Viola finally turned to look at him, pulling her knees up to her chest the way she always did when she was settling into a place, making herself small and comfortable all at once. Sebastian, who had been watching her quietly, found her smallness endearing in a way he couldn’t quite explain. But he knew better than to underestimate that smallness, for she was really a hellcat who would fight him tooth and nail if pushed, his adorable little wife.

"Like your favorite food," she said, bringing his attention back to their discussion.

Sebastian laughed softly. "My favorite food. Is it strange if I tell you I never really had a favorite meal?" He said. "My mom and Matt’s mom used to be like chefs and they liked to experiment with everything edible. I ate everything they made because it was all delicious, so I never settled on a favorite. Sometimes I do miss the way she cooked..." He paused for a moment, something quiet and distant crossing his face. "If I were being honest, my favorite food would be my mother’s cooking."

Viola saw the way his eyes softened as he talked about his mother and she felt a silent ache settle in her chest.

She had never truly experienced a mother’s cooking herself, not the real kind, and yet she felt a deep and unexpected sympathy for him because he had experienced it and then lost it entirely. She found herself thinking that if she knew how to cook, she would try to recreate it for him just so he could have that soft look on his face when talking about hers, but she pushed the thought away just as quickly as it had come and didn’t let herself linger on it.

It was very hard to have her walls back up. It was almost impossible with this calm, soft, caring Sebastian...

"What about you?" Sebastian asked, turning the question back to her. "What is your favorite food?"

He already knew what she liked to eat and had it noted down somewhere, but he felt the conversation ought to go both ways.

Viola shrugged. "I like everything made with beef." She remarked, and then she lay down on the bed, turning onto her side to face him with her head pillowed on her arm. "What is your favorite color?"

She thought she didn’t even really need to ask, given that his closet was filled with nothing but black and gray with no color in sight anywhere, but she didn’t want to let the silence creep back in between them. Apart from midnight blue and gold, she hadn’t seen him wear anything in the way of bright colors at all.

Sebastian looked straight at her. Her blue eyes were catching the warm glow of the bedside lamp, and he didn’t answer immediately.

He found himself looking at her eyes the way he sometimes did when he thought she wasn’t paying close enough attention to notice.

He had realized days ago that she had stopped wearing her glasses because she could see clearly on her own now. He didn’t know entirely what to make of that shift, except to think that Doctor Gilbert’s analysis was proving itself right. Being close to her mate was beginning to make changes in her.

Her wolf might be slowly surfacing and healing her, starting with her eyes. It was part of why he wanted to find her twin as soon as possible, to give that process every chance it needed.

But then that wasn’t what this moment was about. This moment was about his favorite color.

That particular shade of blue in her eyes that didn’t belong to any single thing he could name and pin it to. Not the sky, because the sky changed and was inconsistent and her eyes never were. Not the ocean, because the ocean was restless and cold at its depths and there was nothing cold about the way she looked at the people she trusted and cared about. Not sapphire, because sapphire was a stone and stones were dead things and there was nothing dead about the color living in her eyes now.

It was simply hers. A blue that existed in her and nowhere else that he had ever found in all the years he had walked this earth. He had never been a man who had a favorite color. Colors had never meant anything to him worth pausing over. He wore black because it suited power and he had never given the rest of it a single thought.

But then she had looked at him for the first time in the forest with moonlight pooling in her eyes and he had realized that a color could be captivating in a way nothing else was, and he had understood without wanting to that this was what it felt like to find something you hadn’t known you were missing until it was right in front of you.

A favorite color.

She had made him a man who had a favorite color.

He parted his lips and replied quietly. "Blue. My favorite color is blue." The shade of your eyes. He thought to himself, keeping that last part where it belonged.

"Blue?" Viola asked, genuinely taken aback. She never would have expected that answer from him. She had been fully prepared for him to say black or gray without hesitation. "Now that I think about it, you would look good in a light blue shirt. You should get one for yourself."

Sebastian smiled. "I will wear it if you get it for me." He teased with a deep chuckle.

Viola felt heat rise to her cheeks. She had once bought him blue diamond cufflinks, back before any of this had happened, and she had never gotten the chance to give them to him. They were still sitting in her closet. She cleared her throat. "Hmm. I will think about it when we get back from this journey. I was planning to go shopping anyway."

She had made many plans for things to do with her twin once she found her, and shopping was at the very top of the list because Ivy would need so many things starting from nothing. Perhaps she could pick up a few things for her husband along the way as well. A gift of some kind.

"Can I hold your hand?" Sebastian asked suddenly, and Viola looked over at him in quiet confusion.

"Why?"

Sebastian’s silver eyes glimmered with something warm. "Because I like holding it. We agreed not to argue tonight. So let me hold your hand." He stretched his hand out across the space between them on the bed, wiggling his fingers slowly for her to place hers in his. He just wanted to feel that delightful spark that came from holding her, the one that settled something restless inside him every time.

Pursing her lips, Viola placed her hand over his and his warm, slender fingers closed around hers immediately, and she heard him exhale a long and satisfied sigh before his eyes drifted shut. And just like that, right before her eyes, he fell asleep like it was the easiest thing in the world. He was even snoring very slightly, a soft and barely there sound, but the grip around her hand didn’t loosen even slightly.

She looked down at their joined hands resting between them, his tanned against her fair skin, and felt that funny, fuzzy feeling bloom in her chest and send a warm tingling spark through her body all the way to her fingertips.

"What a baby you are..." She muttered softly, looking at his peaceful and handsome face in the low light. "You are going to make things so hard for me if you keep treating me this way, Seb..."