Earlier, Voren spotted Ravyn the mont they crossed paths near the back of the building, and Ravyn, to his credit, didn’t waste ti on pleasantries.
"Voren." He fell into step beside him, dropping his voice low. "Did you bring her?"
"She’s here," Voren confird. He glanced around the space they were moving through, the side corridor that ran parallel to the main gym floor, and ca up empty. No Seraphine. No Damon. No Bryan. He put it together quickly enough.
She’d gone inside ahead of him, probably with the other two, because being near Voren for an extended stretch of ti required periodic breaks for her sanity. He understood that, though he didn’t particularly like it, but he understood it. "Get sothing to train in first."
Ravyn’s mouth curved. "Already handled. Changing room."
They took the back entrance into Ravyn’s private changing room, a space that most pack mbers never saw, set apart from the main locker area and separated from the gym floor by nothing more than a wall and whatever distance sound needed to travel.
As it turned out, it didn’t need much. The voices from inside carried cleanly, and Ravyn knew every single one of them without having to think about it.
Voren went still as he listened. The easy, coiled patience he usually carried with him had gone sowhere else entirely, replaced by sothing tight and low and simring just below the point where it would start to show on his face.
He pulled on the training gear, white shorts, a white tank that fit well enough, and kept his jaw locked while the sounds from the other room continued to travel through the wall.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. Controlled in the way that things are controlled when the alternative is considerably worse. "You made bring her here for this?" He didn’t look at Ravyn while he said it. He focused on lacing his sneakers, precise and unhurried, like he needed sowhere safe to put his hands. "I trusted you."
"It’s not what you’re thinking." Ravyn’s voice was flat but honest, the tone of a man who wasn’t going to dress sothing up just to make himself sound better. "I’d heard a few of them making comnts about her. Ugly ones. I wanted to get everyone together so I could call it out directly, and make them apologize in front of the whole pack." He paused. "I wasn’t expecting any of this."
Voren finally looked at him. The look lasted long enough to make its point. "Then you need to fix it," he said, low and without room for negotiation. "Because if she throws my shares back in my face because of this morning, I won’t forgive you for it. That’s not a threat, Ravyn. That’s just what’s going to happen."
"I’ll handle it."
"See that you do."
Ravyn moved first. Voren finished the second lace and stood, and they walked out together into the gym, through the wide doorway that opened onto the main floor with its high ceilings, scuffed mats, weight racks and long rows of equipnt.
The space was large enough that the pack used it for assemblies when the weather or the occasion called for it. It swallowed sound differently than a regular room.
Right now it was full of bodies and the particular charged quiet of people who had been making noise and then stopped when they saw who was walking in.
Ravyn’s gaze swept the room and found exactly what he’d feared it would. There was no remorse anywhere, not in Diane’s expression, not in Kevin’s, not in the faces of the people who had been laughing loud enough to fill the space ten seconds ago.
They looked back at him with the easy confidence of people who had decided in advance that whatever he was about to say wouldn’t really apply to them. After all, he’d made his feelings about Seraphine clear enough over the years, hadn’t he?
He hadn’t even drawn breath to speak when Bryan appeared at his side like he’d been launched from sowhere, all flushed cheeks and heaving chest and eyes that had gone deep red around the edges.
"Dad." Bryan grabbed his hand. His grip was tighter than it should have been for a child his size. "They said bad things about Mom." His voice cracked on the last word, and he pushed through it. "I don’t want to be in this pack anymore. Can I go with her? To the city?"
Sothing moved through Ravyn’s chest, quick and quiet, like a door opening sowhere inside him that he hadn’t expected to find unlocked. His gaze went to Daisy first, almost without aning it to.
She was standing right there the entire ti, and she had let every word land without raising a single objection. He turned the thought over as he looked at her. A Luna was supposed to be the heart of a pack, the standard, the anchor, the person who set the temperature of how things were done here.
He had been watching Daisy and asking himself quietly, if she could ever fill in the role of a Luna.
His gaze moved to Seraphine. He looked at her long enough that the look beca sothing that leaned toward sorry without quite announcing itself as an apology yet, because that conversation wasn’t one he could have in front of everyone.
He crouched down in front of Bryan, eye level, the way you had to be when a conversation actually mattered. "Seraphine is a very busy woman, pup. She wouldn’t have ti for you the way you need."
He kept his voice even and warm, the kind of steady that a child reaches for when everything else feels unsteady. "And you have sothing important ahead of you. The pack is going to need you."
"But they upset Mom." Bryan was not interested in being redirected. His chest was still moving too fast and his jaw was set with a stubbornness that Ravyn recognized from sowhere uncomfortably close to ho.
"I know." Ravyn didn’t argue with it. Didn’t smooth over it or explain it away. He just let the acknowledgnt sit. Then, quietly, with a calm so complete it was almost more unsettling than anger would have been and asked, "What would you like done about it?"
The gym went very still.
Bryan looked up and around him, taking in the faces, all those adult faces that still hadn’t found anything resembling regret, and his small chest rose and fell and rose again.
His eyes swept the room with the kind of gravity that didn’t belong to his age, and when he spoke, his voice carried further than it had any right to.
"They should all be punished."
Nobody laughed this ti. Nobody exchanged knowing looks or comfortable smiles. The room had gone the particular quiet of people who were no longer certain which way this was going.
Because Ravyn hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t softened the conversation toward sothing more manageable or steered Bryan toward forgiveness or glanced over at Daisy for backup.
He was still crouched, still eye level, still looking at his son with the kind of complete and focused attention that told everyone in the room without a single word directed at them, that he was listening for real.
"What punishnt did you have in mind?" he asked.
And every gaze in the room pulled toward them, sharp and uncertain, trying to read a script that had stopped behaving the way they’d expected.
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