Seraphine could feel the weight that had come down across his back. She could feel him absorbing it, holding it up, refusing to let it crush down any further.

Then she heard it.

A sound that made her stomach drop.

The low, awful crack of bone. It moved through him and she felt it more than heard it, the way a sound can go through a person when they are too close. His wolf was right at the surface, pushing forward, the animal trying to take over to handle what the man was carrying.

Shouts came from everywhere at once. The warriors converged fast and she felt the weight lift as several of them got underneath the tree and rolled it clear.

Voren stayed where he was for a breath longer than necessary.

Then he pulled back just enough to look down at her. Rain ran off his jaw and dropped onto her cheek. His eyes moved across her face fast, checking.

"Are you alright?"

She opened her mouth to answer.

And then a fourth presence arrived.

She felt it before she saw it. The ground vibrated slightly with the weight of something large moving at full speed. A werewolf cleared the last stretch and landed nearby and the shift happened mid-motion, fast and practiced, the wolf folding back into a man in the space of a breath.

Ravyn stood there in the rain.

His chest was heaving. His eyes were wild in the way they get when fear runs ahead of the body and the body is still catching up. His mouth opened. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"Voren, Sera—"

And then he stopped.

Whatever he was going to say stayed stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat. His eyes dropped to them. To the way Voren was still braced over her. To the rain soaking them both.

To the way they were tangled together on the ground. Ravyn stood in the rain, his emotions all over the place as he searched for the right words.

One of the warriors stepped forward and held out an emergency clothe toward Ravyn. It was soaked through before he even finished wearing it. The rain was coming down that hard. It didn’t matter. Nothing about dry clothes mattered right now.

His eyes were still on them.

Seraphine was flat on her back in the mud and Voren was directly above her, both of them completely drenched, the rain hammering down on the two of them like it had something personal against them today.

Voren moved slightly, trying to push himself off and away from her, but h;is body refused.

The groan that came out of him was low and involuntary, the kind of sound a person makes when pain catches them completely off guard. He went stiff, everything locking up at once.

"Ouch—"

"Don’t move." Seraphine’s voice came out steady. Not panicked. Not sharp. Just calm in the way that meant she had already switched into doctor mode and her brain was three steps ahead of everyone else standing in the rain. "Hold still, Voren."

The warriors closest to him took a step forward, hands out, ready to grab him and lift.

"Stop." Seraphine threw her hand up without even looking at them. "Nobody touch him. He could have a broken bone. If you grab him wrong, you’ll make it worse."

The warriors pulled back.

Ravyn stood a few feet away and let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding since he crossed that gate. Something loosened in his chest. The image his mind had built in the three seconds between arriving and understanding the situation quietly dismantled itself.

He could see it now. The tree. The dent crushed into the top of the car on Seraphine’s side. The mud. The way Voren’s body was angled, protective, like he had thrown himself over her.

It was not what it had looked like.

That also explained why Voren’s wolf hadn’t already healed him. A break bad enough, close enough to something serious, and even a wolf that lethal would have to wait for the reset.

"Voren." Seraphine’s voice pulled everyone’s attention back down. "Look at me."

His eyes found hers. There was something unguarded in them that didn’t belong on Voren’s face. Pain had a way of stripping the armor off a person whether they wanted it to or not, and right now he looked almost vulnerable, his jaw tight, his gaze locked onto her like she was the only steady thing in the rain.

"Can you move your hands?"

He nodded slightly, rain dripping from his hair down to his face and onto her.

"Then press them flat on the ground. Get into a hold. I’m going to move out from under you and as soon as I’m clear, I’ll help reset your bone. Can you do that?"

He nodded again.

He started to move his hands toward the ground but Bloodfang wasn’t happy about that arrangement.

’I’m enjoying this,’ he snuffled, completely unbothered. ’Why do you think I haven’t healed you yet?’

Voren’s teeth came together so hard he nearly bit through his own lip. The pain was real and Bloodfang was sitting in it like it was a warm spot by a fire.

He pressed his palms into the wet mud and started to push himself up anyway, arms shaking with the effort, lifting into something close to a plank while his spine screamed at him.

Seraphine moved the moment she had enough room, sliding out from under him fast and clean.

The mud had other plans for Voren.

His grip slipped. His face went straight into it.

He lay there for a second, face down in the mud, rain pelting the back of his head, and said nothing.

’You better heal me the second she’s done,’ he told Bloodfang quietly, inside his mind. ’Or I promise you, you won’t see her again.’

Bloodfang said nothing. Not a single word. Acted like the threat had come through completely silent on his end.

Voren closed his eyes briefly.

"It’s okay." Seraphine was already crouching beside him, her knees pressing into the wet ground. "Stay still."

The rain kept coming. It ran into her eyes and she blinked it away, pushing her wet hair back with one hand. With the other she reached for the hem of his soaked shirt and carefully lifted it. She needed her fingers to do the work that her eyes couldn’t do properly in this weather and this light.

She started tracing along his back, pressing gently, reading the bones through her fingertips the way years of training had taught her to.

’He’s so hot,’ Marsha started from the back of Seraphine’s head, she could feel her cheeks burning from the flirty words of her silly wolf.