Voren walked back over to the bed and lay down beside her again, both of them back to looking up at the soft light from above.
"I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you. I was already in so much pain, and that story just fed right into everything the angry side of wanted to hear about you. Like you were so obsessed with Ravyn that you didn’t even recognize who you were anymore."
Seraphine swallowed hard but stayed silent, just listening.
"You went back to school after that. Then the news hit that you were pregnant." His voice broke a little on that last word before he caught himself.
"You put your dical program on hold and headed back to the pack to finish things there. I heard about it all from Ravyn, and I just... I completely fell apart, Sera. Sothing inside snapped for real."
Seraphine wanted so badly to turn and look at his face. The way his voice cracked open told her so much more than the actual words, and she wished she could see it all, but the heavy weight of sha kept her right where she was, staring up.
"I can’t go back and fix any of it," she said gently. "None of it. Ravyn was my biggest mistake, and I know that now. Honestly, I knew it even before it ended. But knowing that doesn’t erase what happened."
"I know." The way Voren said it carried a deep bitterness mixed with a kind of tired acceptance, like soone who’d learned to live with an old injury but still felt it ache when the weather changed.
He stayed quiet for a bit, the chandelier casting its gentle, broken light across their faces. "That’s exactly why you need to hear what ca next because it wasn’t nothing, and I’m not gonna act like it was."
Seraphine turned onto her side.
She couldn’t stop herself. Sothing in how he said it pulled her eyes right to him. She studied the sharp line of his jaw and the way he kept staring up at the ceiling like it might give him the answers he needed.
"What are you talking about, V?"
He could feel her watching him. His hand reached for the remote on the nightstand without even looking, fingers wrapping around it a little tighter than usual.
"I’d rather you lie back like you were before," he said. It wasn’t quite a request, but it wasn’t bossy either. Sowhere right in between.
Seraphine didn’t move at first. Then she heard it, a soft, clear click. The lock on the bedroom door turning.
Her eyes darted to the door and then back to him.
"Why’d you just lock that?"
He rested the remote on his chest, still holding onto it, and kept staring at the chandelier. "So if what I’m about to say upsets you, you won’t leave before I get it all out."
The room suddenly felt a bit smaller and more closed in.
Seraphine glanced at the door one more ti, then back up at the ceiling. She made herself breathe steady and normal.
She thought about how much ground they’d already covered tonight, all the painful pieces they’d spread out on this bed like broken parts that might still fit together sohow.
"We already went way past that point tonight," she said. "I told you I’d listen to everything. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve heard it all."
She felt so of the tightness ease out of the air between them.
Voren stayed quiet a little longer, like he was weighing it out one final ti. Then he went ahead. "I went out looking for soone who looked like you."
Seraphine blinked in surprise as Voren continued his confession.
"I needed sothing to dull the pain," he said, his voice flat as he tried to keep his emotions in check. "It got to be too much for to carry around anymore. So I did what I thought might help. I asked soone to search around and actually find soone who resembled you. And he did after a few months."
Seraphine’s lips parted, but no words ca out at first. She feared a single word would discourage Voren from saying more, so she kept quiet.
"She was human. That was the biggest difference, besides her hair being blonde instead of brunette. But her eyes were the exact sa blue as yours. Sa face shape. Sa mouth, nose, sa height. Pretty much everything else matched you."
He didn’t turn to look at her. "I had her dye her hair darker to match better."
The chandelier beca too interesting above them. The little rainbows on the ceiling stayed still.
"Her na is Coco Jas."
And then it all clicked into place. The missing piece she hadn’t expected, the one that suddenly made the rest of the picture rearrange itself in her mind.
"That’s why Marigold calls you mom," Voren finalized, Seraphine’s entire body went completely still.
Not the peaceful kind of still, but the frozen kind that happens when your thoughts race so far ahead that everything else just stops, waiting for your mind and body to sync back up.
Voren grabbed his phone. He unlocked it, pulled up a photo, and held the screen out for her to see.
Seraphine took it and studied the image.
The woman looking back at her had an almost identical face. The bone structure matched perfectly, the eyes were that sa pale blue, and the mouth had the sa shape.
But if you looked close enough, there were little differences. The skin texture wasn’t quite right, the way she stood, a slight variation in the brow. It wasn’t her. Seraphine could tell that without any doubt.
Still, staring at the picture, she could see exactly how a little kid might have spent years thinking it was.
She placed the phone gently on the mattress between them without saying anything.
Her thoughts raced through the tiline. Did it an Marigold wasn’t hers?
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