Chapter 538: Missing puzzle pieces

"Vaelor has your face, and Azmira, I believe, has mine, or at least I know Nerissa looked exactly like me, and if they’re twins, then she carries my face too. It was like us, in another lifetime, but also not quite us. He marked her, and then he killed her." Viola remarked, and she watched Sebastian begin working to piece everything together in his mind.

"Could the mark be... the same mark on your wolf, the one tied to the prophecy?" He asked, bringing his hand up to her neck, where no mark showed, even though one existed plainly on her wolf form.

Viola hadn’t considered it that way before, but now that he’d said it aloud, she found herself unable to dismiss it, since a mark never simply appears on its own, someone has to place it there. If the mark on her wolf was the very same one Vaelor had left on Azmira before killing her, that would mean it bound her to him in some lingering way, even now. Her eyes widened as she looked at her husband.

"Could that be the reason we can feel each other’s pain? The reason we’ve had the mind link all this time, without any mark at all? Were we them, in another life?" She couldn’t help but feel it fit the missing pieces too perfectly to be coincidence, since only a mark like that could explain why, after awakening her wolf, she suddenly felt so many things that should have only been possible after an actual marking.

"Why would he mark her at all, only to kill her right after? Why didn’t she fight back, being the Child of the Sea?" Sebastian asked, unable to understand why he’d have any connection to, or nightmares about what Vaelor, the very bastard who’d cursed his entire bloodline, had done to his own woman when Sebastian himself would never, not in a million years, stab and kill his own wife for power, no matter how weak he might someday become, no matter if her heart was truly the only path left to him.

Vaelor had never been anything close to a role model to Sebastian, not since he understood what the man had actually done, and the thought of having been him in some other lifetime offered Sebastian no comfort at all since it would mean he’d once killed the very woman he loved, purely for power.

"She didn’t have access to her Child of the Sea powers on land, remember? So she couldn’t have defended herself even if she’d wanted to. But the truth is, she wasn’t trying to defend herself at all. She knew he meant to kill her, and she let it happen. Nerissa warned her to leave, told her once that Vaelor’s behavior had started frightening her, and still Azmira stayed, for that exact reason. Now we’re the ones left to untangle what actually happened between them, so I can know whether I’m even able to awaken that other side of myself." Viola told him.

Sebastian sat up, settling his back against the headboard, and Viola sat up beside him as he looked at her. "You want to awaken that other part of yourself?" He asked, his tone noticeably less pleased than Viola had expected.

"It’s the only way I know of to stop losing people in my life. Imagine being able to bring things, people, back. But I can’t do any of that unless I understand what really happened between them, and how. Every single day I see my parents, and Zoe, telling me they’re waiting for me. I don’t want to let them down, not if there’s any way for me to help them." She said quietly, and Sebastian pulled her closer against his chest, stroking her hair and understanding why she wanted to gain her other part back.

"I don’t want us to end up like them, sunshine. Vaelor and Azmira’s story was a disaster, and I’m afraid digging too deep into it might only complicate ours further." He said, resting his chin atop her head, feeling her arm slip around his waist, before adding, "Did you ask your sister?"

Hearing that, Viola remembered what she’d told him, that she’d ask Ivy, and she nodded. Yesterday, Sebastian had asked if he could go down to see where his sister’s body rested, hoping it might help heal the hole still sitting in his chest, and Viola couldn’t have agreed more readily.

But now, as a werewolf with her mermaid side entirely suppressed, that decision was no longer hers alone to make. It was up to the mermaids, and she had no idea whether they would welcome a werewolf, especially the Silver Alpha, into Aquaville to visit his sister’s grave.

"Ivy said she’d go down to the sea and ask our aunt if she agrees. If she does, she’ll get us the concoction we need to breathe underwater and let me know by morning," she told him, her mind wandering back to what she now understood about the mark her wolf carried.

She couldn’t help wondering why Vaelor had killed Azmira when he had loved her. What had happened between them? And why were she and Sebastian reborn as them without any memories of their past lives? Did they have unfinished business that still needed to be resolved?

What if Sebastian was right? What if she dug too deeply into their past lives and uncovered an enmity that eventually resurfaced between her and her husband because of something that had happened before they were even born?

Did she really want that?

But could she live with herself if she knew she might have helped bring people back and chose not to simply because she was afraid of ruining her relationship with her husband? Could she really turn her back on something so important out of fear of what it might cost her?

"What are you thinking?" Sebastian’s voice brought her out of her thoughts.

He looked down at his wife, whose brows had drawn together as she’d drifted off into her own world. At his question, she turned to look at him.

"A penny for your thoughts, my love," he added.