Chapter 22
“She’s a nobody,” Seb said coldly. “Once she recovers, she will be gone. Matt, come with me. We need to talk p>
With that, he walked away from the meeting room, finally allowing the less powerful people present to breathe again. Still, none of them dared lift their heads until the echoes of his footsteps completely disappeared.
Matt followed after Sebastian and opened the door to his private office, allowing him to enter first before stepping in himself.
Just like Sebastian’s personality and expression, the room felt lifeless and chilly. Once upon a time, this office had been filled with lively colors and photographs of a single woman, but now it was as cold and barren as Sebastian’s life had become.
Right behind the enormous ebony desk where he conducted pack affairs stood a large glass window that gave a perfect view of the skyscrapers lining Silver City.
Sebastian strolled to his chair and sat down heavily. “Have you gotten it ready p>
Matt cleared his throat and pulled out his phone, turning the screen toward his friend. “Yes. Everything is arranged for tomorrow. And I ordered the glasses the doctor recommended p>
“I thought it was supposed to be today. She’s a pest in my life,” Sebastian said darkly, resting his chin on his propped-up arm and scowling at Matt.
Matt rolled his eyes. It had taken him years, since they were kids, to get used to Sebastian’s dark stares and voice. He knew it was unintentional, but did it really have to look like the devil himself was staring straight into one’s soul? If Matt didn’t know him so well, those silver eyes alone could give anyone nightmares.
“Did you think it was easy getting the elders off my back and finding the time to set everything up so we could send her away?” Matt complained as he dropped into the chair opposite Sebastian.
“Not to mention Miss Ember has been bugging me nonstop, trying to bribe me with her meal recipes if I put in good words for her to you. She even included her body and boobs as dessert. She’s really something, Seb p>
Sebastian opened his laptop as he listened to Matt talk, then hummed nonchalantly. “You can have her. I don’t want her anymore. And also, I want their pack blacklisted from the Silver Pack. Anything made by the Silvers will no longer be sold or given to them from now on p>
Matt blinked. Blacklisted?
Wasn’t that going a bit too far? Almost every pack depended on the Silvers for resources, canned foods, advanced technology, and newly forged weapons for protection. Many of those were exclusively produced in the Silver Pack. Any pack that got blacklisted, like Moonwillow, would immediately suffer shortages that would cause serious setbacks.
After what Moonwillow had done decades ago to Sebastian, they had been cut off completely, and the consequences were still haunting them to this day.
They had tried to make amends countless times, but what they had done had been far worse than what the North Pack had committed. Even so, they had been punished severely.
Once blacklisted, getting back on terms with the Silvers was nearly impossible, because Sebastian never forgave.
What Matt didn’t understand was why Sebastian was blacklisting the North Pack when all Ember had done was offer her body. Or had she done something else to offend him, something beyond attempting to seduce him that night in the drawing room?
On their way back to the Silver Pack weeks ago, with the injured, unconscious girl in tow, Sebastian had told him exactly what Ember had done. From what Matt knew of his friend, whenever a woman offered her body, Sebastian would take it without hesitation and then have nothing to do with her afterward. That had always been how he handled such situations.
Which was why it had come as a surprise to Matt that Sebastian hadn’t taken what Ember had offered him at all.
The Alpha was a man who never got offended by attractive bodies or offers of sex.
So what made him willing to punish an entire pack over something so trivial?
Unless p>
Could it be because that girl had been found nearly dead within their territory?
Viola’s recovery was progressing, but it was going a little slower than she would have wanted. She had been given a wheelchair just that morning and told to prepare because she was leaving. Leaving?
The word sent urgent panic racing through her heart, because she still hadn’t met the Alpha yet. However, no matter how hard she tried to pull him to her by manipulating the connection he was feeling from the bond, it wasn’t working, or he was deliberately ignoring it.
