Chapter 385 Where did you find her?

What had happened? Was she dead? Matt thought as he ran toward Sebastian, pulling off his coat and draping it over his friend’s shoulders, but Sebastian barely blinked. That dark, murderous look hadn’t shifted from his face and he looked as angry as a bull, his aura rolling off him in suffocating waves that hit even Matt hard. Matt quickly checked to confirm the Luna was still breathing and found she was, merely unconscious, and the relief that moved through his chest was immediate.

“Where did you find her? What happened?” He asked, trying to keep pace with Sebastian’s long strides back into the building, but if Sebastian heard him, he gave no sign of it and kept walking, leaving muddy footprints across the clean marble floors of the pack house.

Matt followed silently behind him, knowing he would get nothing until Sebastian had cooled. But he couldn’t stop his eyes from going to the Luna, to the state of her dress, torn to near shreds, barely covering her body, what remained of the fabric tied roughly around her chest and lower half of her body. She was covered in mud from head to toe. Had she shifted, the way the Alpha had? Or had something far worse happened before Seb got to her?

Matt was desperate to know, but the moment they reached the room Sebastian shared with his wife, the door was slammed in his face before he could follow inside, Sebastian’s voice coming through it. “Send word to Silver. I need my warriors here by tomorrow.”

Matt stood outside that closed door for a long moment, staring at it. Warriors? Did it have to come down to this?

He didn’t need to wonder long about what that meant. Warriors were called when a war was about to break out between packs, and it seemed Silver and Grim were finally about to come for each other’s throats in the most direct way possible.

He pulled himself together and turned away, remembering first that he had promised Zoe he would come back and tell her her friend was found. He would do that before making the call for backup, and hopefully before he did, he hoped Sebastian would have reconsidered about starting a war between the packs.

—

Inside the room, Sebastian went straight to the bathroom without stopping in the bedroom. He used his foot to start the water running into the tub while he supported Viola with one arm, then used his free hand to add bathing gel to the filling warm water.

He did all of it without his expression changing, that cold hardness hadn’t left his face and it didn’t intend to. He wanted to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to find whoever had done this to his wife and take them apart piece by piece, but he didn’t know who, and not knowing was its own particular kind of torture and pain in his heart.

His heart was breaking apart so much he didn’t know what to do with it.

The image of what he had found when he cleared that maze kept flashing through his mind, and every time it did, his blood ran hotter.

Even before the tub had finished filling, Sebastian shrugged Matt’s coat off his shoulders and stepped into the water with Viola still in his arms. The tub was large with plenty of room and he sat down and settled her onto his lap instead, pulling her against his chest, and then he simply held her there in the foamy water and stared up at the ceiling with his hand rubbing up and down her spine.

And for the first time in a very long time, tears began to roll down Sebastian’s face.

He cried silently, staring at the ceiling, before he buried his nose into her mud-coated hair and pulled her closer. “I am sorry I didn’t find you sooner, my love. I’m so sorry.”

He rocked her gently as though she could feel it, as though she could feel the weight of his regret at having left her side long enough for someone to do what they had done to her in that maze.

The memory of how he had found her made his tears stop as abruptly as they had begun, replaced by something colder and more dangerous. He began to wash her body methodically and automatically, not allowing his mind to wander anywhere else.

He washed her body three times, as though he could scrub away the touch of whoever had laid their hands on her before he arrived.

When he reached her neck, where he had left a hickey that very morning, something inside him twisted painfully. Another hickey sat right beside his, its marks even more pronounced against her skin. Then he found another near the top of her breast, and Sebastian’s face flushed a furious red. For a brief, terrifying moment, he wanted nothing more than to storm out, hunt down whoever had done this, and kill them with his own hands.

He took a long, steadying breath, forcing the murderous rage back down before quietly continuing to bathe her.

On the third change of water, once the foam was fully rinsed from her hair and skin, he carried her out of the tub and into the room.

Sebastian dried them both and then, without bothering to dress either of them, got her beneath the blanket and slipped in behind her, her back to his front, one of his legs sliding between hers so his thigh pressed up against her warmth, his other hand finding her chest and holding her close.

He listened to her steady breathing without closing his eyes.

His mind kept going back to it. Her naked body lying in the mud at the center of the maze. Her dress torn to near nothing beside her. Someone had assaulted his wife and left her there for him to find.

That image was not going to leave him. And the worst part, the part that was eating at him more than anything else, was that he had not been able to catch a single scent of whoever had done this anywhere near the scene. Whoever it was had left no trace.

Sebastian buried his nose in the curve of her neck and closed his eyes.

Once she woke up, he would find the culprit.