When Sebastian told her about a surprise, Viola had stupidly thought he might take her to lunch somewhere, or something along those lines, even though they had only just had breakfast, but she never could have anticipated where he actually brought her. It was better than anything she had had in mind that it left her speechless.

"An amusement park..." She murmured, taking in the large, iron-fenced grounds spread out before her, where people were pulling into the outside parking spaces and others were coming on foot from the streets, holding their little pups by the hand and filing through the ticket booths before disappearing inside.

She could already see the roller coaster and several of the bigger rides from where she stood, and the place was alive with noise, music pumping from speakers everywhere, and the distant screaming of children and adults on rides blending together into something chaotic and wonderful. The air carried the smell of popcorn and hot dogs and the warm, sweet drift of melting sugar that she pulled into her lungs slowly.

"Do you like it?" he asked quietly, watching her face closely as she took it all in, searching her expression for a clue, even though she looked like a little girl whose long-awaited gift had been handed to her and who didn’t know what emotions to display.

Viola turned to look at him with shimmering blue eyes and nodded, her head moving before she had even fully decided to speak. "I like it. So much." She confessed, and then something behind her eyes went soft and a little emotional. "I have never been to an amusement park before."

The children of the orphanage had never known what a place like this felt like from the inside, even though they had seen magazines from Silver years ago showcasing the grand opening of this very park. Viola had never once dared to dream she would actually stand at its gates.

And when she was eventually adopted, her adoptive parents had enrolled her in everything they deemed productive and steered her away from anything they considered a waste of time, she could still hear her adoptive father’s voice telling her that an amusement park would do nothing for her grades, and that if she wanted to be at the top of her class she needed to get such useless ideas out of her head entirely.

She had believed, quietly and without much argument, that this was simply something she would never get to experience in her lifetime.

The excitement that rushed into her chest now felt like a wave breaking.

"If you want," Sebastian said, noticing the emotions on her face, "we can come here as often as you wish. I can always make time in my schedule to bring you here from now on." He promised, and she looked at him with a smile.

"I would like that a lot, if it’s no trouble to you. Let’s go inside. I can’t wait."

She reached out and slipped her hand into her husband’s larger one and pulled him toward the large, colorful open gates, giggling as she went. "I want to try every single ride in here. Do we have the time for all of it?"

"We have the whole day." Sebastian assured her.

He had taken his time thinking about where to bring her, and the amusement park had come to him almost like an instinct, perhaps because it was also somewhere he had never once been in his entire life. Not even as a boy.

He had always considered it beneath an Alpha bloodline, and had turned down every suggestion his mother ever made about having fun there without a second thought.

Now, standing here considerably more grown than the boy who had refused to come, he told himself he didn’t need to get on every ride, he could simply watch her enjoy herself. That had been the plan, anyway.

His wife, as it turned out, had her own plans entirely.

At the ticket booth, Sebastian sent a quiet mind link to one of his warriors stationed in the crowd in plain clothes, and without standing in the long line for even a moment, they had VIP passes wristbands that granted them access to every ride in the park without waiting.

Their first stop was the Ferris wheel, and it was while Viola was getting settled into her seat that she noticed something. The security staff were turning people away, telling them the ride was temporarily closed.

A couple with three small, excited children were being redirected, and the children immediately began to cry, tugging at their father’s shirt. She looked around, and then looked to her husband, and found him seated comfortably on a bench outside with no apparent intention of moving towards the ride.

"Aren’t you coming on?" She called, and he shook his head, waving her forward to go ahead and enjoy.

"It’s not really my thing. Go on, I’ll be right here when it’s done." He had absolutely no intention of getting onto that spinning contraption. He didn’t trust it, and he would rather stay on solid ground where, if something went wrong up there and his mate plummeted, he would at least be positioned to catch her and avoid any unwanted accident.

Viola pressed her lips together. "That’s no fun at all. How am I supposed to ride something this big alone?" She wanted the full experience, the real one, and more than that, she wanted him beside her.

