Chapter 266: Chapter 266 - Better safe than sorry

The water was cold and dark, but Voren didn’t hesitate. The moment he caught their scent cutting through the night air, sharp and wrong, he moved. Not up. Not toward the surface where they’d be waiting.

He pushed deeper, cutting through the current with long strokes, letting the water swallow him whole. He knew these waterways better than most people knew their own backyards.

Every tunnel. Every hidden outlet carved into the rock walls below. He came up on the far side, fingers gripping wet stone as he hauled himself through a narrow passage and climbed until his feet hit solid ground again.

He was a good stretch away from where he’d gone in.

What he didn’t count on was the sound of footsteps right beside him.

Not Seraphine’s.

He pressed flat against the rock face and held his breath, scanning the darkness. That’s when he caught movement in the distance, a cluster of figures tightening around Seraphine like a noose.

His jaw locked. He didn’t think twice. The shift came fast and hard, bones rearranging themselves as Bloodfang took shape, and Voren launched himself into the trees.

The assassins never saw it coming.

They went down one after another, each one hitting the ground with a finality that left no room for argument. When the last one stopped moving, Bloodfang’s paws pressed into the earth and his chest rumbled low.

He was already turning toward Seraphine when something made him stop dead.

Her wolf.

Bloodfang went completely still, every muscle locked, eyes fixed on the creature standing in the clearing ahead.

I knew it. The thought moved through him like a current. I knew there was something different about her.

Voren felt it too, that sharp jolt of recognition breaking through everything else. Hold on. Are you absolutely sure? The gifted wolf is supposed to be a story. Something the old ones told to scare people.

That’s no story standing out there. Bloodfang’s gaze didn’t move from her. Look at her. Wild. Unafraid. She loves this the same way I do. She loves the blood.

And he wasn’t wrong. Her wolf moved through what was left of the fight with something that went beyond training or instinct. There was joy in it. The raw, honest kind.

Voren turned it over in his head, trying to make it fit with everything he already knew, and then slowly, it did. Piece by piece, it all clicked into place. Seraphine’s instincts. The way she read situations before they fully developed.

The knowledge she carried that seemed to come from nowhere. The way she fought like she’d been doing it for a hundred years instead of just this one lifetime.

Her wolf had been giving her all of it.

The gifted wolf was the only one of its kind that worked that way, passing its power directly into its human host not as strength or speed alone but as knowing. Deep, bone-level knowledge. It was also the only wolf that ran anywhere close to Bloodfang’s level of pure, uncut ferocity.

And Ravyn had let her go.

The thought sat in Voren’s chest like something heavy and blunt. Ravyn had never even bothered to look. If he had, really looked, he would have known. He would have moved mountains to keep her.

Instead, he’d thrown her away without a second glance, which meant he’d never once taken the time to actually know her.

His loss. Entirely his loss.

Stop her. Voren cut through Bloodfang’s focus like a blade. She can’t kill that one. Not yet. We need him talking first. Someone sent these people and I want to know who.

Bloodfang was already moving before the thought finished, crossing the clearing in long, ground-eating strides.

One of the assassins was still breathing, kneeling in the dirt in front of Marsha, head bowed and shoulders caved in. Her wolf was standing over him, and Voren knew that look. He’d worn it himself.

The man had maybe three seconds left.

It’s us.

Bloodfang’s voice came out rough and low, just loud enough. Marsha’s wolf snapped her head around, body already coiling to strike, and for one breath-stealing second it could have gone either way.

Then the tension broke. Both wolves pulled back into themselves at the same time, the shift reversing, and two humans stood in their place breathing hard in the cool night air.

Seraphine moved toward her clothes without a word.

Voren dropped a rock onto the surviving assassin, quick and efficient. Heavy enough to keep him pinned. Not enough to finish him. Then he was gone, back into the tree line, moving fast.

He knew exactly where the emergency stash was. He’d used it before. He grabbed what he needed, grabbed an extra set for Seraphine, and jogged back toward the clearing but she was already dressed.

He stopped walking and looked at her, puzzled. "Did you seriously strip down in front of them?" The words came out flatter than he intended, but he didn’t take them back.

"I wasn’t going to run around with nothing on." Her chin lifted just slightly, that particular brand of unbothered that she wore like armor.

He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled slow. "There’s an emergency stash out here." He held up the bundle of clothes so she could see it clearly. "You gave them a free show for absolutely no reason."

She blinked. Once. Then something flickered across her face, not quite embarrassment, not quite amusement. Something in the middle. "Better safe than sorry."

Voren pressed his back teeth together and said nothing. He tossed the extra clothes over a low branch nearby and told himself it didn’t bother him.

But it wasn’t convincing, because the image was already living in his head now, Seraphine standing in the open, skin bared to a ring of men who had just been trying to kill her, casual about it, completely casual. And somehow the fact that it was assassins and not him was the part that stuck like a splinter.

He pulled his thoughts back with effort and turned toward the rock.

Seraphine was already crouching beside it, both hands braced on the edge, fingers working for grip.

"What are you doing?" He crossed the space between them in four steps and got his hand on her arm.

"He has to die." Her voice dropped, and something moved behind her eyes. Something cold and certain that her wolf hadn’t quite let go of yet.

She had wanted to interrogate him before but with Voren here, she didn’t want to do so in front of him. What if he tells Ravyn before she was ready to spill out everything?