Voren adjusted his position a bit, sliding one arm behind his head while his eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling.
"The whole relationship only lasted a few months," he went on. "And she wasn’t all that obsessed with even when our first eting was arranged after the found soone who matched the picture I sent, because she had seen her share of n. Excuse my language on that."
"I spent around two months trying to win her over with expensive gifts and all the things a guy would normally do for a woman he’s interested in. But I was also nervous about getting involved with a human, if you can understand where I was coming from."
"An Alpha’s strength during sex is on another level, and I knew I could really hurt her if I wasn’t careful. So I slept with her just twice the entire ti. I was extra careful, never going all the way in, and then it was over. Still, she complained that I was too huge for her, and I totally got it. Even if I had married her, we both knew we’d never get the kind of sexual satisfaction we each needed."
"Aside from that, my pack would never accept a human as Luna, and Bloodfang would kill for it. So after that second ti, when I saw how much pain she was in, I didn’t try again. And right around then Stanley ca through with everything he’d found, and that beca the final straw."
"I tried to move on after that." He paused. "But two years later, she showed up at my door holding a toddler on her hip."
Seraphine’s chest tightened up. She kept her breathing steady and even. She kept listening.
"She said she hadn’t told when she got pregnant because she wasn’t sure at first. That she needed ti to figure out who the baby’s daddy really was."
Sothing tightened in his jaw. "But she’d already done a paternity test on her own, without knowing. And it ca back positive. I’m the father."
The word hung there softly in the room. Father. The way he said it carried real weight—not exactly pride, but more like soone describing the mont the whole ground opened under their feet and they had to figure out a new way to stand.
"The first ti I saw Marigold, she was just over a year old." His voice got warr when he talked about her, opening up in a special way.
"But she moved and talked like a three-year-old or even older, sharp as a whip, curious about everything, not scared of one bit. Her body was still small enough to match her actual age, but she ward up to right away." He stopped for a second. "The sa way she ward up to you."
Seraphine pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything.
"I loved her right away," he continued. "Before the second test even ca back." He turned his head toward her briefly. "Yeah, I still ran my own paternity test independently. Because that’s just how I am."
"And it confird it?"
"Sa result." He looked back up at the ceiling. "But Coco didn’t want to let her go. She wasn’t interested in sharing custody or any kind of normal arrangent unless it ended with a ring on her finger and her na tied to mine."
His face went flat. "She told to marry her. I said no. She kept pushing. I said no again. Then she said if I wanted full custody, I’d have to pay for it."
Seraphine let out a slow breath, unable to believe that a mother would give up on her child for money. "How much did she want?"
"Twenty million."
There was a beat of silence, and Seraphine’s heart ached. She would give anything for her own daughter.
"I gave her fifty."
Seraphine blinked hard. "You—"
"For my daughter?" Voren said it like the decision had been simple math. "Any amount felt way too low. So I gave her fifty, had my lawyers put together a restraining order, and she signed every single page without much fight. Coco stays completely away from Marigold. That was the agreent, and she’s stuck to it."
He turned his head to look at Seraphine fully now, his expression careful and thoughtful, like he’d been waiting for the right mont to say this next part. "So Marigold is mine. Fully, legally, completely mine."
Seraphine nodded slowly, taking it all in. She was processing everything, trying to find a place inside herself to hold it without letting it show too much on her face how deeply it was changing things for her.
"Except," Voren added, Seraphine felt sothing twist in her stomach at that word. "Except what?"
He was still looking right at her. Not at the chandelier anymore. At her face, reading her like he always could, even when she thought she had her guard all the way up.
"Except you want to be her legal mother."
Seraphine opened her mouth to respond, but Voren’s voice cut through it. "And you can’t say no, Sera."
A slight change ca over his expression, sowhere between a smile and sothing more serious. "You already owe a favor. And I’m calling it in right now."
The room went very quiet, and Seraphine stared at him. Her heart was pounding hard and complicated inside her chest. She wanted to argue back, wanted to list out all the reasons that was a crazy thing to say and how that favor had never been ant for sothing like this.
But another part of her, the part that had sat with that little girl on the hospital bed, the part that had felt sothing lock into place in her chest when Marigold embraced her, that part didn’t have any argunt at all.
She turned back to look at the chandelier. "You planned this for a long," she said quietly, rembering how Voren had gotten upset when she sent that thank you gift through Corvine but Voren’s reasons were far from what she was thinking.
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