Viola was dressed and sitting at the big window of the dining room with a cup of creamy tea she had made herself, her damp hair loose over one shoulder as she wanted it to air dry, when she heard the front door opening. She immediately got up, sensing it was Zoe, for some reason she couldn’t explain, her senses seemed sharper today.

"Vee!" Came Zoe’s voice echoing through the halls, and Viola felt the first real smile of the afternoon move across her face before she could stop it.

She set down her tea and went toward the front door.

Zoe stood in the hallway with her hair piled messily on top of her head, the first time Viola had ever seen Zoe with a hair out of place, given that she always carried herself like a supermodel commanding her height. Her face looked like she had been crying a great deal, and it sent a needle of pain straight to Viola’s heart knowing it was because she hadn’t been told in time about her brother’s fake death.

"Zoe..." Viola murmured with a sympathetic smile on her face as she opened her arms for her friend who looked like she needed the hug.

Zoe adjusted the large bag hanging off one of her shoulder as she pursed her lips and said, "Do you know how devastated I was when I heard the news?" She murmured as she walked forward into Viola’s open arms. She had to bend down slightly since she was taller than her brother’s wife, and the moment she was pulled into the hug she felt her eyes tear up as she began to complain about Sebastian.

"I told you that brother of mine doesn’t give a damn about me. He announced such a thing without giving me any warning. I wish I were older than he is so I could pull his ears and make him understand that things like that are not acceptable!"

Viola rubbed her back and sighed. "Everything happened so quickly, Zoe. Don’t blame him, he didn’t have time to sort things out and it all just happened at once."

Zoe’s brows pulled together as she moved back from the hug and looked down at Viola, biting the side of her lower lip. "Hmm, you are defending him now I see. I heard a wife always stands by her husband but your husband is insensitive." She grumbled, finally noticing that Viola smelled so much like Sebastian now, she didn’t even need to sniff the air to know the two had been together intimately like mates should be.

Zoe’s heart leaped with joy. Did that mean she should start expecting little pups calling her Auntie Zoe soon?

The realization eased some of the hurt caused by her brother’s insensitivity, but she did not let it show. She wanted to see just how far Viola would go in defending him.

"Seb is not insensitive," Viola said, walking right into Zoe’s trap. "He is the most considerate man I have ever known. He treats everyone he cares about with genuine affection, and I hope you won’t blame him this time because he truly almost died from that assassination. I almost lost him and that feeling is still sitting inside me."

Whenever she thought about how he had looked with those bullets in his body, she shuddered, because he would have died if she hadn’t used the ability she hadn’t even known she possessed. And even now she couldn’t fully rest, knowing he could be targeted again wherever he had gone to.

Zoe pursed her lips, noticing the worry lines settling on her friend’s face. She let out a slow breath. "How bad was it?" she asked quietly.

As happy as she was that their relationship had progressed to this level, she still could not overlook the fact that he had almost died, and her friend had been there to witness it happen.

"As bad as it could get. I know you warned me that he gets assassinated often but I never knew it was this serious. I believe a special weapon was used on him." Viola said quietly as they moved into the house together.

Zoe had grown up watching her brother get targeted so many times that his constant assassinations had turned her into a permanently paranoid person, and she knew her friend was about to become familiar with that same feeling, the unpleasant, relentless habit of watching your back and never fully exhaling.

Since she was a little girl she had understood the danger of his world and what being Alpha cost him. When she had heard the news yesterday, Zoe thought grimly, she had believed she had lost the only close family she had left, and for a moment her entire world had gone dark, until Matt had come to tell her the truth last night.

"I suppose the weapons advance with every assassination attempt." Zoe said. "People are heartless and greedy. My brother hasn’t hurt anyone by protecting the pack as the Alpha."

"That’s exactly why I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to leave so soon. I really wish he could have stayed here until all of this was over and the person responsible was caught." Viola voiced her frustration quietly.

"He left already?" Zoe asked as she swept past her into the living room area, already moving toward the kitchen as naturally as if she had been there a hundred times before.

"You know about him leaving?" Viola asked, following behind her.

Zoe was quiet for a moment, setting the bag she had brought, packed with takeaway, down on the counter. Then she turned and looked at Viola directly. "Yes, because he leaves every time at this time of the month. It has been a routine I have grown used to since I was growing up."

Viola couldn’t help her curiosity at those words. "Where does he go?" She asked.

Zoe’s expression shifted and a look of quiet sadness settled over her face. She looked down at her fingers as she whispered, "I don’t know exactly where he goes, but I know that Alex died on the 30th and Sebastian never spends the 30th in the pack. He goes away for a while and when he comes back, he looks like he has fought the devil himself."

Many times Zoe had tried to ask him where he went but his replies had always been so flat and disinterested that she would eventually have to drop the topic. There had even been a time she tried to follow him at a safe distance, but he had caught on and stopped, instructing his warriors to take her straight back to her fashion house and never drive her after him again.

Zoe had eventually given up, stopped asking, stopped secretly following, because he always caught her no matter how careful she was. Just as he never spoke about the real reason he had killed his twin, he never spoke about where he went on the 30th.

She had hoped he would eventually open up to Vee someday, but seeing the look of confusion on her friend’s face, Zoe had a feeling their relationship had not yet reached that level of trust.

"Does he go away to grieve for his brother’s death?" Viola asked quietly.

Zoe shook her head. "I don’t know. He tells me nothing and he never mentions Alex after his death. Sometimes he acts like a man with memory issues because he never speaks about the dead, like he has erased them from his mind completely. That is something I have never liked about him..." Zoe muttered.

Viola recalled his words about not keeping pictures of dead people because he didn’t want to hold on to any feelings connected to them. But if he truly didn’t hold on to them, he wouldn’t be leaving every 30th to grieve for Alex, which meant wherever he was going, it wasn’t to grieve.

"When does he come back after he leaves?" Viola asked.

"He’ll come back." Zoe said simply. "He always does, but there is no certain day or date, you will just find him back one day without any warning. It is the most irritating thing about him." She gave Viola a small, tired smile. "Welcome to the world of Sebastian Kade, Vee. You and I can try to figure him out together, because my brother is complicated as hell."