Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna-Chapter 146: Apologize to her!

"It seems, Miss Ember, that you will have a great deal of work on your hands after your ceremony, for it appears not all of the lowlives here are dressed in uniform, and one even dares to grab your hand." Came Leni’s remark, hanging off Evan’s arm and letting her eyes settle coolly on Viola, who looked impossibly well and far better than someone who had been taken away to serve Ember had any right to look.

The last time Leni had seen this woman, she had looked no better than a skeleton with her skin hanging loosely off her bones and her chest as flat as a board. But there was a fullness to the pajama shirt she wore now, and her face had recovered to that irresistible beauty that Leni could vividly recall being deeply jealous of, the same beauty that had always earned her the undivided attention of every man in their pack, men whom the woman had always carelessly ignored for the sake of Evan.

Ember must truly be a very generous woman to have fed and clothed this nobody so well.

Leni pressed herself even closer against Evan’s side at that thought, and she smiled internally when his arm tightened around her.

"You can stay behind for a few days to assist her in straightening out these lowlives, my pet. Some people really do forget their place," Evan said with pure annoyance as he glared at Viola, who was watching him with blank and utterly indifferent eyes. How dare she look at him that way, as though she had the right? Who did she think she was to even meet Leni’s eyes, let alone his and Ember’s?

"Was that how you were trained in the quarters, you piece of shit? Get down on your knees and apologize to your Luna!" Evan demanded, taking a threatening step forward with his Alpha aura flaring and bleeding into the atmosphere around him.

Viola, in spite of herself and everything inside her that despised Evan, found herself trembling, her insides clenching tightly. Though she could face almost everyone without fear, she couldn’t face Evan. She hated this part of herself that lost all control when it came to him, the part of her he had destroyed with his betrayal, and seeing his protective arm wrapped around Leni’s waist made her fingers clench at her sides.

Wasn’t she over him already? So why was it still affecting her? Could it be because of the...

Taking a deep breath, she bent down and helped Sofia, who was whimpering to her feet, reaching out with concern to move the hair away from her face as she asked quietly, "Are you all right?"

Sofia recoiled from Viola in fright the moment she felt her touch, parting the curtain of hair from her own face, and then she turned and ran as though she were terrified, disappearing before Viola could say another word.

Viola’s brows knitted together, forming a faint crease on her forehead as she couldn’t help but think that for an Alpha’s daughter and the wife and mate of a Kade, Sofia was receiving a very poor treatment from the people around her, and that wasn’t all right. People like Ember shouldn’t have the right to raise their hands against her at all.

Before Viola could look away from the direction Sofia had fled and turn back to face the people who had once been a part of her life, she felt a fist seize her hair from behind and she was tackled to the ground with a kick to the backs of her knees. Before she could do anything, a hard slap landed across her face and her glasses broke, flying off and away from her face and thrusting her world into a haze of blurriness.

Sharp pain stung all the way from her cheek to the back of her head, and her knees hit the floor with a force that rattled through her bones. She bit back a moan of pain. She didn’t need to see clearly to know who it was, it was Evan.

She recognized his ways of tormenting her from years of enduring them, recognized the weight and angle of his slap and his hits, and she felt a hot, seething anger swell inside her at the fact that he no longer had any right to lay a hand on her, yet here he was doing it, again.

"You little bitch, you think just because the future supreme Luna is generous enough to give you a roof over your head and to clothe and feed you well enough to look like a person again, you can disrespect her in front of me? People like you don’t deserve generosity. You need a constant reminder of where you belong!" Evan gritted out furiously as he twisted her hair tighter in his fist and slapped her face again, so hard that a trail of blood crept from the corner of her lips.

People began to gather around the scene, watching, and despite some of them knowing full well that she was the future supreme Luna, not one of them stepped forward to stop this stranger from beating her. Deep down, many of the Silver Pack members didn’t like her to begin with, for they still believed that a wolfless woman had no business being crowned.

However, some among the crowd couldn’t help but think that this Alpha was courting his own death, for no matter what anyone thought of her, no one had the right to beat a supreme Luna. What did he think he was doing?

Viola, who had never imagined she would ever go through such humiliation again, was suddenly flooded with the memory of all the pain she had suffered for four long years under Evan, despite the fact that it was because of her that he had ever come close to smelling the Alpha seat at all. It was her influence, her efforts, and her ways that had gotten him to become who he was today.

Despite everything in her that wanted to fight back, some deeply ingrained conditioning ran far too deep for time alone to erase. She had been broken and tormented for four years into bowing down to him and to every person of power in Moonwillow. And without her glasses, she could see nothing but a blur, making it impossible to deflect his slaps when they came. But anger simmered inside her like hot lava, building steadily beneath the surface.

"Apologize to her!" Evan barked again, driving a kick into her stomach as she lay on the floor.

"You are going to regret this, Evan—" Viola began through gritted teeth as she attempted to push herself up off the ground, but Evan shoved her back down again and delivered another kick to her stomach that made her groan.

"How dare you call my name?" He turned to Ember, who stood to the side with Leni, watching with a satisfied smirk on her face, and said, "Give her to me when I am returning to Moonwillow, she will receive proper discipline in my pack, and she will never dare disrespect anyone again."

"Do whatever you please with her, you can have her. I have no use for the bitch." Ember told him with a delicate, dismissive wave of her hand, not particularly caring where the woman had come from or what she was doing here in the first place, for as long as Ember wouldn’t be dealing with her here when she married the supreme Alpha, she didn’t particularly care what Evan did with the bitch.

Evan smirked in deep pleasure, having gotten exactly what he wanted without even having to try too hard. He would take her back to his pack and put her to work fixing all of his problems.

Bending down, he grabbed her by the hair as she lay curled on the floor clutching her stomach, groaning in pain, and was drawing back his hand to slap some more discipline into her when it suddenly felt as though the devil himself had walked into the space, bringing with him the brutal cold of winter. And along with that suffocating, crushing presence came a very dark and dangerously furious voice that warned,

"Touch her again, and you will learn exactly what is worse than death!"