After what she had done with the water and after Miss Lara’s warning about keeping it hidden, Viola was deeply unsettled. Whatever had happened to Ivy had something to do with it, she could feel it. And it also had something to do with that water creature that had dragged her into the river. Could something like that have taken Ivy the same way?

The thoughts swirled through her mind in endless circles through the night as she sat at the bedside keeping a close watch on Sebastian, checking the progress of his healing every few minutes. It was moving so slowly she could barely tell it was happening at all.

His face looked calmer at least, more like a person sleeping than a person dying, but she knew he would remain in that suspended state until his body had finished what it was doing and healed completely.

Viola turned toward the small window in the room and noticed the gray light beginning to press in around the edges of the curtain, the first quiet announcement of dawn. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. Her back was burning with pain, and she felt deeply exhausted to the bone, but sleeping in a place she didn’t trust was out of the question.

She turned back to adjust Sebastian’s blanket against the morning chill when she heard the door open behind her and Miss Lara came in, the woman who hadn’t returned to the room since their exchange of words the night before.

"If you are here to insist I get some rest, you are going to be wasting your breath, Miss Lara." Viola said tiredly without turning around, but Miss Lara crossed the room quickly and when Viola heard the urgency in her footsteps she turned to look at her.

"How did you and your husband end up in this state in the first place?" Miss Lara asked, and the barely contained panic in her voice made Viola sit up straighter.

She considered the question carefully. Jaz and Nat had been hired with a money reward to kill Sebastian, and Viola had seen the poster inside Jaz’s pocket when she stripped her of her weapons, the one with hers and Sebastian’s face on it and a number printed below it large enough to turn anyone’s head.

If she told Miss Lara about it and the woman decided that reward was worth more than the risk of sheltering them, she would have handed their location over on a plate. Every person in Nightshade was starving and desperate, and desperate people made dangerous choices.

It was why Viola had not told anyone about the assassination and the attack, but now that she was being asked, she looked at Miss Lara and parted her lips to lie.

"We were attacked by packless werewolves," Viola replied, keeping her voice even.

Miss Lara clicked her tongue and reached into her trouser pocket, pulling out a folded poster and holding it out toward Viola. "Why didn’t you say anything about this when you first came here yesterday? You didn’t tell me there are people after your life with this much reward!"

Viola’s face went pale. "Where did you find that?" She reached out and snatched the poster from Miss Lara’s grip.

"It doesn’t matter where I found it. What matters is that I went out to the trees to collect some herbs this morning and this was stuck to the bushes along the path. And it is not just that. Pack members are combing through every corner of Nightshade searching for a red car and the couple on that poster. They will reach here in no more than thirty minutes."

Viola felt her heart drop to her stomach and her back gave a sharp stinging pain that she bit back hard as her eyes moved to the window. The red car was still sitting outside in plain sight, visible to anyone who came down the road.

"They will know we are here the moment they see the car." Viola said, pushing her fingers into her hair as she moved to peek around the curtain. The sky was brightening quickly. There was no time.

"What are you going to do? I cannot have them find you here. I will be implicated along with all the children in this building." Miss Lara remarked.

For the past few years she had been keeping the orphanage matters low key because the Alpha had wanted to tear it down to avoid strangers from coming into their pack to adopt. It had taken so much pleading to keep the orphanage standing, and if a wanted person was found here, it would do nothing but bring unwanted attention along with greedy, money-hungry men tearing down her building and ruining the children’s futures and lives.

Viola looked at Miss Lara over her shoulder for a moment and then without saying a word she walked back to Sebastian on the bed. She stood over him for a quiet second, looking at his face, and then she pulled the blanket up more snugly to his neck, leaned down and pressed her lips gently to the side of his mouth, and whispered,

"I will be right back, Seb."

She straightened up with a small grimace and turned to Miss Lara. "I will drive the car away from here and draw them away from the orphanage. I don’t want Julia anywhere near my husband while I am gone, and I want to find him exactly where he is when I come back."

Miss Lara’s eyes went wide. "You cannot possibly do that in the condition you are in, girl. Your wound—"

"Does anyone here know how to drive?" Viola asked simply. Miss Lara said nothing. "Then it has to be me." She said firmly, and then seeing the genuine worry etched into the older woman’s face her voice dropped and softened. "Promise me nothing will happen to him while I am gone. Please."

Miss Lara gave her a nod, even as her concern for the girl sitting heavy in her chest told her this was not a good idea.

"Thank you. I will be right back." Viola turned and took one last look at Sebastian before she walked out the door.

She moved quickly through the orphanage and out to the car. Getting in, she started the engine with difficulty, cursing under her breath as it kept catching and refusing to turn over until finally it rumbled to life. The moment it did, an idea struck her and she grabbed Sebastian’s phone from the dashboard intending to call Matt, but stopped when she looked at the screen and found not a single bar of signal.

Of course. Nightshade had no network connection to the outside world.

She dropped the phone back on the dashboard and pulled out of the orphanage, driving away from it as quickly as the road allowed. She was still moving when Sebastian’s words from before came back to her. His men were waiting at Kasa Land to take her back to Silver while he returned to Nightshade. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

There was no way to reach them by phone with no signal, but she had the car. If she drove fast enough she could reach Kasa before afternoon and bring his men back here for him before whoever was searching for him found him first. The bullets were out and his body was healing, but that didn’t protect him from the people still combing through Nightshade looking for his head.

Staying here was no longer safe for him. Viola took a steadying breath and changed direction, pointing the car toward the road that led out of Nightshade toward Kasa Land. She pressed her foot down.

As the red car sped over the rough and muddy roads of Nightshade, the men scattered across the pack following tire tracks were quick to spot it moving fast down the road ahead of them and one of them raised the alarm immediately.

"That’s the car! That’s the one!"

Beyond Nat and Jaz’s group who had gone after Sebastian for the reward money, several other groups had been formed and deployed after Nat’s failure. The people behind the poster had sent fresh orders to find the car and locate the man, and since no vehicle like that existed anywhere in Nightshade they didn’t need any further description to know it was the one they were looking for.

The car was moving at a speed that made it look like it was flying over the rocky terrain, and the men on foot knew immediately they had no chance of catching it that way. Their leader made the call for them to shift forms without hesitation.

"Chase her down. It’s the girl driving, she is taking him out of Nightshade. Do not let that car leave the pack boundary!"

"Yes, sir!"

In no time they shed their clothes and shifted, hitting the ground on four legs and cutting through the trees at full wolf speed, taking the forest as a shortcut to get ahead of her and cut the car off before it reached the border.