire body shaking with the effort of staying upright. Matt crossed the remaining distance at a run and caught her before her head could meet the ground, lowering her carefully.

"Sebastian." Viola forced the word out the moment she felt hands catching her, one arm lifting weakly to point back in the direction she had come from before the strength went out of it.

"Where is he? What happened to you?" Matt demanded, his eyes moving quickly over her injuries and the realization hitting him at the same moment that she was alone. Sebastian was not in the car.

She was fading but she held on long enough to tell him what he needed to know. "The orphanage in Nightshade...they are going to try to kill him. He can’t defend himself right now. Please go. Please hurry." She pressed her palm weakly against his chest as if she could physically push him in the right direction.

Matt had a dozen questions he needed answered but he could read the situation clearly enough to know this was not the moment for any of them. Sebastian was in danger. But he also couldn’t leave her on the ground in this condition or Sebastian would tear him apart when he found out.

"What about you? You need a doctor immediately. You can’t—"

"I will be fine. Sebastian needs you more than I do right now. Go." She whispered, pulling herself back from his support and straightening just enough to make the choice easier for him, removing herself from the equation so he wouldn’t hesitate to go to the Alpha first.

Matt looked at her for one moment and made his decision.

"Four of you stay and protect the Luna. Nobody touches her and nobody comes near her. The rest are with me, we are going into Nightshade." He said, and then he turned back to Viola and the look in his hazel eyes had shifted into something that hadn’t fully been there before, a deep and unguarded respect that he didn’t try to hide.

She hadn’t thought of herself once. Bleeding and barely conscious, she had driven through wolves in her condition, and the first word out of her mouth had been his name. Matt had known many she-wolves in his life but very few who would have done what she just did for his friend. Respect, he felt it deep for her.

"Hold on, Luna." He said quietly, and then he turned and moved, barking orders as the warriors split into formation, some taking the car and others hitting the ground on four legs in their wolves form, and within moments they were moving down the road toward Nightshade at speed.

Viola watched them go until they were nothing but shapes in the distance and then dust, and when they disappeared entirely she let go.

Her legs gave out and she went down, the ground coming up to meet her. She let the darkness take her completely and was grateful for it. Knowing that Matt would keep Sebastian safe, she completely gave in to the darkness pulling her consciousness away.