Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna-Chapter 157: The black smoke

They sat like that in silence for a little while before Viola became suddenly aware that she was sitting on his lap with the blanket wrapped all around her body, and she self-consciously shifted away from him. He didn’t stop her, and she crawled back and lay down on the bed, looking up at him from beneath the blanket she had pulled all the way up to her chin.

He stared back at her, smiling a little, and she felt her cheeks warm with a sudden, unexpected embarrassment. Even so, she couldn’t look away from his mesmerizing silver eyes, which twinkled as though he were gazing at something that fascinated him.

"Tell me now," she whispered.

Sebastian looked at her cluelessly until she added, "The history between you and Moonwillow, you promised to tell me if I ate."

She wasn’t going to let go of this chance now that she finally had it, and tonight felt like the perfect time to hear it. She watched him let out a slow sigh and then rise from the bed, placing the bowl back onto the tray on the nightstand before he unbuttoned his shirt further and began to crawl onto her bed, causing her heart to flutter faintly.

"What are you doing?" She questioned with a frown.

"If you want to hear the history, I will have to be under that blanket with you, holding you, otherwise, there is no story at all. Do you want to hear it or not?" Sebastian mused, looking at her with faint amusement in his eyes.

Did she really think he would let go of an opportunity to be close to her? His closeness wouldn’t only help her hidden wolf to surface, it would also work to break that unwanted bond between her and Evan. And Sebastian was already determined to do anything as long as her wolf would reveal itself and make her whole.

Viola bit the inside of her cheek in silent contemplation, realizing that if she let this moment pass, she would likely never get this chance again. Besides, she didn’t particularly mind having his warm body beside hers. She gave him a small glare and then said,

"Fine. You can get in." She lifted one side of the blanket, inviting him in, and he shamelessly crawled underneath it.

To Viola’s surprise, he immediately put his arm around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest, her back pressed to his front and her head pillowed against his arm.

She flushed warm when she felt his fingers flatten against her bare belly in the gap between her crop top and her shorts, sending a trail of heat through her skin, and her toes curled inward as his chin came to rest at the top of her head and he let out a slow, quiet sigh.

His scent filled every breath she drew in, and the warmth of his body and the weight of his hand on her belly seeped into her gradually, coaxing her tense muscles into slowly unwinding. Why does it feel so good to be held in his arms?

"Now tell me," Viola murmured after a stretch of silence where only the sound of his breathing and hers could be heard in the stillness of the room.

Sebastian hated talking about this, more than almost anything else, he would have preferred to never speak of it again, for it dragged back emotions he had buried long ago.

Regret, agony, anger, hatred, all of it combined and enough to unravel him, and whatever wrecked him emotionally like that, Sebastian had always made a habit of escaping. But he had promised, and in order to enjoy her company and let his presence in turn help heal her wolf, he had to speak.

"Twenty years ago, I was held captive in Moonwillow, beaten and tortured for six months. I was only ten years old when it happened, and it was Evan’s father who gave the orders..." His silver eyes hardened into stone and his arm subconsciously tightened around her waist.

Viola was taken aback and stunned. She hadn’t expected to hear any of that. He had been held captive for six months in Moonwillow? And Moonwillow had the nerve to call it a petty incident? How could they hold a ten year old captive for that long and expect him not to hold a grudge?!

"What happened? How did you end up there at ten years old?" She questioned, turning around to face him, her palms resting flat against his chest where she could feel his heart beating steadily, though at her question, it seemed to pick up its pace. And though his expression didn’t change, his eyes did. They turned faintly haunted and distance.

"It was the same time I lost my parents..." Sebastian said, not looking at her but staring at the wall behind her head, and Viola realized he was no longer entirely present with her, he was somewhere else, reliving whatever horror had brought that fleeting haunted look into his eyes.

"Tell me what happened," Viola whispered coaxingly, not wanting to force him into reliving a horror but also wanting to hear it.

"My parents, just like every Alpha and Luna before them, had many enemies who wanted them dead. But none of them had ever succeeded, they had never so much as touched a hair on either of them, because my father was careful. But twenty years ago, they finally succeeded in taking their lives..."

Sebastian’s fingers found the waistband of her shorts and began to idly flick the band as he spoke. Viola was aware that he didn’t even know he was doing it, that it was his way of anchoring himself, of keeping from slipping too far into the past he was slowly uncovering, and she allowed it, even as his fingers grazed intimately close to the top of her bottom.

"As you know in our world, werewolf tradition calls for traveling to each other’s packs to celebrate the moon festival. That year, the celebration was taking place in both Moonwillow and Blood Moon Pack. My father asked my brother and me to choose which pack we wanted to visit first. I chose Moonwillow and my brother chose Blood Moon."

Sebastian let out a humorless laugh. "I should have chosen Blood Moon Pack. But I thought I had already seen Blood Moon Pack before and hadn’t yet seen Moonwillow, so we all agreed to go to Moonwillow. Zoe was still a little baby then. We all traveled together, just as we did every year during the celebration month, with guards and escorts surrounding us, the supreme Alpha never traveled without them.

"Everything was fine right up until the moment we crossed into Moonwillow territory. Nobody saw it coming, not even the driver, who had driven my father on long journeys for years. My mother was leaning over trying to clean something off my shirt, and my father was talking to my brother, who was holding Zoe in his arms, when suddenly we were struck by a black smoke..."

Viola, who had been listening to every word, watched as his silver eyes narrowed and his brows drew together, the arm around her tightening at her back. He went quiet for a moment.

"What kind of black smoke?" She whispered softly.