Chapter 535: Corrupted heart_Part 1

Back in Viola and Sebastian’s penthouse, the two of them were in the kitchen, Sebastian heating up his dinner while Viola insisted he actually eat it before her sister arrived to examine his heart and confirm whether the corruption was truly gone, since he claimed he hadn’t noticed any symptoms since, expert the stain on his fur that hasn’t gone away completely.

After what he’d asked of her earlier, they needed to be certain he was healthy before Viola would even consider bringing his request to her sister.

Once the food was heated, he brought it out, and his wife reached for a tray to help carry everything, but he took it from her hands smoothly, balancing it in one arm before reaching for her hand with the other and walking with her toward the dining area.

When they reached the table, he set the food down and first pulled out a chair for her, helping her settle comfortably so her stomach wouldn’t press against the table. She looked up at him and smiled, and Sebastian couldn’t resist leaning down to peck the corner of her lips before walking over to his own chair and sitting down.

"Are you sure you don’t want to eat with me?" Sebastian asked as he settled into the seat across from her.

Viola rested her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together and tucking them beneath her chin as she watched him. At his question, she shook her head.

"I already eat something before I came to find you earlier. I’ll just watch you eat and have the grapes here. Go ahead, before Ivy gets here," she urged, reaching out to pour him a glass of juice.

He thanked her and took a sip before beginning to eat, trying to find the appetite he’d lost somewhere along with his sister.

Viola watched him eat, and as she noticed him stuffing food into his mouth before he’d even finished chewing the last bite, she realized he was only eating because she’d asked him to, not because he was actually hungry. He’d lost weight, and his eyes now carried near-permanent dark circles and shadows beneath them, exhaustion written plainly across his face.

Werewolves might be supernatural creatures, but they still needed sleep, just as much as humans did, and going without it showed, eventually, in every visible way. Her husband had neglected his rest for two straight months, barely eating, barely sleeping, and Viola hated seeing him this way. If it came down to singing him to sleep tonight just to force that exhaustion out of him, she made a quiet mental note to do exactly that. But first, she needed reassurance about the corruption.

Earlier, he’d worked so hard to reassure her own insecurities, made her feel steadier in her own body, laughed and joked with her freely. But now, sharing his own feelings again, she understood there was still so much locked away inside him, things that would take real time to surface. Still, she intended to stand beside him through every bit of it.

"You’re staring, amor," He said, without even glancing up, chewing his food and washing it down with a sip of juice.

Viola didn’t bother denying it, sighing instead. "Yes, I am. I find you even more handsome when you’re eating."

He lifted his eyes to her, a small smile tugging at his mouth. "Is my wife flirting with me?" He teased.

Viola laughed before answering, "It’s not a crime to flirt with one’s own mate, is it?" She winked at him, and a smile broke across his face as he shook his head in amusement before asking,

"Are the guests from Steel Pack giving you any trouble? You shouldn’t have invited my aunties, they’ve always been a pain in the neck." Sebastian remarked, since they were exactly the kind of relatives he’d have cut off entirely, even if they didn’t remind him so sharply of his late mother, who used to take them to Steel Pack for weekend visits.

Those aunties would gossip about his mother and father right in front of them and Sebastian had always found them unlikeable but tried not to show it because of his mother.

Viola scrunched her nose, popping a grape from the table into her mouth. "Too late for that, I invited them before I realized they had such a different personality from your grandmother. You never once mentioned you had a living grandmother, and a lovely one at that." Viola mused, and watched him shrug, resuming his eating without much reaction.

"I’d forgotten she existed. If you look closely, she looks a lot like my mother did." He said, and Viola understood immediately, he’d deliberately pushed her existence out of his own mind for years. If she didn’t love him so much, she might have thought him a genuinely strange man for it, which he was.

"If any of those aunties give you trouble, let me know, and I’ll have them packing and gone within the hour."

Viola hadn’t run into any real problems with his aunties yet, nothing she couldn’t handle on her own, so she let the topic drop as a different thought crossed her mind.

"I was thinking, what if we finally went on that vacation we planned?"

Sebastian paused mid-bite, staring down at his food for a long moment before lifting his eyes back to her. "We still haven’t found Nick. It’s too dangerous right now." He told her, his gaze dropping back to his plate. "Besides, you’re almost due. It’s best we stay close to home, for the babies, we don’t want to risk having them in a foreign land."

Viola knew Nick would always linger somewhere in the shadows of their lives, especially her husband’s, who had made hunting him down, dead or alive, into something close to a personal mission. As much as she wanted that resolved too, more than anything, she didn’t want their entire lives put on hold because of him, didn’t want to let him hover over everything indefinitely, when they could still stay cautious and vigilant while actually living their lives in the meantime.

She didn’t want their children born into a world still shadowed by him, and she murmured, "My aunt said there’s a strong chance he was eaten by sharks, since he went into the water already bleeding, and no body has ever surfaced. What if he’s already dead?"

Sebastian opened his mouth to respond, but their door chimed before swinging open, Ivy already knowing the password, as she and Alex walked in together.