Sebastian rolled on the bed, but a frown climbed quickly to his face when he belatedly realized something. He came fully awake and stared at the empty space beside him on the narrow hotel bed. The space was cold with only a faint crease left in the pillow.

His heart gave a sharp twisted thud inside his chest and he shot off the bed and rushed to the bathroom to check even when he couldn’t sense her presence anywhere in the room. This was bad. He shouldn’t have let himself fall asleep after what she had kept whispering to him the night before when he brought her back to the room to rest.

After they had stayed outside on the ruined street for a while, she had murmured words under her breath and appeared to fall asleep in his arms, or so he had thought, until he brought her back to the room he had checked them into.

His seemingly sleeping wife had woken the moment he began to lay her down on the bed. She had looked up at him with pain filled blue eyes and whispered for him to hold her to sleep. He had intended to step out briefly to find someone who could look at the car engine so they could resume the journey to Kasa Land, as his instincts were nagging at him with an uneasy feeling in this place. But the look in her eyes made him drop the idea entirely and stayed.

Sebastian had quickly taken off his shirt and shoes and gotten into the bed still in his trousers, and immediately she had rolled into his arms and laid her head against his chest, wrapping her arm around his waist.

It was heavenly for a male mate to be needed by his female in that way, and Sebastian had felt something close to cloud nine settle over him, a feeling that was far better than anything else he could name. He had held her for some time before she began whispering words he had told himself she didn’t fully mean.

"Sebastian..." She had whispered. "Tell Zoe and Nick I am sorry, but I am not going back to Silver. I have no reason to be there anymore. I wanted to make a home for Ivy’s sake and now I don’t even know where she is...I have no reason to go back and live my life like nothing happened when I have destroyed Ivy’s life. Tomorrow...you should go on ahead without me..." Her voice had been so small that if he hadn’t had sharp hearing he would have missed every word.

Sebastian’s arm had tightened around her. "Don’t talk like that. You have every right to be in Silver. You are my wife, remember? And you haven’t given me my heir yet." He had whispered back and she let out a small hollow laugh that he felt vibrate against his chest.

"What is the use when after you find the one you are truly destined with you will leave me anyway? The pup will suffer for it. I am only your wife by name, Sebastian. Most of your people don’t even want me as their Luna because I am a nobody. I have no real identity and I don’t even know who I am anymore...I am a messed up person that nobody can truly like."

She paused for a moment and then continued in that same quiet broken voice. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"Don’t let me ruin your life. Go...marry Laila, she fits you far better than I ever could. Have your heir with her. I will stay here and look for my sister or die trying..." She had said it with a quiet bitter determination, and even as the words came out she had tightened her arm around him and buried her face deeper into his chest like she was contradicting herself without realizing it.

"I don’t want to have a pup with Laila. I want one with you." He said gently, running his fingers into her hair and caressing the back of her neck in slow strokes.

She shook her head against his chest. "No you don’t. I can’t even figure out what is wrong with my wolf. I am not a good candidate for your wife...I don’t want to go back to Silver..."

The thought of her not coming back with him sent something hot and fierce straight through his chest. As much as part of him understood that perhaps keeping her out of his complicated and dangerous life might actually protect her and give her a longer one, Sebastian was no longer willing to let go of her. Not when she made him feel the way only she ever had, and not when he knew she would suffer far worse staying behind in this godforsaken place if she followed through on what she was saying.

"You are talking like that because you are drunk. I am not leaving you here. We are going back together. Now go to sleep." Sebastian had said firmly.

"I am not going back. And I am not drunk. I am giving you the freedom to find a better Luna than me."

She had said all kinds of things last night that Sebastian hadn’t truly believed she would act on, but waking up to an empty bed and an empty room, his insides twisted sharply at the realization that she qhad actually meant it and slipped away while he was sleeping.

Without bothering to put his shirt back on, Sebastian shoved his feet into his shoes and ran out of the hotel room, immediately trying to pick up whatever trace of her scent was still lingering in the air. The faint daisy scent was so thin it was clear she had been gone for a while. But how had she left without taking a single thing with her, not even her phone?

When he stepped outside and still couldn’t find her, Sebastian cursed the fact that she had no wolf for him to connect to.

"Where could she have gone?" Sebastian asked his wolf who had snapped awake at the waves of panic beginning to roll through him.

Sebastian rarely ever panicked. He was a man of complete control over his emotions and circumstances, and he genuinely could not remember the last time something had made him feel the way he was feeling right now as he stood on the red mud road outside the hotel.

’Why did you fall asleep, man? Now look, our mate has escaped us in this godforsaken place!’ Muffin complained loudly.

’It wasn’t my intention to fall asleep. Her scent always calm me down to sleep. Now stop playing the blame game and help me track her down!’

He took off down the red mud road, following the faint trail of her scent that still clung to the morning air. Tracking her in his wolf form would have been considerably faster, but he couldn’t risk shifting out here or his scent mask would drop and every werewolf in Nightshade would know immediately that the supreme Alpha was walking their territory.

When he reached the forest edge of Nightshade he felt a small wave of relief because her scent was noticeably stronger here and he quickened his pace. The forest was deeply silent, the only sounds being the morning birds calling to each other somewhere high in the trees above him.

The deeper he pushed through the trees the stronger the daisy scent became, but the deeper he got the more aware he became of another sound beneath the birdsong. Water. Moving water, like a river somewhere ahead.

When Sebastian finally found her he had just begun to exhale in relief, but the relief died the moment his footsteps came to a dead stop at the scene in front of him.

She was there. But she was standing at the very edge of a small cliff, and beneath that cliff was a vast river that everyone in the territory knew was connected to the waters running under the Blue Bridge and from there straight out to the sea. Why was she standing so close to the edge? He recalled clearly how terrified she was of open water, so why was she standing right there at the very lip of it?

What if she fell?!

"Viola..." He called her name carefully and softly, but when she turned to look at him it was with a wide terrified expression and a desperate whispered cry of, "Help me!" before she went pitching over the edge with a scream that cut through the silent forest, followed by a loud splash, and then a deafening silence that was broken only by the undisturbed singing of the birds above.

"Viola!" Sebastian called her name and ran to the edge, looking down into the water below where the surface had already gone still again, showing no sign that anyone had fallen into it at all. Without thinking about a single thing except getting to her, he dove in after her.