"Isn’t it more fun riding alone?" Sebastian questioned, not seeing why the crowd would add to the fun. She was the Luna and shouldn’t be made to ride with regular werewolves with no ranks.

"It’s not made for one person, Mr. Kade. You know what, never mind."

Without hesitating, she unclipped her belt, removed the protective bar, and stepped back down.

"If I’m riding alone there’s no point. Let’s find something else." She said, taking his hand and doing her best to keep the disappointment off her face. When he didn’t move, she turned back to find him staring up at the Ferris wheel with an expression that could only be described as grim dread, before he turned back to her and gave a reluctant question.

"Do you want me to ride it with you?"

Sebastian watched her eyes brighten as she gave an enthusiastic nod and said, "Yes, and let the other people on too. It’s much more fun with everyone."

She noticed his throat bob visibly as he gave the order for the ride to reopen and the waiting guests to be let through. She kept her eyes on him as the seats filled and the safety bars came down, and it was the thin trail of sweat making its way down the side of his neck that confirmed what she had already begun to suspect, though it was so absurd she almost didn’t want to say it out loud.

"Are you scared?"

He turned to her with a dark scowl and a carefully composed expression and scoffed. "Why would I be scared of a ride?"

"Then why do you look pale? You’re sweating quite a lot." She pointed out.

He glared upward and said, "It’s blazing out here. The sun is hot." And he would be cold in the ground before he admitted the truth, that he hated anything that spun and was scared shitless of the moment it began to spin. Even as a boy, Sebastian was the kind who threw up easily and had dizzy spells from small motions.

He had locked his wolf inside him because Muffin would have been absolutely beside himself with secondhand embarrassment if he knew Sebastian was terrified of a simple amusement park ride. Besides, admitting fear as an Alpha felt uncomfortably close to admitting incompetence. So Sebastian swallowed his nausea and his pride in equal measure and held on.

"You can always hold onto me," Viola offered helpfully, biting back her smile. "Although, with the grip you have on that bar, I’m not entirely sure the bar is going to survive before the ride ends."

She heard him make a sound that wasn’t quite a response as the ride began to move, and when it picked up speed and the screaming started from the seats around them, his grip found her arm instead of the bar, and she found herself watching his face with barely contained delight as his expression cycled through several shades of green, like he was about to be sick.

He made no sound. Not a single one. The Supreme Alpha of the most powerful pack in existence rode a Ferris wheel in complete, dignified silence despite his terror, though at a certain point, Viola became genuinely uncertain whether his eyes were open because he was coping with the fear or because he had passed out with them open that way, and she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or feel sorry for him.

When it was over, he remained in his seat for several long seconds before carefully extracting himself and making his way to the nearest bench, sitting down with the careful deliberateness of a man reacquainting himself with the concept of solid ground. He was still holding her hand tightly.

"I’ll be damned," he muttered, fighting nausea. "I think my soul genuinely left my body for a moment there. Can I have some water, please?"

Viola laughed so hard she had to sit down beside him, and pressed a cold bottle of water into his trembling hand.

For the remainder of their time on the rides, she quietly steered them away from anything that spun, tilted, or dropped, the last thing she needed was to explain to the pack why their Supreme Alpha had passed out at an amusement park.

They spent hours moving through the park together, trying everything else it had to offer, until they eventually made their way to the haunted house, where the roles promptly reversed, and it was Viola’s turn to grip his arm and make involuntary sounds at every corner they encountered ghosts.

She managed well enough through most of it, right up until one of the actors leapt out from the dark for a jump scare, at which point Sebastian’s reflexes acted entirely without his permission, and his fist connected cleanly with the actor’s face for scaring his wife. The man went down cold without standing again.

The remaining ghost actors collectively decided that this particular couple did not require any further scaring, and gave them a wide and respectful berth for the rest of the route in the hunted house.