Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 205: Needing bodyguards

It was just too remarkable for him, she fascinated him all the time with the things she did.

"You rock, Vee! I should get you something but I can’t quite figure out what other gifts I could possibly give you." Nick mused thoughtfully and Viola smiled as she said,

"Stop humbling yourself. It’s not something anyone couldn’t do, but nobody did it until you." Nick said, looking at her from the kitchen counter where he was working on the protein shake he had promised to make for her, having noticed over the past few days that she was losing weight and looking too thin for his peace of mind. As her trainer and friend, he wanted her to be in her best of health.

He had been thinking about what new things to create for Silver for a while now, but this gave him a direction, and if Vee would genuinely like it then he would make it happen without a second thought.

"Mi primita, tell me more. Give me all the juice on Laila’s expression when the deal was done." Nick called out to Zoe from the kitchen, and Zoe glared across the room at him for calling her his little cousin again the way he always did just to get under her skin, but she still gladly launched into the gossip he was asking for, because the two of them were like two beans in the same pot who could never keep anything from each other for long.

Though along with the pride, there was that lingering worry that never truly left Zoe, the kind that had taken root in her bones ever since she had lost people she loved and couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. She had become something like a paranoid mother to her little remaining family, and even small things that carried the potential for conflict and danger were enough to make her chest tighten.

"How about I speak to my brother about giving you personal bodyguards the way he assigned them to me? They are so sharp they can sense danger from miles away before it even gets close."

She was aware that she had offended more people than she had wanted to today, more than she had fully prepared herself for. She had noticed all sorts of eyes following her as she left the council hall, calculating in ways that made the back of her neck prickle. But she didn’t think it would ever reach a point where she needed personal bodyguards, and she certainly wouldn’t allow Zoe to go to Sebastian on her behalf and ask for it.

She wasn’t naive. She understood that in the werewolf world, a mate, especially one without a wolf was an Alpha’s greatest weakness, and she refused to be the thing that brought more problems to his door than she already had with Javier, even as she fought every day to push back the feelings that kept quietly growing in her chest no matter how firmly she tried to trap them there.

"I can volunteer to be your bodyguard. I have had the same training as our pack warriors since infancy, and I can be a far better guard than any of Zoe’s." He said, flexing his bicep muscles and wiggling his brows across the counter at his cousin, who responded with a flat roll of her eyes.

Nick gasped with exaggerated offense, grabbing the protein shake in the stray cup and stepping out from behind the counter. "Oh no no, primita. I can beat up two or three of your guards without breaking a sweat, and if you don’t believe me then let me challenge them to a match right now and let Vee be the judge of it!"

The two of them could never seem to go a full day without arguing about something, and yet Viola had long since learned that underneath every argument was a deep and unshakeable fondness neither of them would ever openly admit to.

"Vee!"

"Don’t talk like that." Zoe muttered, her voice suddenly trembling. "You are not going to die. My brother has promised me, so please don’t talk like that."

It wasn’t something he said just to comfort her. Normally Nick didn’t linger in the main pack building, preferring the freedom of moving around Silver on his own schedule, but he had quietly begun staying closer these days because somewhere in the back of his mind lived the fear that a night would come when Viola needed someone near and he would be too far away to reach her in time. Curse or no curse, Viola was not going to die in the hands of the Alpha the way the other Lunas had. Not while he was around.