Chapter 516: Going Hunting

"Some people never appreciate what they already have. They always want something else instead. Sebastian found out about the affair, and about the child not being yours, and he might have acted out of pure rage, killing her before he ever let you hear the truth for yourself. He never told you any of this before, because he was afraid the news would destroy you faster than anything else could. I hope, eventually, you can give him a chance."

Alex looked up at her from the photo, offering a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Thank you. Can I ask you to leave now? I’d like to be alone."

Viola nodded, rising to her feet, and rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. "I hope you’ll consider staying. Sebastian was already planning to bring you home, before all of this happened. You two need each other, and... Zoe would have been so happy to have you both together again."

Viola turned to leave, but his voice stopped her.

"Viola, right?" He asked, still not looking away from the photo of his late wife.

"Yes."

"Be careful around Seb in this moment. He grieves in the strangest way and makes the harshest decisions, and he always seems to lose a part of himself along with them. When our parents died... he grew distant from the rest of us and put a wall around himself. I stopped understanding him after that. He became a different person.

"If you can... stay away from him for some time, until he cools down," he told her quietly.

Viola bit the inside of her cheek before Alex asked another question.

"Who killed my sister?"

Viola’s fingers curled tightly.

"Nickolas."

Alex only nodded, and Viola left him there, hoping he wouldn’t disappear before morning, before he and Sebastian had a real chance to fix things between them, though she doubted Sebastian would even be ready to talk anytime soon. She still didn’t know how deeply this loss had cut into him, or whether she’d ever truly be let in, close enough that he’d speak to her about the pain he carried.

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(Music recommendation: The Storm by Secession Studios, Greg Dombrowski.)

~°~

You can spend all day running from the truth, but when the world grows quiet and you are finally alone, there is nowhere left to run from what lives inside you.

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Sebastian stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, hating what he saw in his own eyes, hating the way his mind kept spinning miles away from him, uncontrollable, regret and anger and pain buried so deep inside him that there was no escaping any of it, because it lived inside him now, a permanent resident. He wanted to shut it all out, but there was no shutting it out, not when everything around him carried some piece of her, so he did the only thing he knew how to do: he destroyed it.

And once he’d destroyed it, he stared back at himself and watched his own eyes shift into something flat, indifferent, and he understood, on some level, that as long as he never looked at anything of his sister’s again, he might survive the demon clawing at him from the inside, the one made of grief and rage in equal measure, because he had just lost his little girl. His little sister.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he could still hear her laughter, still hear her voice calling him hermano, could still see the innocent way she used to look at the world, at people, always expecting the best of them.

"Stupid girl. I taught her not to trust so easily. I raised her to be careful, even around family. I raised her well. I fucking raised her well!" He rasped, though no tears came, the words leaving him flat and hollow as he turned away from the mirror, already knowing this was all the grief he’d allow himself, and nothing more.

She was gone. The only thing left within his power now was avenging her, and maybe then his mind would finally settle. This was exactly why you didn’t let yourself attach to anyone, people died, they left you behind to drown in the wreckage of missing them, and Sebastian refused to drown in that feeling, refused to let himself hate it from the inside out the way he already did.

Like a cage slamming shut against a frantic, fluttering bird desperate to escape its prison, Sebastian sealed his mind and heart away inside a cage he had no intention of ever opening again. He locked his emotions away as easily as one might peel and discard a banana, entirely unaware, as he did it, his heart was quietly turning black from within, the same slow corruption that had once claimed his brother’s heart after losing Natalie.

He left the bathroom and reached out to the men already waiting on his orders, and the moment he opened the link, Jace, his most trusted warrior, spoke up.

"Are we executing the women and children along with the men?"

Sebastian’s eyes barely flickered as he pulled a shirt from his closet and answered. "All of them. They committed a treasonous act, siding with him, taking part in murder. Have there been any tracks on him yet?" He asked, buttoning his shirt, pulling on his boots.

"Nothing solid yet, Supreme Alpha, but we can tell he’s injured, hasn’t had the chance to heal before running. We followed a blood trail into the woods, but it disappeared at some point, no further trace." Jace reported, hesitating over whether to mention that most of the prisoners taken, especially the children, were almost certainly innocent, but he knew better than to interfere with a decree already given.

"Which woods?" Sebastian asked, gathering his guns and weapons.

"Valad Forest, between his pack and the next one over. We suspect he’s made his way into the neighboring territory, but the men stationed at the border swear no one’s crossed through, and if he had, they’d have flushed him out, per your orders."

Sebastian took the news in stride. "I’ll check it myself. Send the men out ahead, I’ll join them shortly." Saying that, he closed the link and left the penthouse.

If Nick thought he could hide at the edge of the world, Sebastian would drag him back out of it and have his head on a platter, by his own hands, for this was the last crime he’d ever get the chance to commit.

Sebastian stepped out of the High Tower, but the moment he did, he found someone waiting there he hadn’t expected, standing among the rest of his men. But the presence of this person reminded him of her again that he felt a stab within him.

His expression barely shifted as he demanded harshly,

"What are you doing here?"

Matt met his friend’s eyes evenly. "The exact same thing you’re here to do. We’re going hunting, and it’s not happening without me. I want his head too. You’re not stopping me." He said firmly, noting the emptiness that had settled over the Alpha’s face, his silver eyes carrying nothing now but pure, undiluted murder.

"It’s on you. Whatever happens to you, it’s on you," Sebastian said, unbothered, walking past Matt to reach his men and issue orders. From now on, he didn’t want anything related to her to come hunting for him, and Matt was completely tied to her. A memory of the two of them holding a crying baby, confusingly not knowing how to feed it, flashed through his mind, and he pushed it away.

"I never said my life was on you..." Matt muttered to himself.

Matt watched him go and felt something tight settle in his gut, recognizing the pattern instantly, this was happening again. His friend was shutting everyone out, exactly the way he had years ago, only this time Matt was among those he had decided he no longer wanted around.

Sebastian had never been the kind of man who handled loss well, and everyone who’d once assumed his parents’ deaths would leave him broken, hollowed out, had been surprised when he’d bounced back with startling speed instead, with nothing going wrong with his body.

But the way his aura had shifted now, that same emptiness radiating off him, Matt, still nursing his own private grief, couldn’t shake the feeling that this, finally, might be the thing that broke the Supreme Alpha for good.