Voren’s fingers were already moving across his phone screen, the call half-dialed, when sothing slamd into his hand hard enough to send it crashing to the floor. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, but the phone was still intact.
"Voren." Seraphine’s voice didn’t rise, only threatening. "You made a promise."
He turned to look at her, jaw tight. "Yeah, and you got everything you wanted out of that promise." His eyes darkened, the muscle in his cheek jumping.
"Daisy crossed a line the mont she started wanting you dead. You really think she’s just going to stop? That she’s going to wake up tomorrow and decide she’s done?"
The truth was, sothing primal in him wanted nothing more than to find Daisy and make her pay, not quickly, not cleanly. He wanted to watch her suffer the way she had made Seraphine suffer.
The image sat behind his eyes, sharp and satisfying, but then Seraphine stepped closer and he saw it — that cold, calculated look she got when she was already five steps ahead of everyone else in the room. She had a plan, just as always.
"Daisy is exactly the kind of woman Ravyn deserves." The words ca out of Seraphine’s mouth like she was reading a grocery list, flat, unbothered, almost bored. "Those two belong together."
Sothing about the way she said it hit different. Not the words themselves but what was underneath them, that hollow kind of calm that only showed up when a person had buried sothing too deep to dig back out. Voren felt it settle into his own chest, cold and uninvited.
His eyes moved over her face. "You won." His voice dropped. "You ca out on top. So why do you still look like that?" He paused, hoping it wasn’t what he was thinking. "Are you still in love with him, Sera?"
He didn’t see it coming.
Her palm connected with the side of his face so hard his head snapped to the right.
This one had more behind it than the slap she gave him during the whole Santiago situation. This one had grief in it, and fury, and sothing close to desperation.
"In love with him?" Her voice broke at the top, climbing in a way that made the air in the room feel thinner. Her claws had already slid out, long and sharp at her fingertips, and for one second Voren genuinely thought Marsha was going to co tearing through.
But Seraphine pulled it back. Her wolf retreated, the claws slowly sliding back in, and what was left behind was just a woman cracked open and raw in the middle of a dimly lit room.
"They almost killed my child." Her voice dropped back down to almost nothing, which sohow made it worse. Tears spilled over before she could stop them.
"And even if sohow my baby survived, Ravyn still stood there and said she should be killed." Her throat worked. "Nobody even knows if she’s out there sowhere breathing or if she’s—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "And you’re standing here thinking what? That I still have feelings for that monster?"
Voren opened his mouth, then closed it quickly.
The guilt hit him fast and without warning, moving through him like sothing physical. He watched her shoulders shake and sothing in his chest that he had kept carefully locked away rattled hard against its door.
He closed the space between them before his brain signed off on it.
His arms went around her and she imdiately pushed back, both palms flat against his chest, trying to create distance, but he held on.
Seraphine pushed again, but he didn’t move. And then, like a building finally giving way after too long under too much weight, she stopped fighting and let herself fall into him.
Her tears soaked through his shirt almost imdiately.
"I’m sorry, Sera." Voren leaned down without thinking, his lips pressing to the top of her head, and he didn’t even realize he’d done it until he felt her go completely still in his arms.
She pulled back slightly, or tried to, but his arms tightened.
"Relax." His voice ca out low, close to her ear. "I’m not going to take advantage of you while you’re hurting. That’s not what this is."
Whatever wall was still standing in her ca down at that. Her whole body relaxed against his, going soft in a way that told him she hadn’t let herself rest in a long ti.
His fingers moved slowly through her hair, working through it gently, and her breathing started to even out, the hard shaking in her shoulders fading to nothing.
She didn’t love Ravyn anymore.
Voren felt that truth settle over him like sothing warm, and he held onto it. That was all he had ever really needed to know, not for any sche. Just for himself. Just to have that one thing confird.
One part of it was done.
Her breathing had gone slow and deep by the ti the last of the crying stopped. When Voren tilted slightly to get a look at her face, her fingers imdiately twisted into the fabric of his shirt and pulled. She wasn’t letting go, just like the old tis.
So he didn’t make her.
He lowered himself back slowly, bringing her down with him onto the bed, careful and quiet like he was handling sothing that had already been through enough.
She curled into him without a word, her head on his chest, and within minutes her breathing told him she was out.
He stayed awake a little longer, staring at the ceiling, wondering what happened more than one and half decades ago when he visited the city for the first ti and left her side.
Everything changed after he returned a few months later. Did she hurt him intentionally or was there sothing else he didn’t know? From the looks of it, Seraphine did not even rember him that way, and not for once had she apologized for what she did.
That night, sleep ca differently for both of them, not the restless, surface-level kind that left you more tired than before, but the deep, heavy kind that pulled you all the way under.
Seraphine found herself sowhere strange in her sleep, moving through images that felt too sharp and too real to be random. There was a child in it. Small hands. A sound like crying that she couldn’t get to no matter how fast she moved.
Then her phone rang, and her eyes snapped open.
Pale yellow light was already cutting through the curtains in long, lazy lines across the floor. Morning. She had no idea how many hours had passed but the light said it had been a while.
And then she realized where she was.
Sohow, at so point in the night, she had ended up completely on top of Voren, her cheek against his chest, her legs tangled with his, his arms wrapped around her back like she belonged there. Her heartbeat picked up so fast she was almost certain he could feel it.
She moved carefully, trying to slide off without waking him, and his hand flattened against her waist and pressed her back down.
"Sera." Sleep was still thick in his voice, pulling it down low, and there was sothing underneath the roughness of it, sothing that moved through her in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely.
"Voren, I’m so sorry, I didn’t an to—"
His mouth found hers before the sentence had anywhere left to go.
User Comments
0 comments from readers