The Grim Pack.

"He’s here, Hailey!" Exclaimed Hailey’s sister Kimberly, who was peering through the window of their room at the arriving guests, announcing everything she saw to her sister, who was taking her time getting dressed for the welcoming of their guests.

"Oh my god, he is so much more handsome than in the magazines and pictures. That new haircut is everything! I think he came looking clean just to impress you, girl!" Kim cried out like a town crier to her sister, who was beaming at her own reflection in the mirror.

Of course, he would want to impress, especially after the way they had parted years ago.

"I knew he was looking forward to seeing me too. My two days at the spa are not going to go to waste, and I might actually be the one to finally put an end to Daddy’s obsession with trying to take his place. If I marry him, just imagine, I would be the Supreme Luna, and Daddy wouldn’t need to worry about overtaking my husband because he would be family." Hailey said in a singsong voice, applying mascara to enhance the color of her light brown eyes. But she noticed her sister had gone quiet and turned to her with a frown.

"What’s he doing now, Kim?" She asked, knowing her younger sister’s tendency to say whatever she thought Hailey wanted to hear.

"Well... you might not actually like this, big sis. He didn’t come alone like we thought. He’s here with that wolfless girl everyone has been saying is sitting as the Supreme Luna." Kim said, turning in time to watch her sister’s excitement dim, though Hailey quickly moved to cover it with a forced smile.

"So what? She’s nothing to him from what I’ve heard. I may not have attended the wedding, but I know his taste in women, and a wolfless is certainly not something Alpha Sebastian would ever take seriously." Hailey said offhandedly, turning back to her mirror. She refused to let some nobody disrupt her plans for the duration of the Supreme Alpha’s stay in their pack during her brother’s ceremony. She had looked forward to this day and told her Daddy to make sure he was on the top guests lists.

He could bring the wolfless girl if he wanted, Hailey didn’t care. He had once been her man, someone who had sent her gifts beyond anyone’s imagination, and just because they hadn’t been in contact for some time didn’t mean she had faded from his memory. She wasn’t that easily forgettable. She told herself this and was reaching for her mascara again when Kim spoke up.

"You might want to come and see this. The way he is holding her... it’s suggesting a lot more than nobody. It honestly looks like something out of a romantic film, Hailey, and the way he keeps looking at her—"

Hailey slapped the mascara down onto the white vanity and rose from her stool, striding toward the window with a scowl, but by the time she reached it and craned her neck to see past her sister’s blonde head, the Supreme Alpha had already walked up the front veranda of the mansion and disappeared from view entirely, the wolfless girl right beside him. Hailey dropped the curtain with barely contained irritation.

"You must be seeing things because you are such a hopeless romantic idiot. Go get yourself washed up, you smell like horseshit from riding around all morning, Kimmy, and don’t disturb my evening with your gossip today."

She said irritably to her younger sister, who annoyingly liked to suck up to her all the time because Kim was the baby of their family, having come along years later than the rest of them, and quite unexpectedly too. She could entertain the girl for as long as things were going her way, but they weren’t, and he had brought the wolfless girl to their pack. Why would he do that when she had missed him so much?

Hailey stood there glaring at the curtain.

The last time she had seen Sebastian in person, he had been furious with her for showing up unannounced at his office while he was working with some guests betas. He had sent her away in front of everyone, coldly and without apology, and told her never to come to Silver again unless he contacted her himself.

He never had. And Hailey had been too proud to go back after the humiliation of the last time, so she had waited. Instead of a call, she had gotten news of a wedding, to a wolfless girl who had won some competition of all things.

She had been furious, and she had been jealous, but her pride had kept her silent. She had refused to confront him publicly over it. But now he was here, in her pack, on her territory, and she saw absolutely no reason why she couldn’t approach him herself and remind him of everything they had once shared.

Perhaps a quiet affair while he was here, and then, with time and the right moves, the idea of marrying her would plant itself. It would solve everything, shut her father’s ambitions down cleanly and give Sebastian a proper mate from a powerful bloodline who could give him a worthy heir.

Hailey had it all worked out in her head. The one variable she hadn’t accounted for was his wife being present, but then, when had a nobody ever posed a real problem to Hailey? She knew how to get what she wanted, and she already had access to the room arrangements made for his stay.

With that thought settled comfortably in her chest, Hailey returned to her vanity and finished her makeup, humming softly to herself. She might not be particularly fond of her brother’s bride-to-be, but she was grateful for this ceremony and everything it was making possible.

Satisfied with her blonde hair and the jewelry, the pieces he had once gifted her, deliberately chosen and deliberately worn, she left her room to go and make arrangements for their most important guests.

---

Viola was tucked firmly against her husband’s side as they stepped into the mansion, which looked as though it had been built sometime in the 1930s, tall columns, heavy stonework, intricate old-fashioned detailing across every surface. It was many stories high, painted a slightly yellowed off-white, with a grand entrance and large French windows overlooking the front. Even without looking up, she could feel eyes watching from behind those windows.

At the entrance they were welcomed by Alpha Daniel himself, his Luna standing beside him, and several of his daughters arranged nearby, and Viola quickly noticed that Hailey was not among them. She let out a quiet, private breath of relief.

"Welcome to the Grim pack, Supreme Alpha." Alpha Daniel said, extending a hand. "I trust you had a smooth journey."

Sebastian reached out and clasped it. "We did. The only unfortunate aspect was the absence of a landing space within your pack grounds, something that really ought to be considered at this point, so that guests don’t have to touch down miles away and be driven in." He said it with complete smoothness, landing the subtle observation about how far behind the Grim pack had fallen before Alpha Daniel had even finished greeting them.

Daniel laughed, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. "We have no need for a landing space when even I don’t own a private jet. A good Alpha puts his people’s needs before personal indulgences like jets and helicopters. I am not a greedy man, Supreme Alpha."

The quiet dig landed clearly, the insinuation that Sebastian was the sort of man who spent pack resources on himself rather than his people, merely because he owned different kinds of jets and helicopters and had many landing spaces for them within his pack. Sebastian found it funny that the Alpha of Grim Pack thought doing things like that was being greedy.

"Greed isn’t buying things that benefit yourself and your pack," Sebastian returned with a mild smile of his own. "Greed is letting your people live with outdated infrastructure and old vehicles when the resources exist to improve their lives. What was that sound I heard on the way in? Old engines from the last generation?" He tilted his head slightly. "Now what should we call that kind of maintenance?"

Viola, standing pressed to his side, quickly noted that Alpha Daniel’s expression had shifted, the performance of warmth dropping away from his face, his jaw tightening just slightly. This had never been a friendly exchange. It looked very much like things were about to go badly because of Sebastian’s words, and she felt her throat go dry as the atmosphere suddenly changed.