"Seraphine."

Ravyn’s voice came from the top of the stairs. He was leaning against the banister, unhurried, like he’d been standing there long enough to have heard most of it. "I hope you’ll make it to the moon festival. Next full moon. We’re hosting it here."

Seraphine looked up at him. Her expression didn’t change. "Good luck with that."

Ravyn tilted his head. "You say that like you’re not coming."

"You’re smarter than I give you credit for."

Something flashed in Ravyn’s eyes, quick, hot, and his jaw went tight. He swallowed it down. Voren was three feet away and standing very still, which tended to have that effect on conversations.

"The bond restoration ritual requires input from every werewolf," Ravyn said, his voice measured now. "Packs across the whole world are being contacted. We need everyone."

"I heard you," Seraphine responded without looking up, still unfazed.

"You could find your fated mate there, you know." He came down two steps, and there was something intentional in his tone now, something that was aimed somewhere specific. "He might not be an Alpha, probably—"

"Enough!" Voren’s voice dropped into the room like something heavy hitting a floor.

Ravyn went still on the stairs.

Damon cleared his throat and turned to Seraphine with renewed enthusiasm, the grin sliding back into place. "Alright, forget the festival talk. Sera — hug. Come on." He opened his arms and made sure his eyes found Voren’s over her shoulder, bright and just a little bit reckless. "For the road."

The temperature in the room dropped by several degrees the moment Seraphine opened her arms to meet Damon halfway.

Voren’s gaze moved to Damon slowly, dark and absolute, the kind of look that didn’t need volume behind it to carry exactly the right amount of warning, and it stayed there, steady and unblinking, and every single person in that room understood exactly what it meant before he even moved.

Nobody saw him move.

One second Voren was standing five feet behind Seraphine, and the next he was simply beside her, around her, his arm hooking under hers from behind and lifting her clean off the ground like she was made of absolutely nothing.

The whole thing happened in the space between one breath and the next and Damon stood there blinking, genuinely trying to work out if he’d missed something.

He was starting to wonder, not entirely as a joke, if Voren had vampire blood somewhere in his line.

"Voren—" Seraphine’s voice pitched up instantly, her legs swinging in the air with zero coordination, her bag bumping against her hip as she twisted left and right and accomplished absolutely nothing. "Put me down. Right now. I mean it."

"Car’s that way." Voren’s voice was completely level. Conversational, even. He was already moving toward the door, Seraphine tucked under one arm like a rolled up carpet, and with his other hand he looked back over his shoulder at Damon and raised one finger.

The middle one.

Damon pressed his lips together very hard.

"I haven’t said goodbye yet!" Seraphine’s voice echoed through the entrance hall as the front door swung open around them. Her legs were still going, heels cutting through the air helplessly. "I owe him a hug, Voren, he was good to me—"

"You want a hug that badly?" Voren stepped through the door without breaking stride, the cool night air hitting them both. His voice dropped just slightly, something low and even threading through it. "Use me. I’m right here. Won’t complain."

Seraphine stopped wiggling.

Every bit of movement in her body just, stopped. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

She went completely rigid in his arm, like all her circuits had tripped at once, and the only sound for a full three seconds was the soft crunch of gravel under Voren’s boots as he carried her the remaining distance to the car and set her down in the passenger seat with the kind of gentleness that had absolutely no business following that sentence.

He closed the door like nothing had happened and walked around to the driver’s side as he checked where the dent had been before. Ravyn’s Mechanic had done such a good job within a very short time.

Back at the packhouse entrance, Damon stood in the doorway and watched the taillights until they disappeared around the tree line. The smile on his face was the complicated kind — not quite happy, not quite sad, sitting somewhere in between.

Behind him, Ravyn said nothing.

Out on the grounds, the five under punishment had slowed to a collective crawl the moment Voren carried Seraphine through the front door. Now they’d stopped entirely, standing in a loose cluster near the track, staring at the gate.

The rumors from earlier that Alpha Voren had carried Seraphine on his back through the rain had been floating around the pack all evening. Most people had half-believed it.

Nobody half-believed it anymore.

They looked at each other, then, with the quiet, unified logic of people who have decided a problem has resolved itself, they sat down in the wet grass.

"The punishment runs until tomorrow." Ravyn’s voice cut across the grounds, sharp enough to carry to every corner. "All of it. Damon supervises."

Daisy’s head came up. She wasn’t completely royalty anymore after how she made the whole pack members have a salary cut.

Her face had gone the kind of pale that meant she was holding herself together by sheer determination alone, her chest heaving slightly, her hair plastered to her temples. She looked at Ravyn, waiting for something, anything, a look or a word or even just a hesitation.

But he turned and walked back into the packhouse.

Damon stepped outside, rolling up his sleeves. "You heard him. On your feet."

✦༶✦༶✦

The road back to the outlands was clear and dark and quiet, the wet asphalt catching the headlights and throwing them back in long pale streaks. The storm had scrubbed the air clean and left the cold in its place, not the deep bone-cold of winter, but the kind that settles at the back of your neck and stays there.

Inside the car it was warm, and completely silent.

Seraphine sat with her bag in her lap and her eyes on the window, watching the trees blur past in the dark, and she turned Voren’s words over in her head exactly once, decided she was not going to think about them, and spent the rest of the drive thinking about them.

When they pulled into the outlands restaurant parking lot she had her door open before the engine was fully off, stepping out into the cold air and letting it hit her face like a reset button but a strange presence filled the air, making her uncomfortable...