Voren’s hand closed around hers before she could get any real leverage on the rock, fingers wrapping tight, and she pulled against him with everything she had. It didn’t matter. He held her like she weighed nothing, like the effort didn’t even register.
"Do you know who sent him?"
"Yes." The word ca out quiet and flat.
His grip loosened. Just slightly. Just enough for her to slide her hand free and step back, putting a foot of distance between them.
His eyes narrowed. "Then tell ."
Seraphine’s shoulders went rigid, the kind of stiff that started in the spine and worked its way up. She looked at a spot sowhere past his left ear. "There’s no point."
The muscle in his jaw moved. He watched her for a long mont, reading her the way people read weather, looking for the thing she wasn’t saying. Then sothing moved in his expression, not anger exactly, more like a decision being made.
"You still can’t hand even an ounce of trust." His voice dropped, not softer, just lower. More direct. "Even after I gave you my word."
He took a half step toward her, not threatening, just closing the distance she’d put between them. "Let be clear about sothing. If I ever turn on you, everything I put into MindNest is yours. Every dollar. Our new arrangent included. You’d have every right to it and I wouldn’t fight you on a single cent."
His eyes didn’t move from her face. "I’m the one who laid this trap. So get out of my way and let finish it."
Seraphine opened her mouth, then closed it. Her brow pulled together. "What trap?"
The rogue made a low, broken sound beneath the rock. She barely heard it.
"I knew soone was hunting you." Voren’s tone was matter of fact, like he was explaining sothing simple to soone who’d missed the obvious. "So I used myself as bait. When I jumped into the water, I wanted them to think you were out there alone. Draw them out and get them in the open."
Sothing moved through his expression, quick and honest before he locked it down again. "I wouldn’t have been half as worried if I’d known what your wolf was capable of."
Seraphine stood very still.
She turned that over carefully, looking at it from different angles the way you do when sothing doesn’t quite fit the shape you expected.
Was this about her? Or was it about MindNest and the money he had sitting in her company and the clean business arrangents he needed to protect? She couldn’t find a clear answer and that bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
Voren crouched down next to the pinned man and rested his forearms on his knees, perfectly relaxed, the way a person is relaxed when they hold every card in the room.
"I know how your people operate." His voice was almost conversational. "Nobody gives up their boss. It’s a code. I respect it." He tilted his head just slightly.
"But here’s what I’m offering you. Option one, you go to your ancestors quiet and alone, right here, right now. Option two, I send what’s left of you back to the outlands and have your family brought out to keep you company." He let that sit in the air for exactly two seconds. "Your choice. Take your ti."
The rogue’s face changed completely.
Whatever fear he’d been carrying before, the kind that ca from pain and being trapped under two hundred pounds of rock, that was nothing compared to what moved through his eyes now.
Because he knew, the way everyone in the outlands knew, that Alpha Voren wasn’t a man who made empty threats. He was actually the only Alpha who knew where to find the outlanders’ families.
He would get the information about the rogue leader’s family without even asking. His mouth opened before his brain caught up with it.
"Raul." The na ca out cracked and dry. "His na is Raul."
Seraphine’s head snapped toward the man on the ground. Her forehead creased. "Raul?" She crouched slightly, getting closer. "Why? Why does he want dead?"
The rogue’s head moved side to side, slow and miserable. His eyes were glassy with pain. Under that rock, his body couldn’t do what wolf bodies were built to do. No healing. No recovery.
The energy coming off the stone was cutting off everything his wolf would normally kick in to handle, and what was left was just a man lying broken in the dirt, wishing it would end.
"We don’t ask why." His voice scraped out of him. "We just do the work. Killing is how we eat. How we keep our families alive."
Voren straightened up slowly.
He looked down at the man with sothing in his expression that was hard to na. Not satisfaction exactly. Closer to the look of soone closing a Chapter they’d already read twice.
"I told your people before." His voice was quiet now, almost conversational again. "I sent a ssage through the waiter, and I said the woman was under my protection. I made that clear." His eyes stayed on the rogue’s face. "And you still ca."
The man said nothing. There was nothing left to say. Pain had eaten through whatever dignity he’d walked in with.
Voren reached down, gripped the rock with both hands, lifted it clean, and smashed it on the head of the rogue.
Seraphine turned her face away. Fast. The sound was bad enough without the visual attached to it, and she kept her eyes on the tree line until the sound stopped and the world went quiet again.
"Let’s go."
Voren’s hand found hers again, different this ti, no force behind it, just direction. She let him pull her toward the car without argunt.
Part of her had wanted to stay, to sit near the waterfall a little longer and let the sound of the water do sothing useful for the noise inside her head. But that want dissolved the second the na landed in her chest and started spreading.
Raul.
She turned it over and over the whole way to the car, the na sitting wrong, and sharp.
She dropped into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. Voren got in, started the engine, and turned the wheel in the complete opposite direction from where she expected. "Where are we going?" She asked, hoping it wasn’t what she was thinking.
"Centenary pack." He didn’t look at her when he said it, eyes already on the road ahead. "I need to understand why this Raul, or whatever his full story is, decided you needed to be in the ground."
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