"Show him who the superior is at his own event, make it clear while his son is being presented as the next Alpha. I will handle him personally. He is not a significant problem. And as for my heir, that is something personal, and when it happens, no one will know until the child is born. Learn to ignore anyone who doesn’t have the spine to bring it to my face directly." Sebastian said with complete indifference, and Matt let out a slow sigh.

"You do realize there will be talk of it at this ceremony you are attending, and the Luna will be subjected to all of it. She will also be meeting many of your past flames, and if luck is not on her side, she will meet Hailey. Hailey would never miss a family gathering like this one, given that she is the sister of the man having the ceremony. If you want my honest opinion, for the sake of avoiding unnecessary drama, you should consider going alone and—"

"Drama can happen for all I care, Matteo. I will not hide my Luna or keep her in the shadows any longer. It is time she makes a proper public appearance and stands on her own ground as the Supreme Luna. As for Hailey and the others I once shared a mate bond with, it is about time I tested whether my hellcat is enough to make me resist all of them. I have already resisted Laila, and I haven’t seen the others yet."

When Alex had chosen Natalie, his body had naturally built a resistance to many of the she-wolves he had found himself sharing a bond with in the past, and even with those he still had a faint bond with, the love he had for his wife had made him unable to let anything come between them. Because of that strong bond between Alex and Natalie, Sebastian had, at one point, believed she might be the prophesied one and that Alex would be the one to break their curse, until everything went downhill.

And now that Viola had such a strong bond with him too, it didn’t automatically make him think she was the one, which she could no longer be, as she carried half the blood of the creatures who had caused their curse. But that didn’t mean he would entertain any other she-wolves in his life. He was content with her and would make it work until the end.

Matt could only shrug. He had made the suggestion purely to avoid unnecessary complications at the ceremony and to make things smoother for Viola, who would inevitably be subjected to the scorn and sharp eyes of every high and mighty she-wolf Sebastian had once taken as a fling. But if Sebastian was ready to face all of that head-on and was confident enough to want the world to see his Luna standing beside him, Matt didn’t see the point in arguing further.

"You should come with us as well," Sebastian added. "I imagine you could use a few days away from here, and who knows, you might meet your mate at the ceremony."

Matt let out a long sigh. "Any she-wolf unfortunate enough to be my mate would regret it the moment she saw my schedule. But you are right, there is no harm in going." He paused, then said, "Gilbert mentioned he has a date for the ceremony. I couldn’t help wondering who."

"It is most likely Laila. They are a pair, my wife told me." Sebastian said, already reaching for his work, wanting to get through it so he could be back home on time and receive his kiss at the door like promised.

"No kidding? You are serious?" Matt asked, genuinely taken aback, and Sebastian gave a small shrug.

"How did your wife find out?" Matt pressed, still not quite believing that the doctor had managed something like that before him, especially with no one but Laila Serrano, of all people. How on earth did such a match happened?

"Laila told her herself, I believe. Some kind of conversation happened between the two of them."

"I’ll be damned." Matt sat back. "And you are actually all right with it?"

Sebastian leveled him with a flat look. "Why wouldn’t I be? She was never mine to begin with. I am happy for them both. My only concern is my sister, she has feelings for the doctor and she is going to be hurt when she finds out."

"She is still carrying that crush? I genuinely thought it was a teenage thing that would fade on its own." Matt said with a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. "Guess it grew into something more. Our little girl." He said it with the easy warmth of someone who had known her since before she could properly walk, and then relaxed back in his chair. "She will get over him. It is only a matter of time." He paused. "Is it strange that I still picture her as little spoiled Zoe, the one we used to carry on our backs around the pack just to stop her from crying?"

"Hmm. She’s still a baby to me." Sebastian only hummed, already focused on his work, and Matt drifted quietly into the memory of it.

He could remember all of it so clearly, the chaos of trying to help raise a small child without either parents present, how she had refused to be held by anyone else and screamed until one of them picked her up, and how, after Sebastian became Alpha at such a young age, Zoe had practically lived at their house. She had made it a habit to appear at Matt bedroom door at night, clutching her little doll, her wide gray eyes blinking up at him as she told him she had bad dreams and needed to sleep where he was.

’You can’t sleep in my room, Zoe. Go to my mom,’ he had told her the first night she came by.

She had looked on the verge of tears as she pouted and said,

’I don’t wanna go dere. I wanna be wif Matty. I be as quiet as a mouse. Pwomise.’

Thirteen years old Matt could not turn her away with her teary eyes pleading at him, he had given in and since then she had made it a habit to disturb his night.

She had been so endlessly troublesome. And he had been so endlessly patient with her, more than he had ever been with anyone, protective of her in a way that had gone beyond what was reasonable, to the point where he genuinely could not stand to watch her cry.

All of that had ended when he traveled to Mexico with his mother for a month after Sebastian’s coronation. While Sebastian had become Alpha at such an early age, Matt hadn’t become his Beta until he was eighteen years old and had only been his best friend before then.

By the time he came back to Silver, Zoe had grown into someone more independent, pulling back from both of them and spending more time with Sebastian’s twin. Matt had felt the loss of it more than he had ever admitted to anyone and had eventually taught himself to stop missing those days, the ice cream outings days, the bike rides with her little arm wrapped around his waist as she held onto his shirt, and the way she used to follow him around like he hung the moon.

She no longer lived with them. She came on weekends to visit his mother, not him, and the distance between them had settled into something comfortable and permanent. He had taken to calling her brat in his head as a way of making it matter less.

They were not what they used to be to each other. But he still saw her, when he looked at her, as little troublesome Zoe, a little sister he never had, perhaps.

"Is she coming to the ceremony as well? Zoe?" He asked, and Sebastian nodded without looking up. "Naturally. I wouldn’t want my wife to feel alone when I am pulled away for stretches of time. Zoe is coming."

Matt nodded slowly, making a quiet decision of his own. If Zoe ended up heartbroken at the sight of Gilbert with someone else, he would find a way to cheer her up, the way he used to when they were small and everything could be fixed with ice cream and a piggyback ride, only now he knew they were both adults.

Neither of them knew, sitting there in that office, that Gilbert’s date to the ceremony was not Laila at all.

It was Zoe.

And when they all arrived at the Grim pack and found themselves in the same space at the same time, things were going to unravel in ways none of them had seen coming.