Seraphine’s mouth had fallen open just a bit. The picture of her own life that she’d been carrying around for years was quietly rearranging itself in her head, and she wasn’t sure yet what it would look like once everything finally settled into place.
"You were incredible out there, by the way," Voren started. "Smarter than almost everyone in your year group, sa as in business engineering, and I wasn’t surprised at all."
"I had another plan for your graduation," Voren said, and sothing in his tone changed, a weight coming back into it.
"I thought four years away from the pack, away from Ravyn, that distance would have cleared your stupid obsession out of your system. I told myself that by the ti you crossed that stage, you’d have moved on. That there’d finally be an opening for us again."
He stayed quiet for a beat. "I had the whole thing mapped out in my head."
Then his voice changed again. Careful now. Like he was picking out each word with extra thought.
"But during one of the long vacation breaks, there was a full moon festival. And you went back to the pack because you could not forget Ravyn right?"
Seraphine felt sothing tighten up in her stomach before he even finished the sentence.
"And that’s when Ravyn ca to ." His eyes went back to the ceiling, but his jaw had gone tight. "He told that you had lured him to bed."
"That’s not true."
The words ca out of her sharp and imdiate, with no hesitation at all. Seraphine’s voice cracked on the last syllable, and she let it happen, didn’t bother trying to hold it together.
The tears that had been threatening finally slipped loose and ran sideways down her temple as she lay there, staring up at the ceiling.
"I was drugged."
The room went very quiet.
Voren turned onto his side slowly, propping himself up on one arm, and looked down at her.
Everything he’d been about to say, all of it about how Marigold’s mother ca into the picture, the explanation he’d been building toward, just stopped sowhere in his throat and wouldn’t co out.
Because her face wasn’t the face of soone reaching for an excuse. Her eyes were wet and open and exhausted, the kind of exhausted that lives deep in a person for years before they finally put it into words out loud.
His expression changed. The careful control he usually kept over his face gave way to sothing raw and unguarded, sothing that looked a lot like a man realizing he’d been handed a completely different story than the one he’d been told all this ti.
"You were drugged." He repeated it back to her quietly, not exactly as a question, but like he needed to hear the words out in the air between them to really understand them.
"How?" His voice ca out lower than he ant it to. "Sera, how did that happen?"
"I didn’t know myself," Seraphine started right there with that honest confession, because it felt like the realest place to kick things off. Her voice ca out quiet but steady, the kind of steady that takes real effort to keep together.
Lying there on their backs helped a lot. Both of them staring up at the chandelier instead of facing each other created just enough space to actually get the tough words out.
It was like talking in the dark, almost like a confession where you don’t have to et anyone’s eyes.
But then Voren rolled onto his side and looked straight at her, really studying her face, and the words started getting stuck in her throat.
"Can you lie on your back again?" she asked softly. "Please."
He held her gaze for a second, so emotion flickering across his face, then let out a long breath and settled back down next to her. They both went back to staring up at the chandelier.
The light hit the crystal drops and sent little rainbows dancing across the ceiling in the quiet.
Seraphine let out a breath of her own.
"You followed out into the outlands that ti," she said. "And you saw pick up that girl."
"I rember."
"Her na is Tallulah." Seraphine kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling. "And she’s living proof of everything that went down that night. Every single bit of it." She let that sink in for a mont before continuing. "Daisy was the one behind the whole thing."
The silence that ca after felt heavy, like it had its own weight in the room.
Then Voren moved. He sat up slow at first, like he was fighting to keep himself steady, but soon he was on his feet and that control just broke apart.
His fist slamd into the wall, not so light tap, but a real hard punch that ca straight from deep down in his chest, the kind your body throws when your head can’t hold it all in anymore.
The wall didn’t budge, of course, but his knuckles ca away bloody.
He stood there with his back to her, shoulders rising and falling with each breath.
"I’m sorry." His voice sounded rough around the edges. "Sera, I’m really sorry. I should have been there that night. Ravyn invited and everything, but I didn’t show up."
Voren knew nothing like that would have happened under his watch because he would have still kept his eyes on her like a hawk.
He turned halfway around, not quite looking at her full on. "I couldn’t handle the idea of being in the sa room as you and seeing you with soone else. So I stayed away. And I’ve replayed that choice in my head every single day since then."
Seraphine stayed quiet and let him keep going.
"I believed Ravyn because of the things you had said to , how you pushed away, and what I had seen—" He paused and pressed his lips together tight.
"That was the first ti in my whole life I ever cried. Not as a kid. Not during any of the rough stuff the pack put through. None of it."
He finally turned to face her properly, and his expression looked more open than she’d ever seen it, like he was letting his guard down even though it clearly hurt to do it.
"Because I knew right then and there that I’d lost you for good, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it, and that led to do things I would have never done if I knew this truth..."
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