Seraphine stopped walking so abruptly, her entire body going still as her eyes locked onto Corvine’s face with a focus that felt almost predatory in its intensity, and when she finally spoke, her voice was low but firm, carrying that quiet authority she never had to force.
"Let it out," she said, her gaze unwavering, as if she could already sense that whatever he was about to say was going to drag sothing ugly out of the past.
Corvine hesitated, and that hesitation alone was enough to make Seraphine’s pulse tick faster. He glanced away, then toward the car, as if the moving vehicle would make the conversation easier to handle.
"I’ll tell you on the way," he said carefully, like soone choosing his words before the battle even began.
She did not argue, but instead turned and moved toward the car in long, controlled strides, her mind already racing ahead of the mont. The night air felt cool against her skin, yet she barely registered it, because the tension in her chest had begun to coil tighter with every second.
The engine ca alive with a low rumble once Corvine settled into the driver’s seat, and as soon as he pulled out onto the road, Seraphine angled her body toward him, her eyes studying his profile in the dim glow of the dashboard lights.
"Go on," she pressed, her tone calm but insistent. "Tell what you know about Zane."
Corvine kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, his fingers tightening slightly around the steering wheel as if the na itself required steadiness. "Do you rember the guy from the Quantum pack," he began slowly, "the one who set up the pack’s server before you went off to school in the city over a decade ago?"
The words floated toward her, but they felt distant, blurred by ti. A decade was not a short stretch of mory, especially when so much had happened since then, and Seraphine’s mind tried to reach back into a haze of old faces and forgotten nas.
"I don’t rember the face," she admitted, frustration creeping into her voice because she hated not rembering sothing that might matter now.
"I figured you wouldn’t," Corvine replied, his voice gentler this ti. "So I had soone send his current picture. Look at the image on my phone."
Seraphine picked up his phone from the console, her fingers steady even though sothing in her stomach had already begun to twist. She unlocked it and opened the photo, and the mont the image filled the screen, the color drained from her face so fast it felt like soone had pulled the warmth straight out of her veins.
"Zane Callahan?" she whispered, and her voice, which was rarely uncertain, shrank into sothing smaller, almost fragile, as mories crashed into her mind without rcy.
She had not even t Zane at her pack back then, not properly, not in any aningful way, but during her first year in college, he had approached her like soone who already carried a grudge.
She could still rember the way his eyes had looked at her, sharp and calculating, as if he knew sothing she did not. He had been a senior, older, more established, and there had been sothing almost deliberate about the way he targeted her with those cold, cutting remarks.
Back then, he had told her that he would teach her a lesson, and she could still hear the faint edge of threat hidden beneath his calm tone. He never acted on it before his graduation, never did anything overt that she could report or confront, but the promise had lingered in her thoughts long after he walked away.
Even now, rembering it made her shoulders tense as if bracing for sothing unseen. She had spent years wondering what exactly he ant, how he planned to teach her that so-called lesson, and most of all, why.
"No wonder the pack server kept losing data," she murmured, her mind connecting threads that had once seed random. "It only stopped after I started encrypting everything secretly." She swallowed, her gaze still glued to the image on the screen. "But what I don’t understand is what he has to do with Daisy."
Corvine exhaled slowly, as though he had been waiting for her to ask that exact question. "There’s more," he said, and there was sothing almost grim in the way he said it. "Since I started working at the company, I’ve run into a few pack mbers, ours and others. Guess who I t recently."
Seraphine turned her head slightly toward him, her curiosity sharpening despite the unease stirring inside her. "Who?"
"Zane’s ex. Her na is Ery."
The words landed with unexpected weight, and for a mont, the tension in her chest shifted into sothing else entirely. Information, especially juicy information, had a way of soothing her when chaos tried to cloud her thoughts.
"Tell more," she urged, leaning back slightly but watching him carefully.
"I haven’t had the chance to really talk to her yet," Corvine admitted, "but I invited her to dinner. That’s why I was upset when you were late earlier."
A flicker of guilt passed through Seraphine’s eyes, though it softened quickly once she rembered the reason. "Leon asked to assist with a surgery," she explained, her voice steady but carrying a quiet pride she did not bother to hide. "It was successful, which is why I got held up."
Corvine’s head turned toward her briefly before returning to the road, surprise and admiration written clearly across his face. "So you can perform surgery on humans now?"
A slow, deeply satisfying smile spread across Seraphine’s lips, the kind that ca from accomplishnt rather than ego. "Yes," she said, and the word carried the weight of long hours, quiet study, and the stubborn determination that had always defined her.
Corvine’s expression softened into sothing warr, sothing proud. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "I have this feeling you’re going to beco the most sought-after surgeon in the world."
She let out a soft breath, shaking her head slightly. "Do not make it personal," she replied gently. "I did it because I could help, and because I care. Besides, I have other responsibilities. Surgery demands too much ti, and I cannot ignore everything else just to chase one path."
She understood her worth, but when it ca to human lives, putting a price on them felt almost wrong. Healing was not supposed to be transactional, not in her world.
The car suddenly turned down a street she did not imdiately recognize, and she glanced out the window before realization settled in. He was not just talking about Zane’s ex, he was going to pick her up.
In the dimly lit parking area of an apartnt complex, a woman stood waiting, her posture straight and her expression clearly irritated. She was slightly taller than Seraphine, with sharp features that hinted at a strong personality, and when Corvine parked in front of her, she crossed her arms lightly.
"I thought you were going to change your mind," she said, her voice heavy with disappointnt, but the mont her eyes landed on Seraphine inside the car, her expression loosened, and her gaze dropped almost instantly. "Luna..."
"Call Sera," Seraphine interrupted softly, her tone respectful yet firm, because titles did not define her the way people assud they did.
The woman swallowed slightly. "Sera," she corrected herself. "I had no idea you two were together."
Corvine let out a faint smile, clearly amused by the misunderstanding. "Ery," he said gently, "Sera is a close friend. We live together, yes, but it’s more family than anything else." He hesitated for only a second before adding what truly mattered.
"So you two are not dating?" Ery asked cautiously, her eyes flickering between them. "Everyone knows Luna Sera is divorced."
The word divorced lingered in the air like a fragile truth, and for a split second, Seraphine felt the weight of it press against her chest, not because it hurt anymore, but because she refused to let it define her story.
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