Viola slowly peeled one eye open first, still chewing the chocolate bar nervously, and then the other. The fear on her face gradually melted into stunned wonder.

The world beneath them looked so small.

The roads had become thin ribbons winding through endless stretches of green, the trees looked like tiny dots scattered across the land, and the houses resembled little toy blocks someone had carefully placed on a giant map. Above them, the sky stretched on forever, impossibly blue, while soft white clouds drifted past so close she felt as though she could reach out and touch them.

Golden sunlight spilled through the windshield and danced across the cabin, wrapping everything in a warm glow. She had never imagined the world could look this beautiful from above.

A slow smile spread across her face as she leaned closer to the window, unable to stop looking.

"It’s... so pretty," she whispered in disbelief, her eyes roaming from the endless sky to the clouds floating beside them. "It feels like we’re flying through heaven."

Sebastian smiled quietly at the awe on her face. Somehow, watching her discover something for the very first time was always far more enjoyable than the thing itself, and he tucked this moment away into the growing collection of memories he hadn’t realized he was building with her, one by one, without ever meaning to and without even realizing he was making them.

The flight took a little over an hour, and by the time they landed at the Grim pack, a limousine sat waiting at the landing site, the chauffeur, dressed in a uniform of black and white already standing beside it with the door open the moment he caught sight of the helicopter descending.

There was no landing space within the main pack building itself, so Sebastian had to set down several miles out, and a Supreme Alpha and his Luna were certainly not expected to walk the remaining distance, hence the car waiting in advance.

The chauffeur greeted them with a deep, formal bow, extending the same level of respect to the Luna as he did to the Alpha, even though he and everyone else in the Grim pack was well aware she carried no wolf and came from a background most would consider unworthy of such treatment. But one glance at how the Supreme Alpha looked at and handled his wife was more than enough to make it clear that even the smallest disrespect toward her would not be tolerated.

Once they were settled into the comfortable backseat and the limousine began moving through the pack, Viola watched through the tinted windows as the foreign landscape unfolded, a pack built entirely differently from anything she had seen.

A tarred road ran between rows of pack houses, all built to an identical structure, two stories, painted in green and cream with matching green roofs, clean lawns stretching out front, and blossoming trees planted evenly between each home. Electric poles lined the streets at regular intervals. The whole layout felt more like a tightly organized gated community, and noticeably more old-fashioned compared to Silver.

"Alpha Daniel still lives very much in the past." Sebastian explained. "Rather than modernize the pack and bring it up to current standards, he has let it remain almost exactly as his father built it, apart from basic repairs and maintenance. Nothing has actually been rebuilt." He glanced over at her. "I’m hoping Kenny is more open-minded and willing to make some real changes."

"Maybe you could advise him, give him a few pointers. Coming from you, I think he’d take it seriously enough to actually move the second largest pack in the world forward." Viola said, turning back to find him already watching her.

"I plan to. We need his alliance, if he ends up the way his father is, constantly trying to undermine us, we could be looking at a long, drawn-out conflict with the Grim pack instead." He told her.

Part of the reason for this trip was building a foundation with the incoming Alpha rather than inheriting another enemy. The Grim pack might depend heavily on Silver for resources, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop Daniel from rallying the other packs to isolate them anyway.

Viola wanted to tell him she already had a plan for winning Kenny over to their side, but she had been saving it as a surprise, and decided to keep it to herself a little longer. She would let her plan speak for itself once it was already in motion.

As they began approaching the main pack building, Viola was still looking out the window when she heard Sebastian say,

"There’s something I want you to know before we get there."

She turned away from the window and looked at him with curiosity.

"What is it?"

"One of Alpha Daniel’s daughters, Hailey, was once one of my mates. We had something that lasted around two months in the past." He told her honestly, reasoning it was better she heard it directly from him than from someone else, or worse, from Hailey herself, who might be inclined to romanticize what had only ever been a fling on his end.

Viola noticed the careful way he was watching her, clearly bracing for her reaction, and she gave him a small smile instead. "I’m glad you told me." She said. "Do you still share a mate bond with her?" She asked, wanting to mentally prepare for whatever waited for them inside.

"When I told her to stop coming to Silver, I still felt some kind of connection to her. I can’t say for certain whether that’s still true until she’s standing in front of me again."

"Oh. I see." Viola said with an understanding nod. "I’ll prepare myself for it then."

Sebastian reached out, took her hand, unclipped her seatbelt, and pulled her forward until she was straddling his lap, her hands settling against his shoulders and his settling firmly on her hips.

"I’m telling you this because I know Hailey will try to make a point of having once been my mate. I don’t want you holding back if you need to put her in her place. She’s her father’s daughter through and through and believes she can get away with anything because of it. Don’t let anyone in there bully you. Your position is higher than every single one of them, and you have every right to put anyone in their place if they forget that." He told her, meaning every word, watching her nod along like a student absorbing a lesson she intended to remember.

Viola hoped, mostly for the sake of avoiding unnecessary drama, that this Hailey, who she had heard mentioned before, the way she had come to know the names of every Alpha’s daughter and every arrogant she-wolf by reputation alone, had moved on and found someone else entirely. She also quietly hoped Sebastian’s bond with her really had faded, because regardless of how firmly he told her not to hold back, an active bond would only complicate everything and risk pulling him into a conflicted place between two mates.

While she sat there a little lost in thought, she felt the warmth of his mouth against hers, and snapped back to the present feeling his tongue press gently at the seam of her lips.

She opened for him without hesitation, kissing him back in a way that curled her toes against the car seat. Within moments his hands had slipped beneath her shirt, cupping her breast through the fabric of her bra, giving it a slow, deliberate squeeze that pulled a moan straight out of her and into his mouth, and he deepened the kiss until it turned hungry.

The chauffeur, catching exactly what was unfolding in the backseat through the rearview mirror, quietly raised the privacy screen between the front and back without a word, realizing that the terrifying Supreme Alpha everyone in packs whispered about was, at this particular moment, very much wrapped up in his wife.

Heat pooled low in her stomach as he trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and along her collarbone, tugging her bra cup down with one hand before closing his mouth over her nipple, and for a moment, her mind went blank, and she forgot everything else as all her thoughts narrowed to where his mouth was.

It was while he was sucking and licking, lost entirely in her, that the car rolled to a stop, and if it hadn’t been for the sound of the chauffeur’s door opening and closing outside, neither of them would have registered exactly where they were or how quickly things had escalated.

Sebastian pulled his mouth away, breathing hard, miserably hard and aching, the scent of her arousal thick in the air around them and doing nothing whatsoever to help his situation. He belatedly realized they had arrived at their destination, and if he wasn’t fast enough, the car door might be opened before he could stop it, and his wife would be exposed.

He swiftly and carefully tugged her bra back into place, smoothed her shirt back down, and pressed one last quick kiss to her lips.

"We’re here. Are you ready?"

Still trying to catch her breath and fixing her hair to cover the side of her neck, where she had absolutely no doubt he had left a trail of marks, she slid off his lap and nodded.

"Ready."