Chapter 545: The Talk With The Alpha_Part 2

Hearing Sebastian’s words, Gilbert turned to him, curious. "About what? Is it about the Luna?" He asked, since lately, whenever Sebastian spoke to him at all, it had always been to ask about his wife and nothing else.

In fact, this was the first time the two of them had met face to face in months, not since Zoe’s death, and the doctor understood well enough by now not to push conversation with the Alpha unless spoken to first.

Sebastian turned to the doctor. "It’s not about her. It’s about Nickolas." He began. "Can a werewolf survive a torn neck in water, along with deep bruising?"

Sebastian had been meaning to ask the doctor this for a while now, since no matter what he did, he couldn’t get his cousin out of his head, couldn’t stop wondering why no body had turned up if the man really was dead. With everything else piling up around them, including the recent discoveries tying their lives to a far older story, Sebastian didn’t want to keep carrying the weight of Nick’s unresolved fate on top of everything else.

There was already too much on his plate as it was. With so much competing for his attention, Sebastian genuinely didn’t know what to focus on first anymore.

"How deep was the tear in his flesh?" Gilbert asked, curious since he hadn’t been present for the fight itself.

"Not as deep as I would have fucking liked, but I tore through part of a major vein, enough to make him bleed heavily. He also had two bullet wounds already in his shoulder, I believe... my sister shot him."

At the mention of his sister, Gilbert belatedly noticed the way the Alpha’s face hardened and his voice became almost emotionless, as though he were talking about the weather.

"I taught her once how to use a gun, but she never took it seriously because she thought she would never need it. But she shot him, missing his fucking black heart," Sebastian said flatly, his expression giving away nothing.

Gilbert wasn’t sure whether he should offer his personal condolences to the Alpha, but then thought better of it. He had heard that Sebastian had broken a man’s head a few weeks ago when the man had offered him condolences.

Sebastian’s eyes turned toward the doctor as he continued speaking.

"As you already know we never found his body, but my wife’s sister says there’s a real possibility the sharks got to him first," he informed him.

The doctor looked thoughtful for a moment before answering.

"If the rumors are true, that he now carries power equal to a Supreme Alpha, his odds of survival would’ve been higher, if he’d been pulled out and treated immediately. But if he wasn’t treated right away, those odds drop sharply, and the bullet wounds would only make it worse. There have been reports of sharks in our waters lately, so it’s entirely possible he was eaten."

They reached Sebastian’s floor, the elevator doors sliding open as they stepped out together. Sebastian was still unwilling to pin all his hopes on the possibility that a shark had finished the job.

A sudden, almost desperate urge to smoke hit him, even though he wasn’t a smoker. The worry gnawing at the edges of his mind over the safety of the family he had left and what he would have to do to make sure no other threat ever touched them again was making him restless, giving him an almost unbearable itch beneath his skin.

Because Sebastian was done losing the people he loved.

"You shouldn’t worry so much about him, Supreme Alpha," Gilbert assured him, noticing the look in the Alpha’s eyes. "Silver has twice the protection it once had now, with the men Ken sent, all of them possessing sharpened senses and abilities," Gilbert told him.

As they continued walking down the hallway, he cleared his throat before asking, "By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. How did you discover that the Luna and I are related?"

Sebastian had told him this weeks ago, when he’d ordered him to look after his cousin with everything he had in his absence, to make sure her pregnancy never went wrong, and when the doctor had asked how exactly she was his cousin, Sebastian had given him only a vague answer at the time, mentioning only that his family’s records had been lost at Mooncreek Pack.

"Her father was your uncle. Vincent," came Sebastian’s brisk, flat reply, enough to make the doctor bite back whatever other questions he had wanted to ask. Sebastian had already turned away, his walls visibly going back up, his aura flaring around him as though he wanted to shut down any sort of connection or small talk.

Gilbert didn’t ask anything else, but he couldn’t help thinking about what a small world it was. His uncle Vincent, whom he vaguely remembered from when he was a boy, had daughters, and one of them had turned out to be Viola.

His mother and uncle had been so close back then. His uncle would carry Gilbert on his shoulders and take him on walks, and Gilbert could still remember how his late mother would always conceal his uncle.

’Don’t worry. You protected her by letting her go. You two were never meant to be, Vince.’

’How could I ever forget her, Claire? She carries my child and my heart...I can never forget her.’

So it turned out his uncle had fallen in love with a mermaid, the same creature who had later destroyed their world and killed them all. Gilbert didn’t know what to do with the information, but as though Sebastian had read his mind, the Alpha spoke.

"Don’t blame any of their deaths on my woman or her mother. They had nothing to do with it. It was the mermaid king who flooded your home and killed your family. Whatever misgivings you have in your heart, make sure they don’t extend to my wife. I told you about this because I want her to feel close to her real family and to have more people around her who genuinely care about her."

Sebastian stopped and looked at the doctor.

"And I also told you because I want you to share any memories you still have of your family with her, so she can feel close to them too. She gets saddened sometimes, and I hate it."

Gilbert looked at the Alpha. Even if he had wanted to blame the mermaids for his real family’s deaths, he would never have chosen the Luna as someone to hate. She was kind, and now that he had learned he had cousins, especially the twin daughters of his favorite uncle, he could never hold anything against them.

"I have some picture frames of my uncle in my apartment, along with some of our family heirlooms I kept. I’ll give the box to her and her sister," Gilbert said. "Don’t worry. Now that I know who was responsible for the flood, I won’t extend my dislike to the twin sisters."

Sebastian nodded before turning and resuming his walk, glad that he had made things clear with his wife’s cousin. At least now, he didn’t have to worry about another villain building resentment and hiding it beneath the surface like his own cousin had.