Sebastian immediately understood something at Nat’s words. This confrontation had nothing to do with his hellcat pulling Jaz’s hair and putting her fist in her face last night. These people were here to assassinate him specifically. He was no stranger to things like this, to traveling and finding himself suddenly under attack, but he had been careful to keep his scent mask in place and had not revealed to a single person here who he actually was.

Furthermore, Nightshade had no functioning power devices or means of communicating with the outside world, no way of knowing what the supreme Alpha looked like without his aura. Which meant whoever was behind this had traveled all the way here with them and specifically hire these people and gave them what they needed to recognize him. Someone on the outside had sent them.

Sebastian might not have agreed with much of anything the man said, but he agreed with one thing. His wife should not be involved in this.

Turning his face slightly to the side while keeping his eyes locked on the men in front of him, he said quietly, "Go and wait for me at the car. There is a gun in there and it is loaded with silver bullets. Use it to protect yourself if anyone comes near you. I will meet you in a few minutes, hmm?"

Viola’s brows pulled together hard at those words and she couldn’t help the glare she leveled at him. Was he joking with her or what?

How could he expect her to just walk away and leave him here because some pig-faced man with a gun didn’t feel like killing her? If Jaz’s boyfriend thought she would be happy to be sent away while they assassinated her man, then he was mistaken, she wasn’t going to leave him to this many people!

"I am staying. I am not leaving you." She said firmly, because he would never have come to this land at all if it weren’t for her sake, and now he was being targeted because of her and she was not going to be the kind of person who ran while he stood alone facing it.

Sebastian was about to say something when he felt the shift in movement and yanked her sharply to the side just as a gunshot cracked through the air and buried itself into the tree directly behind where Viola’s head had been a second before.

"If you want to stay and die with him, bitch, then I will deal with you too!" Jaz gritted out, her patience gone completely. She couldn’t understand staying to die for any man, and since this wolfless woman was clearly a fool, Jaz was more than willing to show her exactly what being a fool cost.

"What if you’d fucking shot her?" Nat rebuked as he turned to Jaz, who had pulled the trigger.

Jaz turned to look at him and smiled. "Don’t worry, I am just trying to scare her away. She’s wasting our time here."

Nat fired a sharp warning look back at her not to mess things up for him.

"Get on with your business. I will drag her away from here first." She said, raising her gun and aiming it directly at Sebastian, whose face had shifted into a mask of pure fury, as if he hadn’t moved Viola in time, that bullet would have hit her straight in the skull!

Sebastian made his decision. He had no choice left. He forced the scent mask away and released his aura, letting it expand and fill the space around them.

His supreme Alpha aura couldn’t produce its full effects on wolves who had lived outside the world order system for years, wolves who had never submitted to the hierarchy and therefore had never been truly conditioned to respond to it.

But every single one of them felt it hit them regardless. The chill of it rolled over their skin and made them shiver where they stood, their bodies reacting instinctively even as their minds tried to push it off. But with the price on the man’s head being what it was, none of them were willing to let intimidation be the thing that stopped them, and they began forming into position, raising their guns to eye level and training them on him.

Sebastian didn’t turn around this time as he spoke to Viola behind him, his voice dropping low.

"Don’t argue with me. Go. Now."

Viola was parting her lips to repeat that she couldn’t leave him, but then she also realized that staying would do nothing but distract him, and if she ran quickly enough she could get to the gun he spoke of and come right back.

Viola began walking backwards before she turned and broke into a run in the direction she believed would take her back to where Sebastian had parked the car the night before.

However, the moment she was a little distance away, multiple gunshots rang out behind her and she flinched hard and stopped, her heart seized with a worry so deep it made her want to turn back immediately and check if he was all right.

Following the series of gunshots she heard men grunt and then a wolf’s howl that she recognized, for reasons she couldn’t fully explain, as Sebastian’s. The sound of it settled something slightly in her chest.

She turned back and kept running toward the direction she believed would take her to the roads, holding onto the fact that his howling meant he was alive and fighting. But the moment she turned a corner, something hard struck her across the head, and Viola saw a burst of colors explode behind her eyes as she collapsed to the ground.

She grimaced in pain, looking up at the woman standing over her who was smirking down at her with obvious satisfaction. "Surprise, bitch. You didn’t think I would just let you walk away after you pulled my hair and punched my face, did you?"

"I didn’t think anyone could be this petty about getting beaten for trying to seduce another woman’s husband directly in front of her." Viola gritted out, glaring up at Jaz with hot anger burning behind her eyes.

"You still have that mouth on you. How about I blow it off?" She said, raising the gun and pointing it directly at Viola’s face. "Let’s see how much talking you do with a bullet stuck in your throat. What do you think?" She smirked.