Chapter 88 Try to Seduce
Sebastian's POV
The phone call with Elara ended, and I felt my expression harden into something cold and unforgiving as I lowered the device from my ear. The carefully constructed reassurance I had forced into my voice for my daughter's sake evaporated the instant the connection broke, replaced by the controlled fury that had been simmering beneath the surface since the moment I had walked into that restaurant private room this morning.
I turned away from the window of the upscale restaurant's private dining room where I had taken the call, my gaze sweeping across the elegantly appointed space that had become the stage for what would undoubtedly prove to be one of the most catastrophic family scandals the Silverstone Pack had ever faced.
My Beta Albert stood guard just outside the room in the hallway, his posture rigid.
As I moved back toward the main area, I caught sight of the scene through the partially open door, and my jaw clenched tightly. Moira sat crumpled on the plush carpet near the inner room entrance, disheveled. She was still wearing that ridiculous pink off-shoulder dress.
Edwin sat on the leather chair with his hands clenched into fists so tight that his knuckles had gone white. The air around him practically vibrated with barely contained rage.
I stepped fully into the room and let the door close behind me with a soft click that somehow sounded deafening in the oppressive silence. My voice was utterly devoid of warmth or familial affection, cold and flat and final as a judge pronouncing sentence. "Today's matter, you make the decision yourself."
I was giving him the choice of how to handle his wife's betrayal, how to deal with the woman who had just confessed to using him as nothing more than a convenient stepping stone to get closer to me. I was offering him the power to decide her fate, whatever that fate might be.
If it were not for the fact that Moira was Edwin's wife, if it were not for the consideration of our family's reputation and the stability of the pack hierarchy, I would have already used my Alpha command to deal with her directly.
The thought of what she had attempted, what she had been planning for apparently eighteen years, made my skin crawl with disgust so profound that I had to actively suppress the urge to physically remove her from my sight immediately.
One hour earlier
I had arrived at the upscale restaurant at exactly eleven o'clock, instructing Albert to wait outside the private room while I went in alone. The moment I had stepped through the door, I had been hit with an overwhelming wave of sickly sweet floral fragrance, so thick and cloying that it had immediately made my chest feel tight and my emotions begin to churn in ways that felt fundamentally wrong and unnatural.
My hand had gone to my collar, fingers working to loosen the suddenly constricting fabric, and that was when I had felt it. The small protective talisman that Elara had given me yesterday, the one I had tucked into the inner pocket of my jacket directly over my heart, had suddenly erupted with searing heat against my chest.
The sensation had been so intense and so unexpected that it had shocked me into complete clarity, burning through the haze that had been rapidly clouding my judgment.
In that instant of crystal-clear awareness, I had understood exactly what was happening. The sweet floral scent was not perfume or air freshener. It was some kind of magical drug designed to affect an Alpha's rational thinking, to lower inhibitions and cloud judgment in ways that would make even the strongest-willed werewolf vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation.
My first thought had been that this was a trap set by enemies of the pack, that someone was using Moira as an unwitting pawn to compromise me and gain leverage over the Silverstone Pack.
My second thought had been darker, more paranoid, wondering if perhaps Edwin himself had grown resentful of the power structure within our family and had convinced his wife to help him create a scandal that would force me to step down as Alpha.
Either way, I had decided in that moment to play along, to pretend the drug was affecting me while using my Alpha power to actively purify the toxins from my system. The talisman pressed against my heart had continued to pulse with protective warmth, helping me maintain perfect clarity even as I deliberately let my posture relax and my eyes glaze slightly, adopting the appearance of someone whose resistance was crumbling.
I had been waiting to see who would walk through that door next, what conspirator would reveal themselves thinking they had successfully compromised the Silverstone Pack's Alpha. I had been prepared for corporate rivals, for ambitious pack members, for political enemies, for any number of potential threats.
What I had not been prepared for, what I could never have anticipated in my darkest imaginings, was that the person who walked through that door would be Moira herself.
She had entered the private room with confidence. She had locked the door behind her with deliberate care, the soft click of the bolt sliding home sounding. Then she had shrugged off her outer jacket, revealing that obscene pink dress underneath, the off-shoulder design and short hemline clearly chosen to be provocative.
I had remained frozen in my seat, genuinely shocked into immobility as I watched her approach. This was not some unknown conspirator. This was my brother's wife, the woman who had been part of our family for years, the mother of Edwin's children.
The realization that she was the architect of this scheme, that she was the one who had drugged me and locked us in this room together, had been so incomprehensible that for several long seconds my mind had simply refused to process what my eyes were seeing.
Moira had knelt beside my chair. When she began speaking, her voice had been breathy and trembling. "Sebastian, I have been waiting for this day for eighteen years. From the moment I first saw you at that charity gala, from the instant our eyes met across that ballroom, I knew you were my true destiny. I knew you were the one I was meant to be with."
She had continued talking, her words spilling out in a rush as if she had been holding them back for so long that they could no longer be contained. "But I was nobody then, just a girl from a minor family with no status and no prospects. I knew I could never approach you directly, that you would never see me as anything more than another face in the crowd. So I did the only thing I could think of. I got close to Edwin instead."
The casual cruelty of that admission, the matter-of-fact way she had described using my brother as nothing more than a convenient tool to remain in proximity to me, had made my blood run cold. This was not love. This was not even genuine attraction. This was obsession, twisted and warped into something toxic and destructive.
"Edwin is a good man. He has always been kind to me, always treated me well. But Sebastian, you have to understand, I have never loved him. Not really. Not the way I love you. Every day of our marriage, every moment I spent playing the role of his devoted wife, I was thinking about you. Dreaming about you. Waiting for the chance to finally be with you the way I was always meant to be."
"When Elena died, when Elara was gone, I thought finally the path was clear. Finally there was no one standing between us anymore. I just needed the right opportunity, the right moment to make you see what has always been right in front of you."
"This drug, someone gave it to me. They told me it would help you see clearly, would help you understand your true feelings. All you have to do is stop fighting it, Sebastian. Stop resisting what you know in your heart is meant to be. Just let yourself feel what I know you feel for me too."
The sheer magnitude of her delusion had been staggering. She genuinely believed that I harbored secret feelings for her, that I had been suppressing some deep attraction all these years out of loyalty to my brother and my late wife.
But beyond the disturbing nature of her confession, beyond the violation of trust and the betrayal of my brother, just how catastrophic this situation could become for the entire pack.
Even if nothing physical happened between us, even if I walked out of this room right now without laying a finger on her, the mere fact that my brother's wife had been harboring these feelings for me for nearly two decades was a scandal of epic proportions.
I had been about to speak, to drop the pretense of being drugged and confront her directly with the full weight of my disgust and fury, when the door had suddenly been shoved open with enough force to make both Moira and me turn sharply toward the sound.
Edwin had stood in the doorway, his face twisted into an expression of such profound anguish and rage that he barely looked human anymore. His eyes had already shifted completely to the golden glow of his wolf, the beast fully present and straining against the thin veneer of human control.