Three days ago he had held her like she was the center of his universe on his bed, kissing her and touching her as he set her body on fire with pleasure. Now he moved with careful detachnt, as if she were fragile glass he was afraid might shatter and cut him open, and he had to be careful.
She parted her lips to accept the porridge despite his silence cutting into her chest. The warm spoon slid between her lips, creamy, lightly salted, and comforting against her throat. She swallowed, and the simple act felt far too intimate under his intense gaze fixed on her mouth.
"Good?" he asked, his first word to her since coming in.
"Good, but not as good as the one you make." Viola whispered honestly, because he made the best porridge she had ever tasted. Though Nick’s was not bad at all, she was being honest, and quietly hoping he would say more words to her than just that single one.
Sebastian only nodded, but he couldn’t hide the rush of satisfaction that moved through his veins at her words, despite the cool, expressionless mask he kept firmly in place on his face.
He would have preferred she hadn’t taken sothing made by another man, especially one he could plainly see was beginning to hold sothing for her, but it would take ti to make another porridge from scratch, and he didn’t have all that ti right now. He shouldn’t even have had the ti to co back to her at all after pulling her out of the punishnt room, but he hadn’t been able to stay away knowing she wasn’t in a good condition. His feet had brought him back before his mind had finished arguing against it.
Viola watched him bring another spoonful up to her lips. He blew on it again, slower this ti, his breath stirring the tendrils of damp hair at her temple.
The gesture was so tender it hurt.
Because he wouldn’t talk to her, not even when it was obvious that he cared.
The feeling lodged in her throat like a stone. She accepted the next bite anyway, her eyes flickering up to his face. That sa dark scowl from earlier still remained at the edges of his expression, but it wasn’t directed at her now. It looked more like he was fighting sothing inside himself.
"Sebastian..." she called.
He lifted his eyes to hers. For a brief mont, she thought she saw sothing tremble in them.
"Are you cold?" he asked her.
Viola shook her head. "No. What is wrong?" I missed you so much, and I can’t take your silence like this, she thought, biting the inside of her cheek and fighting down the emotions bubbling up her throat.
"You’re still shaking," he murmured, adjusting the blanket around her properly and carefully.
Viola grabbed his hand. "I’m fine. I am not cold, really. I feel okay now."
"Then finish the porridge before you talk. You look like you haven’t eaten in a long ti," he said, bringing another spoonful to her mouth. This ti his free hand moved, settling lightly on her blanket-covered thigh and squeezing it gently.
"When did you last eat?" He asked.
Viola swallowed the food in her mouth before she replied, "Two days ago..." The strangest thing was that she had been starving and yet food had been the last thing on her mind in that cell. Even now he occupied her thoughts more than the food should have, even when she was shaky and weak and her body was desperate for nourishnt.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
They had starved his mate for days and whipped her in that cell during his absence. They had electrocuted her in a pool. No wonder she looked thin again, it reminded him painfully of when he had first t her. She wasn’t quite as thin as she had been then, but she was close, and that alone made his blood run cold, because it should never have happened again.
Not with him in the picture. Not with her mate as the Supre Alpha. She should have been untouchable within his own pack, soone the people feared to even look at the wrong way, and yet they had laid hands on her as though she ant nothing.
Sebastian felt guilt grip his insides like a fist. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t had a twin brother who resented him, or felt the constant need to make things up to Alex all the ti, he would have been there for his mate when she needed him most.
"Viola..."
The way he said her na, so quiet, almost reverent, sent a different kind of tremor through her. She wanted to lean into that hand resting on her. She wanted to crawl into his lap and demand he hold her like he had that night. But doubt clawed at her chest, as he hadn’t moved to hold her first, and if she did and he rejected her, she would die from the pain of his rejection.
She took another bite, slower. Their eyes finally t. His were stormy, unreadable. Hers were wide, searching, terrified of what she might not find.
Sebastian’s thumb brushed a tiny circle on her thigh through the blanket. The smallest gesture, yet it cracked sothing open inside her. She felt her eyes sting.
"Are you angry at ?" the question slipped out before she could stop it, barely above a whisper.
His hand stilled on her thigh, and he stared at her, taken aback that she thought he was angry with her.
"No, I am not angry at you." He wasn’t angry at her, never.
He was angry at himself and at what he had to do to make it to her in ti. For sure, this ti around, his twin wouldn’t forgive him, but at this point, he didn’t care about forgiveness as much as he cared about and worried for this little hellcat of his.
The thought of what could have happened if he had arrived even a little later still left a bitter taste in his mouth. It wasn’t her he blad. It was himself. Himself for not being there sooner, and for allowing things to reach the point where she had suffered at all.
Just in the span of today, he had gone through more emotions than he had felt in the last twenty years combined, not since he had lost his parents. One could say he was too overwheld to give way to any one certain emotion, and so to be safer, he leaned further into detachnt and indifference, the safest wall he had ever hidden behind since he was little.
Showing nothing. Feeling nothing on the surface. Keeping every other emotion that threatened to break him down or weaken him locked behind a strict, ironclad wall and never allowing a single crack to show.
For Sebastian still feared weakness more than anything else in this world, but he was beginning to fear sothing else even more. He feared karma. He feared the universe growing tired of looking the other way and finally turning around to yank this mate he had co to care for and love away from him, the sa way he had once yanked his twin’s lover away from him without a second thought.
What goes around cos around, and Sebastian Kade had never been a good man.
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