She hadn’t been able to sleep at all the night before, her mind fixed on what she planned to say to the Alpha once he came, but it seemed he was truly intent on getting rid of her completely without ever seeing her.
Someone who had once threatened to kill her just to break a bond that would rip him apart could certainly endure a little discomfort from ignoring her forced longing, a longing she didn’t want to use, but had no choice but to rely on.
He was the last person on earth she would ever long for or want.
But being wolfless, it was a one-sided bond they shared unless he marked her as a mate: right now she couldn’t feel anything from him, but he would feel hers for as long as they remained on the same land.
He would be restless for as long as she was longing and thinking about him. Fated mates could never ignore the pull of longing, because it always led to desire. Desire? Viola wanted to laugh at the word.
He would be the last person she desired.
She didn’t want to long for his presence and would have loved more than anything to never see him again, but she needed him, and it was the fastest way to draw him here. Yet even that seemed impossible when it came to the mighty Supreme Alpha.
Alpha Kade. Sebastian Kade.
Viola thought of him then, recalling when she had first learned his name years ago, how fate worked in its twisted ways, and how he had turned out to be her fated mate.
When she had first heard of him in her pack, he had been married to his first Luna, Natalie.
She vaguely remembered the stories she had heard in the past about the Alpha who had taken the Moonwillow as an enemy, though she never knew the full details of what causes the conflict with him because she hadn’t joined the pack then, and many people didn’t speak about it much.
The only rumors and news Viola had been interested in were about his life with Natalie, whom people described as the luckiest woman in the world for being his Luna.
She remembered watching a viral video on werewolf social media where he had taken Natalie on a cruise ship to a human country, risking everything just to give her happiness.
Werewolves avoided human lands because humans were double their population, and if humans ever learned of them, they would no doubt seek to capture them, take them into laboratories for testing, conduct all sorts of experiments, and destroy ways and systems that had existed for centuries.
Because of that, most werewolves avoided the human world, but Alpha Kade had taken his Luna there years ago. Though Viola hadn’t known him then, she remembered feeling envious and thinking that she wished her own man would risk everything to show her the human world.
But Evan had not only been a coward, he had hated humans and everything related to their world.
That had been the first time she had truly learned about Alpha Kade, and for some reason, she had admired him greatly, even without ever meeting him in person. It was also how she remembered that he had silver eyes, though she hadn’t been able to recall it that night in the forest.
She had watched videos of that cruise trip a thousand times, because despite how much Viola pretended to be indifferent in her pack, she longed to be loved that way, a love she had once hoped to find with Evan. But who would have thought a few years from then he would discard her?
She had even given Evan gifts bought with her life savings. She had once gifted him a cruise trip, not as lavish as the one Alpha Kade had taken his Luna on, but Evan had never gone on that cruise with her. She recalled him saying he would after her wolf awakening.
Alpha Kade… she had known of him for a long time, though only from a distant world, from the safety of her phone.
She had heard many people claim he was born cursed, that he had killed his twin and caused the accident that took his parents’ lives. Viola hadn’t known much about the deaths of his twin and parents, because she had been in the orphanage at the time.
Many said he was cursed to be alone for the rest of his life, cursed to have multiple mates simultaneously.
She had heard many say he was cruel, cold, and bitterly heartless.
Now, though, she was experiencing his cruelty firsthand. Having multiple mates would no doubt make it easy for him to discard her without feeling anything. He must already be an expert at discarding she-wolves, she realized.
’I don’t need his loyalty as a mate, nor his love or anything else. All I want is the position beside him. I need to be his Luna at all costs and secure a place for myself in order to find out why my wolf is not surfacing, because in this world, there is no place for the wolfless. I won’t belong or have a place, and as much as I want to belong somewhere… I can’t if I am only a Hollow,’ she thought, looking down at her broken, cast legs resting on the step of the wheelchair.
Do I even have a chance of convincing him to give me a chance like this, in my current condition? Would he even listen to what I have to say before he throws me away?