"Nick, can you do a favor?" Viola turned to him where he was sniffing his arms and body and then grimacing, but at her words he nodded almost eagerly.
"Sure. What’s up?"
"Can you go and explain to the guest that sothing ca up that makes unable to show up? You can make up any excuses for . I don’t think Sofia should be left alone."
"Don’t worry, we can handle this. I will go with him," Zoe said. "Let’s go." She pulled Nick along.
"Be careful around her, Vee. She might not be dangerous enough to harm but her husband is. Don’t let Javier know she’s with you." Nick warned as he got dragged away by his cousin.
After watching Zoe and Nick leave, Viola turned and went back into the room, only to find Sofia already crawling her way down the side of the bed with the clear intention of getting up and leaving. Viola moved quickly and pushed her firmly but gently back down onto the mattress.
But the she-wolf suddenly turned on her and gripped her arm with a force that hurt, before she said, "Don’t trust any Kade. Don’t trust any male Kade. They are bad, all of them!" She gritted aggressively, giving Viola a shake that made her dizzy. Could it be that everyone was right and Sofia wasn’t sane?
Viola quickly racked her brain before she got shaken to the end of tomorrow, because for soone who had been barely conscious minutes ago, Sofia possessed a startling and unexpected amount of strength.
"Calm down, Sofia. Don’t worry, I don’t trust people easily. Relax. Are you hungry? I can get you sothing to eat." She asked gently.
As though she had been burned by the question, Sofia released Viola’s arm and scrambled away from her, shaking her head frantically. "No. You want to poison too. They want to kill so he can marry again. They give good food and my stomach hurts so badly afterwards. He asks if I am hungry..." Trembling from head to toe, she slid off the bed and sank onto the floor, trying to make herself small in the corner beside it.
Viola frowned and crouched down to her level, keeping her voice as gentle and coaxing as she could manage. "Who is trying to kill you?"
Sofia said nothing and only stared at her through the thick curtain of her hair, scraping her nails slowly against the floor in that familiar back and forth motion.
"Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I promise. Tell who is trying to kill you." She asked again, lowering herself fully onto the floor so that she wouldn’t appear intimidating to the frightened woman.
"Him..." Sofia whispered in a small, airy voice.
"Who?"
"Mi vida..." She whispered.
Mi vida. Viola turned the words over in her mind, recognizing them imdiately. My life. And she frowned in confusion.
"I don’t understand," Viola said.
"Mi vida. Javier..." Sofia added.
Javier was trying to kill her? What on earth could Sofia have done to him to earn this level of punishnt? Viola thought in displeasure. Was he the one who gave her the wolfsbane?
"Mi vida wants another wife. If I die, he will marry soone powerful. His Mami wants him to marry soone that will give him a child before you do, soone more sensible then . He asks if I am hungry and I say yes, he gives poison..." She sniffled quietly. "He gives poison. Mi vida wants to kill ... like the other Kade killed Evangeline..."
Viola’s brows pulled together. She didn’t like a single thing she was hearing, and Javier wanting to kill his own wife was a level of heartlessness that turned her stomach, but it was the na Evangeline that made her go still. "The other Kade?" She asked carefully.
Sofia nodded, her hair swaying with the movent. "Your Kade. The Alpha. The Kades are wicked, that is why they are cursed. I saw Evangeline’s dead body. Your Kade killed her and I saw him dragging her body away, and he looked at and said, ’Shh, don’t tell anyone or you will end up just like her.’ And then he left. Kades are wicked."
Though many thought she was insane, Sofia was perfectly sane and knew what she saw. Being seen as a crazy person made people careless, they didn’t bother to hide their darkest secrets even when she was right there to catch them. And she had caught the supre Alpha. She had seen what he did to his wife with his own hands. That mory would never go away from her mind.
"Javier... he used to love ... Now he is wicked too." She said wretchedly, the words torn from sowhere raw and deep inside her throat.
Viola was struggling to absorb everything the she-wolf was saying. She hadn’t expected Sofia to begin opening up to her like this, as though a stopper had been pulled from sowhere inside her and everything had co rushing out at once. She had seen Sebastian kill the late Evangeline with her own eyes? Had he truly done it with his own hands?
"Wickedness. You will die too." Sofia’s eyes fixed on her with an urgent, desperate intensity. "You are nice. Run away now, take the ring off your finger and go far away from here. They will kill you!" She said, and then began pushing at Viola’s chest in short, frantic shoves. "You have not loved him the way I loved my Kade, you can still leave!"
Viola quickly caught Sofia’s wrists before the pushing could send her backward and hurt her, and then she said steadily and calmly, "Okay, okay, I will run away just like you want. But first tell what happened between you and Javier. Why is he treating you this way if he once loved you?"
Sofia yanked her hands back and hugged them tightly to her own chest, dissolving into quiet, broken sobs as she began rocking herself back and forth. "It was my fault... my fault. I am to bla. I went out when I shouldn’t have. I went out when he told not to leave our room."
"What happened when you went out?" She asked softly.
"I... was in my heat season..." Sofia began, her face lowering into her knees. "Javier was not around and I was waiting for him to co back. We had gone on our honeymoon and were staying in a hotel in another pack. But I didn’t know my scent would travel that far and reach outside the hotel room. I didn’t bother to suppress it because I knew my husband would be back soon to take care of the heat. I went out to check if my Javier is coming. But instead of my Javier coming through the door of the hotel... other n ca. They followed my scent..."
Viola’s fingers began to curl slowly into fists at her sides as the picture took shape. In the werewolf world, the belief that a she-wolf who failed to conceal her heat was inviting whatever ca to her was so deeply and disgustingly ingrained that countless she-wolves had been forced into rape with no action ever being taken against the n responsible.
"I couldn’t fight them. There were too many. They all forced down and took turns putting out the heat in our room, and Javier ca back and found them, and , like that. I told him I hadn’t brought them in, that they had forced themselves on . Javier didn’t believe . He blad . He called a bitch. He rejected our bond..." She whispered, her sobs coming out soft and silent and utterly defeated. "He beats every day now and calls a madwoman. But I am not mad... I am not."
"Shh." Viola moved forward without hesitation and pulled her into her arms. "It was not your fault. Not a single part of it. Don’t you dare bla yourself. Javier is stupid and he is completely undeserving of you."
"No..." Sofia shook her head against Viola’s shoulder, her voice cracking. "I am the one who is undeserving of him. I turned him into a wicked Kade... just like your Kade..."
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