Chapter 333: Immediate regret
Sebastian watched her reach for the fish and something inside him cracked clean down the middle.
He had spent an entire day and a sleepless night convincing himself. He had replayed every word that creature had said to him in that bathroom, had turned each one over like evidence, had used it to build a wall between himself and what he felt for her because it had been easier than accepting that the woman he had fallen for might be the very thing his bloodline had bled against for generations.
He had held her last night knowing. Had breathed her in knowing. Had asked her to hold him anyway because even with the doubt eating him alive, he couldn’t have not touched her. That alone should have told him everything.
And now she was sitting across from him with tears running silently down her face, not screaming, not defending herself with fury, just reaching out with a trembling hand to eat something that made her sick, just to prove to him that she was who he already knew she was.
A talking body of water had nearly made him destroy the best thing that had ever walked into his complicated, miserable life.
His hand shot across the table before it reached her lips. He yanked it from her fingers and threw it across the room, and then he was on his feet, and then he was in front of her, and then he was on his knees.
"Look at me." He said, when she kept her face turned away, her throat convulsing with everything she was trying to hold in. When she didn’t move, he reached up and cupped her face in both hands, gently turning her toward him.
"Amor," he said softly, and it was the first time he had used that endearment with genuine tenderness since yesterday, and she felt it like warmth returning after a long cold. "I am an idiot for letting a talking body of water convince me of anything, because it played me for a fool in that moment. I was angry, angry that you had kept something so significant from me, but I understand now that you don’t even fully know yourself." He stroked the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs as he said it.
What a fool he had been. That creature had planted a seed of doubt so deep it had taken root overnight, but watching her cry now, it was as though that wall of doubt simply collapsed, and he could see clearly again. How could she be one of them when she had grown up here, suffered here for four years in the hollow, with nothing and no one? And he remembered the wolf fur that had risen along her skin during their most intimate moments.
Perhaps Gilbert’s report about her DNA being different had only muddied things further, made everything harder to separate and understand.
Even if it turned out she carried sea creature blood somewhere in her origin, it changed nothing in what he wanted. It did not make him want to harm her. It did not make him want to stand before his people and announce that a hybrid walked among them.
"I am sorry," he whispered, looking into those blue eyes that reminded him of diamonds. "I should have come to you directly instead of letting it build into this. But you should not have hidden it from me either, amor. Look at me, please." He pleaded softly when she looked away, biting down on her lower lip.
"It wasn’t my intention to hide it from you..." She whispered hoarsely. "I was afraid that I would lose you and my place here. I don’t have anything else out there, no family, no home, nothing outside of Silver. How could I have told you, knowing what I was risking?" She cried, wiping aggressively at her eyes and in the process knocking his hand away from her face, but he cupped her cheeks again and held on.
"When did you find out?" He asked, wiping her cheeks delicately, his eyes not leaving hers.
"Not too long ago. There was this water creature following me around, and after what I did to Ember..." She stopped, then pushed through it. "I swear it wasn’t intentional. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to kill her." She said.
"I know. Shh, I know. You didn’t kill her." He said, pulling her down from the chair and into his arms, wishing he could turn back the last twenty-four hours and hit himself for every tear currently on her face.
"I did, I drained her of fluid..." She rasped against his neck, her nose buried there while his large hand moved in slow, careful strokes along her back.
"Yes, you drained her, but you didn’t kill her. Someone else did. She was poisoned with silver afterward. What you did to her was not something that could have taken her life." He told her, and Viola pulled back to look at him with wide, surprised eyes.
She sat with that for a moment before asking quietly, "Who did it?"
"We don’t know yet." He said, brushing her wet lashes gently. "I am sorry I approached this the way I did. The water creature that has been following you, is it the same one that pulled you under in Nightshade? The same one I spoke to yesterday?"
Viola shook her head quickly. "No. It’s different. This one is friendly." She paused, then added quietly, staring down at his bent knee rather than his face, "Don’t ever do that to me again, please..." And Sebastian understood she wasn’t talking about the creature anymore, she was talking about him, about last night and this morning and all the cold, awful hours in between.
"I will never take the side of the sea creatures. No matter what runs in my blood, my home is here, in the werewolf world, and I will never betray it for anything. Not when my husband rules it. Never." She promised.
Sebastian felt regret and relief wash over him at the same time. He had spent so many hours tangled up in what her being a hybrid might mean for their world, for his people, for everything, but hearing her say those words, something in him settled. He would protect her. Whatever it cost him, whatever it required, he would keep her safe from his people, because in this world, hybrids were not welcomed, only pure werewolves, and for a terrifying stretch of time he had believed this would be the end of everything between them.
But he couldn’t end it. Couldn’t cast her aside. Couldn’t break the bond that had already buried itself so deeply into his heart he wouldn’t survive pulling it out. He loved this woman. God help him, he would give it all up for her, just as she was willing to turn away from whatever part of herself belonged to the sea, for him.
