"Alpha, please don’t blame Luna Seraphine this was all Co-Luna’s doing." Diane was already moving before anyone told her to, jogging across the ground toward them with her hands out like she could physically hold the situation together if she just got there fast enough.

She planted herself a few feet away and said what she’d come to say, her voice carrying the kind of urgency that only shows up when someone realizes they’re about to get caught in someone else’s fallout.

Kevin was right behind her, nodding before he even started talking. "She’s the whole reason we got punished in the first place. She kept mind linking us, kept pushing us to go against Luna Seraphine. So please, just let her get treated and she can come right back out here and join us."

Ravyn was still crouched there, holding Daisy’s unconscious weight in his arms and looked at them both like they’d just handed him something he had absolutely no idea what to do with.

Slowly, with the careful, exhausted movement of a man who had been carrying too many things for too long, Kevin lowered himself until he was sitting on the ground, whiles Ravyn was still holding Daisy in his arms.

He was upset, the deep, heavy kind that settles into a person’s chest and makes everything feel slightly impossible.

He already had more than he could comfortably hold, and now here was a pack member who was supposed to be in the middle of a punishment, sitting down on the ground in front of him like he had the luxury of deciding when they would and wouldn’t comply.

He opened his mouth.

"I think they have every right to wait for her," Damon said, stepping in smoothly before Ravyn could get the first word out. His tone was perfectly even, carrying just the faintest ghost of irony running through it like a vein of something cool through warm stone.

"Alpha Ravyn, everyone here knows you’re a just Alpha." He let that sit for exactly the right amount of time before he added, "And as your Beta, I stand right beside you on that."

The others exchanged glances, and then, one by one, they all lowered themselves to the ground and sat. No one said anything else. They just waited, patient and unified in that particular way people get when they’ve decided that sitting still is its own kind of argument.

Ravyn had been a leader long enough to have navigated complicated rooms, difficult people, impossible choices. But he genuinely could not remember a single moment in his life that had left him feeling quite this tangled up inside.

He looked at the people sitting on the ground around him, at Daisy unconscious in his arms, at Seraphine standing a few feet away with that expression she wore that told you absolutely nothing about what she was actually thinking, and he came back to the one thing that had been sitting at the back of his mind since she’d said it.

"You said there were things about Daisy," he said. His voice had gone quieter now, stripped of its earlier heat. "What things?"

Seraphine raised one hand and pressed her fingertips lightly to her lips, a small, unhurried gesture that said everything without using a single word.

She knew Ravyn, knew exactly how his mind worked, knew that without something concrete and irrefutable in his hands, he would find a way to reason around whatever she told him, to smooth it over, to give Daisy the benefit of a doubt he’d never once extended to Seraphine in all the years they were together.

The proof was coming. She was building it piece by careful piece, and the piece about the assassins, about who had sent them into the outlands after her, was going to be the one that mattered most.

"It’s not something I can put out there without proof to back it up," she said. "Once I have everything I need, you’ll get it."

She was done with this particular stretch of ground. She pulled open the passenger door of Voren’s car, settled herself into the seat, and glanced back just long enough to make sure Bryan was comfortable in the back before she turned forward again.

"Luna." Audrey’s voice came quick and breathless behind her, the woman’s footsteps catching up in short, hurried bursts. "Luna, won’t you forgive us?"

Seraphine turned her head and looked at her. Not unkindly. But not softly either. There was a particular quality to her gaze, the kind that made people feel like they were being read rather than simply looked at.

"If things hadn’t gone the way they did," Seraphine said, "or if Ravyn had believed the story you all helped push, would you be standing here asking me that right now?"

Nobody answered. The question hung in the air between them and didn’t move, and in that stillness, every single one of them understood what she meant.

The apology had only arrived because the plan had failed. Accountability that only shows up after consequences isn’t really accountability at all. It’s just damage control, and Seraphine wasn’t interested in pretending otherwise.

The silence that followed was its own confession, and every face in that small circle wore it in a slightly different way.

Seraphine turned back toward the front without waiting for a response.

"Ravyn," she said without turning around. "Why didn’t Daisy’s wolf protect her just now?"

The question landed quietly, but it didn’t sit quietly. Ravyn felt it drop into some part of him that he hadn’t been expecting to feel anything, and for a moment he genuinely had nothing to say.

The truth was that he didn’t know. He had never pushed for a run with Daisy, partly because on the non-existence of the mate bond, that would make it natural to ask.

And during every training session, every physical exercise he’d ever watched her go through, Daisy had found a way around the one thing that would have answered the question. She avoided it consistently with enough different excuses that he’d never quite added them all up into something that meant something. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

He was just realizing that he had no idea what Daisy’s wolf looked like.

"Let’s go," Voren said, and Damon folded himself into the backseat without any fuss.

Ravyn got to his feet, adjusting Daisy carefully as he moved around to the other side of the car with the clear intention of settling her inside. Voren didn’t say anything at first. He just watched. And then, with the calm finality of a man stating a policy that has never once been up for debate:

"Ravyn. You know my rules. I don’t allow women in my car."

Seraphine struggled to hold in the laughter that threatened to gush out of her. Wasn’t she a woman too? For once, she was glad Voren played her card without her even asking him to.

"But Voren, this is an emergency." Ravyn’s voice strained at the edges. "And you already let Sera in—"

"It’s Seraphine." Her voice came sharp and clear from the passenger seat, cutting straight through whatever else Ravyn had been building toward.

He gritted his teeth. "Fine. Seraphine. But she’s my ex-wife. Why would you let her in your car and not—"

"Because she’s sitting on top of my billions," Voren said, and the way he said it wasn’t a joke and wasn’t a boast. It was just a fact, stated plainly, with the quiet weight of someone reminding another person of something they should already understand.

Then he remembered those rogue assassins and explained further. "It’s my job to make sure she’s safe. At all times, and you know exactly why."

Indeed, Ravyn knew, and he had even promised to help but he thought that with this being an emergency, Voren would overrule his principles for once.

Since that was not happening, he had to look for another way, and Seraphine only worsened it with her ultimatum.

"If you don’t get to the hospital before us," her voice floated out through the open window, unhurried and almost conversational, "her condition might get worse." She paused. "Who knows? Maybe something’s actually wrong with her wolf."