Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 380: The Mermaid_Part 2

The men who had gone through the trouble of shipping the creature to Silver had suffered all kinds of injuries along the way and had nearly gone through a complete shipwreck, because the creature had been using her tail to slam against the tank she was trapped in, making sounds and shaking the ship from the inside.

They had lost three men to her sharp fins and pointed scales, which looked like the most beautiful jewels in the world but were as sharp as blades the moment she decided to use them to fight, and she had used them more than once.

Now, having finally brought her to their destination, she was acting restless again after being silent for hours, hitting the tube with her tail as though she intended to break through it.

The tube, however, had been built from unbreakable materials specifically for stubborn sea creatures like her. That didn’t stop the mouths of every werewolf who laid eyes on her from watering, because the fish half of a mermaid was the most prized and delicious delicacy known to their kind.

"The Supreme Alpha only wants her heart, we can bargain for the fish part. I’ve never tasted it before but I’ve heard it’s something else." Remarked one of the three men standing watch over the long tank that ran from ceiling to floor, filled with clear water in which the creature swam up and down looking for a way out, her bluish tail catching the light with every movement.

She made a sound like a wail and slammed her tail against the glass.

"That tail sure is strong. Can’t wait to have a taste of it. She must be calling to her fucking partner with those cries. The bastard killed Willy."

"She’s glaring at us," muttered another one. "Glare all you want. If you don’t stop making those annoying sounds, we’ll find your partner and kill it too to avenge our friend. You should consider yourself lucky you’re still alive, but you won’t be for long once our Supreme Alpha gets back."

The mermaid suddenly stopped struggling. She suspended herself in the middle of the tank and raised both hands slowly. The men, confident that she couldn’t escape or do anything from within that sealed tank, watched with curious eyes, waiting to see what trick she was trying to pull this time.

But as they watched, the ground beneath their feet began to shake. A crack split through the floor and water began gushing up through it, flooding the ground faster than any of them had expected, and their eyes went wide.

"Fucking fish! I told you she’s royalty and has more power than the others! She’s going to flood all of Silver if you don’t give her more of the sedative dosage!" One of them shouted as they scrambled to keep their footing and hold back the panic rising in their chests.

The water coming up through the floor didn’t just flood, it moved. It shaped itself into something like a snake, coiling and striking, wrapping around the throats of two of the men and slicing their heads clean off in a single motion as though a blade had passed through them.

The third man saw it happen and lunged for the control panel on the wall, and if he had been even a step further away from that button, the water would have reached him too. His palm hit the switch, and a blue liquid released into the tank immediately, and the mermaid went limp, sinking slowly to the bottom of it as the gushing water retreated back underground.

The man stood there with water up to his knees, breathing hard, staring at the heads of his companions on the floor as the flood receded around his feet. His heart was slamming so hard in his chest he could barely think straight.

He didn’t waste another second. He covered the water tank with a tarpaulin and backed away from it. Then he reached for his phone and called the Beta, to report that the mermaid they had captured was far more powerful than anticipated and was almost certainly one of the royals, whose strength was known to be in a class entirely its own.

---

Back in the Grim pack, the hall that had been carrying the weight of gloom and tension was now filled with movement and smiles, people dancing around the floor with a warmth that hadn’t been there an hour before.

The Supreme Luna had won the hearts of the room without even trying, her song had reached into every chest and loosened something there. And the moment she finished and began stepping down from the stage, the Alpha heir, who could never walk away from music, had come forward with his guitar and asked if they could sing together.

Their voices combined into something that the people in that hall would be talking about long after the ceremony was over. A masterpiece born in a moment of unexpected joy. And as they sang and the emotional current of the song moved through her, Viola’s eyes filled with tears and she poured her soul into every note, thinking about how far she had come, and the people who had found her along the way. Zoe, Sebastian, Nick, Tess, and even Laila, despite everything between them at the beginning. And now the Alpha heir singing beside her, grinning like he had just been handed the whole world on his mating day.

Wasn’t this something. Wasn’t this something worth feeling.

After betraying her sister as a little girl. After being adopted and turning hard and mean in the effort to be liked, and letting that cruelty carve a path that had almost broken her entirely. She thought of Ivy, and a lump rose in her throat and tears blurred her vision without her being able to stop them.

There was a bittersweet ache in her chest that she couldn’t put down. Life was never meant to be all sunshine and warmth, she knew that, but she wished, quietly and deeply, that she could find every missing piece of herself. Know what had happened to her sister. Be wholly, completely, unguardedly happy without something always waiting in the shadows of it.

She ended the song carrying every happy and sad and bitter moment of her life at once, and somehow turned all of it into music.

When she finally stepped down from the stage, people came at her from every direction.

"I have never heard anyone sing like that in my life!"

"Supreme Luna, do you know anyone who sings as well as you just did? I would love to book them for my birthday. And if you don’t mind, I can send you a special invitation to attend. Goddess, I would give anything to have you sing for me."

"Supreme Luna, can you do us the honer of sitting with my table?"

Viola had hoped this attention would help her make connections and find her place in the circles a Supreme Luna was supposed to move in, but she was too overwhelmed by her own emotions to do anything more than force a smile and reply to people one by one, and even hugged people.

Thankfully Sebastian came and pulled her away from the crowd, whose attention drifted naturally back toward the Alpha heir and his Luna-to-be, where it belonged, as today was their day.

Werewolf paparazzi moved through the hall, snapping pictures and shoving cameras toward the Supreme Luna, desperate to capture the perfect shot so they could plaster her across tomorrow’s headlines. Earlier, none of them had paid much attention to her, too busy interviewing the people they considered important. Now they crowded around her, calling for her to look at their lenses and smile for the cameras, until a single look from the Supreme Alpha sent them stumbling backward, hurriedly redirecting their lenses elsewhere with shivers running down their spines.