Chapter 424 Stepping into disaster

Sebastian returned to where the mermaid was being held, finding his Beta and the doctor both crouched behind the pod that had carried her in, dodging the scales she was hurling at them in rage and his eyes immediately darkened at the scene.

As he approached, Matt called out,

“Seb, duck if you don’t want to get hurt! She’s crazy!”

Sebastian, already in a foul mood, raised his hand and suspended the sharp scales flying toward him in midair with his power, then swiped everything aside without much effort, knocking the mermaid more firmly against her bindings.

“If you don’t want to die right now, you’ll stop that.” He warned her, a dark look in his eyes that made Yasmin reconsider attacking him further, as he could hurt and kill her with the powers he possessed. She couldn’t help but wonder who among her clans he had killed to get the powers.

Her eyes darted behind him, searching for her cousin, whom she believed would come to her defense, when the cruel werewolf spoke again.

“She’s not coming to your rescue. And the next time you try to call her back here, in any way, I’ll make sure your death is far more painful than it needs to be.” He warned, his aura bleeding into the air around them, releasing a cold, toxic chill that felt like standing in a mountain of snow.

“You are cruel,” Yasmin said. “And you’ll pay for this. My mate will hunt you down until he has your head,” she gritted out, knowing her mate. As one of the Warriors of the Seven Seas, he would never let this go unavenged if Sebastian killed her. He would tear apart the lands and slaughter every land-dweller if that was what it took to find the werewolf responsible.

“I’ll be waiting for him. And as for being cruel, I thought we’d already established that fact. It’s fairly well known. So, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut,” he said, resisting the temptation to let his temper end her life before the time was right.

Sebastian was well aware that Viola was only trying to make things right with her sister, and as much as he loved her, as much as he wanted to help her reconcile with Ivy, he had his own obligations to think about.

Mermaids were the source of his suffering every month. He despised every single one of them and had never seen them as creatures deserving of mercy. Viola had been the only exception because he loved her, an exception he had extended to her twin as well.

But no one else would receive that same privilege. As far as he was concerned, none of them had cared enough to protect Viola herself during all the years she had suffered in the Hollow. So why should he extend that same mercy to the rest of them now, when all they had ever brought into his life was misery through this damned curse?

In two days, if he didn’t complete the sacrifice, Sebastian stood to lose far too much. He knew Viola would be furious with him for going through with it, but he told himself he would make it right afterward, that he would fix things between them. He would finally confess to her what the curse had truly done to him, why he needed it gone, and why he couldn’t afford to let this mermaid go.

Her suggestion to search for another way might have worked, if his curse hadn’t been tied up in all of it.

“Matt, I need you to double the guard outside this door, and across the entire floor. No one gets in here, not even my wife. Especially not her.” He ordered, knowing full well how clever she was; she wouldn’t have been his wife if she wasn’t such a clever woman, and something told him she’d try to come back and free the mermaid herself.

Matt frowned. “For a moment there, I actually thought we weren’t going through with this, seeing as the Supreme Luna was against it. That’s the first time I’ve seen you not give her what she wants.” He remarked, brushing himself off after diving to the floor to escape the enraged mermaid he’d provoked simply by asking what they ate in the sea. Were mermaids that short-tempered?

“I’ll give her the world, anything she wants, but this…” His eyes drifted to the mermaid. “This is the only way, Matt. She’ll understand, when the time comes.” Saying that, he walked away from the room.

“I hope she does,” Matt muttered before turning to the mermaid with a grimace look on his face.

Elsewhere in the building, Zoe was seen walking down the halls toward Viola’s room, nervously fiddling with her hair, anxious, unsure whether Viola was still upset with her, unaware that her friend was currently caught in a far bigger dilemma than anything Zoe imagined.

When Zoe reached Viola’s penthouse, she took a deep breath and typed in the passcode, only to be met with a red light flashing the wrong password. She tried again. Same result.

“Did she change it again?” she muttered to herself, remembering that Viola had done this once before, though she had eventually shared the new code with her.

Zoe checked her spare phone in case she had missed a message containing the updated password after her original phone had mysteriously disappeared from her room the night before. She had searched high and low for it without finding a single trace, but thankfully she always kept a second phone with everything backed up, so she hadn’t lost any of her important information.

However, there was no message from Viola, and her shoulders slumped in disappointment.

She tried calling instead, but the phone rang endlessly, three times, unanswered, and she frowned. Was Vee really ignoring her completely?

Zoe hadn’t been able to sleep, her mind replaying the conversation she still needed to have with Viola about what Nick had told her, though deep down, she knew Nick had been wrong to accuse her friend of pushing her brother to banish him.

She knocked on the door, but there was no reply, and eventually Zoe gave up, slowly backing away. She decided to find her brother instead and talk to him directly, but when she reached his office, one of the guards told her he’d already stepped out of the packhouse.

Zoe walked back to her apartment in High Tower, feeling as though everyone around her was suddenly disappearing without a word of explanation. What was going on?

Once inside, she texted her boyfriend and waited for a reply that never came, her shoulders sinking further. When she tried calling, his phone was unreachable too. He hadn’t called or texted her at all since they’d returned from the Grim Pack.

She hated moments like this, when she couldn’t reach anyone, because they reminded her too much of the time she had lost her other brother and Sebastian had avoided her after breaking a promise he had made.

Zoe had gone through so much trauma that she had needed therapy, attending countless sessions before she finally began to feel like herself again. She had a mountain of work waiting for her at her fashion studio, which she was supposed to return to, but with everyone suddenly becoming unreachable, she doubted she would be able to get any work done without clearing any misunderstanding between her and Viola, and fixing things with Nick and her brother.

Zoe sat there, staring down at her screen, Nick’s name displayed on it, before finally tapping it and calling him, the one person who had always been there for her, more consistently, it seemed, than her own brother ever had.

Just as she’d expected, Nick picked up on the second ring.

“How did you know I was about to call you, Zoe? Perfect timing. I’ve decided when and where we’ll meet. Will you come?” He asked her.

“Sure. I don’t have anything else going on lately. Is there anything you want me to bring you on my way?” she asked, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes, relieved that, at the very least, Nick wasn’t giving her the cold shoulder without explanation.

Unaware of it, she was walking straight into a disaster that would change the course of her life forever.