Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 384: Trust me

Matt and Zoe kept searching through the rooms on the grounds where the one Sebastian and Viola had been given was located, but even after going through every single one, there was no sign of her anywhere.

When they opened the last door and found it empty, everyone still down in the hall celebrating, Zoe’s shoulders dropped. Little sobs began leaving her throat before she could stop them, and she quickly covered her face with her palms and turned her back to Matt, unable to hold herself together and not wanting him to see it.

This was what she had always feared most. The unexpected attack on a Luna’s life that happened so often in their world. She had carried that fear for her friend quietly at the back of her mind from the very beginning, and now here it was.

She had never once imagined it would happen while they were all surrounded by people. If she hadn’t been so consumed with Gilbert, she would have been sitting right beside Vee the whole time. She would have been able to stop anything from happening to her, the way she had once protected her brother from a silver bullet. She would have taken far more than one for Vee.

The worst scenarios began playing through her mind one after another, and she shuddered and cried harder into her palms. Just days ago a Luna from a neighboring pack had been kidnapped and found brutally killed. And now her friend...

She turned and started to move, intending to go outside and help with the search herself, but Matt caught her hand and drew her back, and before she knew it his arms were around her, pulling her against his chest.

"Shh. Don’t cry, she will be fine. Seb and I will find her, I promise you." He whispered into her hair, one hand cradling the back of her head, his fingers threading gently through the strands to soothe her. But Zoe only cried harder.

She let him hold her anyway, she couldn’t help it. Her slender arms came around his narrow waist and she held on, wanting the comfort even while she couldn’t fully believe the promises she desperately wanted to believe. Something must have happened. Vee wouldn’t simply disappear in the middle of a ceremony, not after giving a performance like that on stage and bringing life to an entire boring audience.

"I-I sh-should have d-done something. I should have been b-beside her..." She sobbed into his chest, and his arms tightened around her waist, his fingers spreading across her back as he kept saying, "Shh. Don’t blame yourself, Zoe. Everything will be fine."

He knew she didn’t believe him. But he kept saying it anyway and kept holding her, and he genuinely wanted her to stop crying, because for reasons that went all the way back to when she was small and used to follow him everywhere, he had never been able to stand tears in her eyes.

He much preferred the bubbly Zoe, the one who would talk and talk until she started to annoy him, but always managed to amuse him too because he always end up genuinely wondering sometimes if she ever got tired of talking that much.

Her tears were never something he could be comfortable with. Zoe was the kind of person who would lay her life down for someone she cared about without a second thought, who loved her family without condition, who blamed herself for every small thing that went wrong because she believed she should have been able to prevent it, even when there was nothing she could have done. She had been exactly like that as a little girl. Growing up hadn’t changed her at all, Matt realized.

He thought of the time she had cried for an entire afternoon over losing the eye off her little plushie wolf, the one she used to hug to sleep, because she believed it meant he wouldn’t be able to see her properly anymore and would always be in pain.

Matt felt her tears soaking through his shirt and her shoulders shaking so hard he thought she might break, her voice barely holding together as she kept murmuring Vee’s name. To stop her, he pulled back just enough to look at her face, but her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, silver hair plastered against the wet skin.

He raised his hand and carefully moved the hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears, and then gently wiped her cheeks with his fingers. "Look at me, Zoe." He said it quietly, and it was enough to make her open her eyes, revealing those silver irises, the white around them now pink and swollen from crying.

"She is going to be all right. I promise you that. I will do everything in my power to keep her safe for you, but if you promise me you will not step outside, I will go right now and help your brother search for her. Can you promise me that?" He asked, holding her small face carefully between his large palms and stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

"I...I will go with yo—"

"No, you won’t." He said firmly. "You will slow us down. We will find her faster if we are not worrying about you at the same time. Have I ever promised you something and not kept it?" He looked down into her brimming eyes and waited.

Zoe didn’t have to think about it. She shook her head. Unlike her brother, who had a complicated history with promises, Matt had always been different. Since she was small he had kept every single one. Whatever he said he would give her, he gave her.

"Good. Then trust me now."

She didn’t want to stay and pace and imagine everything her friend might be going through, but she also didn’t want to be the reason they found her a minute too late. With every bit of reluctance she had and a lump sitting heavy in her throat, she gave him a small nod. "I will stay..."

She saw him smile just slightly, his hazel eyes catching a warmth she hadn’t seen in them before. She had expected him to let go and head straight out, but instead he took her hand and walked her back to her room and saw her inside.

"I will come back and tell you the moment we find her. For now, rest." He said, stroking her hair the way he used to when she was little, and for the first time in her life she wasn’t the least bit annoyed by it. She was comforted.

"Don’t forget your promises..." She whispered.

Matt smiled. "I won’t. Be a good girl and don’t step outside." And then without thinking about it, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her wet cheek. "I will be right back."

He turned and left, and the door closed behind him, leaving Zoe standing there with a confused feeling she didn’t know what to do with and a sudden jolt in her stomach from the touch of his lips on her cheek she couldn’t quite explain. She stood with it for only a moment before the worry for her friend swallowed everything else and she began to pace.

Matt jogged out of the building and went through the back door, and then he stopped dead in his tracks.

Sebastian was striding toward him with a murderous expression carved into his face, naked, his shifting clothes left somewhere behind. Cradled against his chest was his wife, limp, one arm hanging at her side like dead weight, her body covered only by the shredded remains of the gold dress she had worn to the ceremony. And for a single moment, Matt’s heart stopped beating entirely as he looked at her.