Chapter 438

Matt didn’t know who to approach about the matter, since the Supreme Alpha had forbidden him from seeing Viola, ordering the men to keep him out entirely until her execution.

So he went looking for Zoe instead, but when he couldn’t find her anywhere and was told she’d returned to her fashion house, he reached out there too, only to learn she’d left on a trip to a neighboring pack to sample fabric. Matt didn’t think much of it, since it wasn’t unusual for her to travel for business, as long as her guards were with her.

That left him with the doctor, so he went to find Gilbert. On his way there, he ran into Laila coming down the corridor, and the moment she saw him, she stopped him.

“Matt, is it true, what I saw on the screen just now? The Supreme Alpha just announced Viola will be executed tomorrow, for conspiring with the mermaids. What is going on?” Laila demanded, unable to believe the Sebastian she witnessed fall madly for his Luna was now planning to execute her himself.

Something about it didn’t sit right with her at all, and it had driven her straight to find the Head Beta and confirm this.

Laila’s uncle had been in the dungeon for days now, and no one seemed to know whether he was alive or dead, not that she cared much either way, but she found she couldn’t bring herself to be indifferent to Viola’s fate in the dungeon. The news felt too unreal, until Matt confirmed it for her.

“He found the one. His prophesied mate. And now she’s all he seems to think about, he wants Viola out of the picture entirely and announced her execution. Everything happened so fast.”

Laila rested a hand on her hip and let out a disbelieving sigh. “And this is exactly the problem with these fucking Supreme Alphas. You can never fully trust them when they’re capable of having so many mates. But finding the prophesied one… that’s genuinely new. Wasn’t it said that she wasn’t real at some point, that she didn’t even exist?”

“Well, as we can see, she does, and she’s here right now,” Matt stated, knowing that many had believed the prophecy wasn’t real after no one had been able to find the one for more than century to break the curse completely.

“But still, did he really have to execute the Luna over it? He didn’t execute me after he found Viola; he just discarded me. Isn’t this taking things too far, especially considering how much I’ve seen him care for her?”

Matt might have agreed it was going too far, if he hadn’t seen firsthand how betrayed Sebastian had looked the moment Viola freed the mermaid. Whatever he’d been carrying since then must have followed him straight into meeting this new mate, and his love had curdled into hatred toward his wife far too quickly. That was the only explanation Matt had right now.

But then what about the time he told Matt to look after her for him before he left the pack?

“I don’t know what’s going through his head. He seemed determine to get rid of her. I need to find Gilbert, the elders are already celebrating, thrilled he’s finally found what generations of his ancestors failed to.” Matt began walking toward Gilbert’s office, and Laila fell into step beside him, unable to just sit back and stay out of this, even though the last person she wanted to see now was that spinless doctor and be anywhere around him, she wanted to help.

Though her old self would have relished the fact that karma was a bitch, and it had bitten Viola right in the ass, making her taste some of what Laila herself had once suffered through, she had spent enough time with Viola to genuinely like her company, enough to even count her as a friend. And as a friend, she felt she should be helping.

“So who is this new mate, and where does she come from?” Laila asked.

Matt let out a humorless laugh. “That’s the question of the century. Don’t ask me; I have no idea. I’ve never seen her before in my life, but she carries a presence you can’t ignore, even though she looks harmless on the surface, with those innocent eyes. She hasn’t said a single word since he brought her back, and honestly, I don’t like her one bit. She looks like she’s just waiting for the right moment to bare her teeth.”

“Interesting,” Laila said thoughtfully. “If you’ve never seen her before, anywhere, and she carries that kind of presence, then she’s clearly not from Silver, Sebastian would have sensed her from miles away otherwise.”

Matt couldn’t help but nod in agreement. “Then we have to find out where she comes from, because Sebastian didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even ask for a background check on her.”

Before they reached Gilbert’s office, they spotted the doctor walking toward them, a worried look of his own etched across his face. He stopped short the moment his eyes met Laila’s beside Matt, memory of that night in his lab flooding back uninvited, but he pushed it aside, composing himself, offering her a friendly smile that she didn’t return, looking away from him with cool indifference instead.

Gilbert felt a sharp pang in his chest but swallowed it down, telling himself it was for the best that she no longer paid him any attention, even as part of him still ached for it, still wanted it. He turned his attention to Matt instead, who said,

“Gilbert, I take it you’ve heard the news too.”

“I have, that’s why I’m out here. Isn’t he taking this too far, executing her in her current condition, of all things? She needs rest more than anything right now and shouldn’t be going through all this. She nearly lost the baby just today.” Gilbert said, having served as her doctor throughout all of this, still unable to believe the Alpha would go through with an execution so callously after ordering him to make her a cure for the suppressant.

Matt’s attention snapped to the doctor’s words. “The baby?” He asked, bewildered, and Gilbert nodded.

“She asked me not to tell anyone, not even the Alpha, until she could tell him herself. She’s carrying his pup.” He announced, feeling he had no choice now, given how everything had turned out.

“Un-fucking-believable. That’s yet another reason we can’t let this execution happen. We need to find a way to get her out of there, but first, I need you to do something for me. We need to find out where this Victoria actually came from, and I think you and Laila are the ones who can pull that off. Something about her feels wrong, man. You should see the way she looks at people, like they’re beneath her, even though she doesn’t look like she comes from an important background.”

“How do you expect me to find that out?” Gilbert asked, realizing that the Beta was putting him and Laila on the task.

“It’s easy. You’re the pack doctor, and you can get closer to her than I can. Here’s the plan,” Matt said, before explaining his idea to them.

Gilbert’s eyes took on a look of understanding as he listened. When Matt finished, he nodded slowly.

“I hope it works out.”