Chapter 386 What happened?

Viola’s entire body was aching and she had a terrible headache she couldn’t think past, beyond the warmth surrounding her that made her want to keep sleeping, but the throbbing in her head pulled her back. She opened her eyes to a dark room and slowly became aware of the solid wall of warmth pressed against her back, the leg trapped between her thighs, and the hand dropped carelessly around her waist and curled up to her bare chest.

At first Viola had no idea how she had ended up in that position with Sebastian, she knew it was him even before she turned around, but she lay still for a moment and let herself feel him against her like that, both of them without clothes, because the last thing she could remember was being consumed by emotions after singing.

The intensity of those emotions was gone now, but the headache wasn’t, and neither was the ache through her whole body. She slowly lifted her leg to free his from between her thighs and carefully turned over in his arms to face him. Though the room was dark, her vision wasn’t quite that of a human’s, and his face was clear enough to her in the dark.

His eyes were closed, but she doubted he was deeply asleep, his lashes were twitching too much for that. She raised her hand and brought her fingers to his face, tracing the lines of it slowly. His under eyes, then the straight bridge of his nose, down to his lips. She was tracing the thick, well-shaped arch of his brow when his stormy silver eyes opened and locked with hers, and her hand stilled against his face.

They stared at each other as though time itself had frozen. In those silent moments, something unspoken passed between them, something neither of them could explain nor ignore.

Without saying a word, he slowly closed the distance between them, his movements careful, almost hesitant. Before she had fully registered what was happening, his lips were already on hers, brushing against them in a soft, tender kiss.

But the gentleness lasted only a heartbeat.

A low, almost pained sound rumbled deep in Sebastian’s chest as the kiss deepened, his mouth slanting over hers with a hunger that stole the air straight from her lungs. His lips were firm and warm, pressing insistently until she parted for him, and the moment she did, his tongue swept inside, stroking hers in slow, deliberate strokes that made her toes curl beneath the sheets.

He tasted like storm and salt. His breath was hot and ragged against her cheek, mingling with hers as their mouths moved together. He kissed her like a man who had almost lost everything, devouring her with a desperation that made her head spin and her fingers curl into his skin.

One of his large hands slid up her bare back, fingers splaying wide as he pulled her impossibly closer, crushing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest. Her nipples tightened instantly at the contact, pebbling into sensitive peaks that ached with every shift of their bodies against each other.

Viola felt him growing hard against her thigh, the thick, heavy length of him pressing insistently into her soft skin as he rocked subtly toward her. A shiver raced down her spine and heat pooled low in her belly as arousal hit her hard.

His other hand cupped the back of her head, threading his fingers through her damp hair and tilting her face exactly where he wanted it so he could kiss her even deeper. Their tongues tangled, slick and urgent, the wet sounds of their mouths filling the quiet dark room.

He sucked gently on her lower lip before claiming her mouth again, deeper this time, harder, until her whole body was trembling and a soft whimper escaped her throat before she could stop it.

But beneath the fierce hunger, Viola began to feel something else bleeding through the kiss. His emotions. For some reason she could feel a fraction of them inside her own chest, and she didn’t know how, but the intense rage and gut-wrenching guilt pressing against her heart didn’t belong to her. She realized quickly that they were his, and that he was pouring every bit of it into the kiss.

It was overwhelming, like drowning in someone else’s storm. Her heart clenched painfully.

She pulled back abruptly, breaking the kiss with a sharp gasp, her hands flying up to cup his face, palms cradling his strong jaw as she searched his stormy silver eyes in the darkness.

“Sebastian…” she whispered, still breathless from the intensity of it. Her thumbs moved gently against his skin, feeling the tension locked in every line of his face. “What’s wrong?”

No answer. He only stared at her.

“Talk to me. Please.” She added softly, and watched emotions play across his face and eyes like he was fighting to keep some demons inside him from breaking loose. She almost thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all, and then he spoke.

“Someone assaulted you today and left you in the middle of the hedge maze for me to find,” he said calmly, but the moment he saw the horror cross her face, the anger he had been struggling to suppress surged right back to the surface, belatedly realizing she didn’t even know what had happened to her.

There were few things more devastating to a mated werewolf than another man laying his hands on their mate. They were possessive and fiercely territorial by nature, and the thought of another man touching the woman who belonged to him burned far deeper than any physical wound ever could.

It was only through sheer restraint that Sebastian wasn’t turning the entire Grim Pack upside down in search of the culprit and cutting off all the limbs he had used to touch his mate.

Viola fell silent for a moment, the horror plainly visible in her blue eyes as she tried to process his words. She had no memory of it happening, and yet she couldn’t deny them either, because faint, hazy fragments were beginning to surface.

She remembered the sensation of struggling against someone’s hands as they tried to remove her dress while whispering words of endearment into her ear, words that made her skin crawl and forced her awake from a numb, sleep-like state. She had pushed the person away, even striking him with a stone before trying to crawl away from him, but he had caught up to her and pulled her back.

She remembered her body being far too weak to fight back. She remembered slipping back into unconsciousness, convincing herself it was only a dream and nothing more, that this person wasn’t real. But after that, she had no memory of what happened next.

Was that what it had been… a sexual assault?

She had truly believed she was dreaming. Her mind had been strangely blank, unable to tell what was real and what wasn’t. She hadn’t even realized those fragmented memories were real until this very moment.

Viola turned to face the ceiling and pulled the sheets tighter against her chest, unable to fight the overwhelming shame that washed over her, as though covering herself more completely could somehow erase the fact that someone had taken advantage of her while she was unconscious.

After a long, painful silence, she asked quietly, her voice carrying a devastating fragility,

“Did… did he penetrate me?”

The question sat in the air between them like a heavy weight. Because if the answer was yes, she knew what it could mean, what it had meant for Sofia.

Once a werewolf’s mate caught them with another person, or learned they had been with someone else, whether intentionally or not, it made no difference. Before the mating mark had been given to strengthen and anchor the bond, the spark between mates would begin to crack. Quietly. Steadily. Like something slowly dissolving into dust. It had happened in countless cases throughout their world.

Viola felt the lump in her throat tighten until it settled heavily in her chest, making it difficult to swallow as she waited for his answer.

“I don’t know.” Sebastian said quietly, and he too turned to look at the ceiling. “I was searching for you for over thirty minutes. I found your ring lying in a puddle near the hedge maze. I found you in the center of it…” He couldn’t finish the sentence and she said,

“How did you find me?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.