Chapter 270: Chapter 270 – Co-Luna Is My Woman and Bryan...

Raul’s smile hadn’t moved. It sat on his face like he’d earned it, wide and loose and completely sure of itself.

"Co-Luna is my woman." He said it the way people say things they’ve been holding onto for too long, finally getting to set it down in front of someone. "And Bryan is my son." He let that land before continuing. "Play along, keep your mouth shut around Co-Luna, and nothing has to happen to you. Simple as that."

Damon stood very still.

It was the kind of still that happens when your body is processing something faster than your face can keep up with.

The cold moved through him slow and thorough, starting somewhere in his chest and spreading outward. He wanted to grab Raul by the collar. He wanted to do considerably worse than that. But Seraphine’s voice lived in the back of his head the way it always did when he was about to do something she’d want him to hold off on.

Wait, it said. Not yet.

He breathed through it.

The moon festival. That was the window. With Alpha Voren being a coward, it could be a great opportunity to bring Seraphine back to the pack to expose all of Daisy’s evil deeds.

He kept his expression easy. Unbothered. The kind of face that gave Raul exactly what he wanted to see.

"To keep your secret," Damon said, his voice perfectly level, "make sure Co-Luna never finds out that I know anything."

Raul’s chest expanded. He looked like a man who’d just won something.

"I knew I could trust you." He stretched the words out, satisfied and slow. "This stays right here between us."

Damon held the smile until he was outside. The door shut behind him and the smile was gone before he reached the bottom step.

He kept walking, past the road, past the treeline, deeper into the woods until the nearest house was far enough behind him that sound stopped traveling cleanly.

Then he pulled out his phone. He was about to call Seraphine when he remembered something important, and mind linked one of the warriors.

I need you watching Raul from tonight. He was one of the pack’s strongest warriors, a man he trusted more than most. Everything. What he eats, who comes to his door, where he goes, what time he sleeps. I want it all.

Yes, Beta Damon. The response came back clean and fast.

And keep it off the Alpha’s radar. Damon added before closing the link. He has enough pulling at him right now. This one stays with me.

He walked another hundred yards deeper into the woods, found a spot where the wind moved through at the right angle to carry sound away rather than toward, and dialed.

One ring. "Sera, you are not going to believe this."

"Nothing surprises me anymore." Seraphine’s voice came back dry and tired in the particular way that meant she’d already been through too much tonight to brace for impact. "Just say it."

On her end, Voren sat forward on the couch without making a sound. His elbows went to his knees and his eyes went to her face, reading everything she wasn’t saying out loud.

Damon pulled in a slow breath. He had the words. They just weren’t moving.

"Damon." Seraphine’s voice dropped a note. "You know better than to hold back on me. Unless you’re telling me I’ve been wrong to trust you all this time."

"That’s not it." The words came out quick and firm. "I just needed to make sure nobody was on this line that shouldn’t be. Last time we talked, Alpha Voren was listening in before either of us knew it."

There was a beat of quiet from Seraphine’s end. "I understand that." Her voice softened just slightly around the edges. "Take your time."

There was another pause before Damon made the revelation. "Raul is Bryan’s biological father."

The room didn’t make a sound.

Then Voren’s voice cut straight through the phone speaker, too loud, too fast, no filter on it at all. "No way."

A long exhale came through from Damon’s end. "Sera." The disappointment in his voice was quiet but present. "Has he been on this call the whole time?"

Seraphine closed her eyes for exactly one second. How to explain Voren. Where to even begin with that. "He’s the one who pulled the information out of the rogue tonight. He was ready to drive straight to the pack himself and I couldn’t have that, so I called you instead."

She glanced sideways without fully turning her head. "I need Ravyn out of this for now."

"And you’re confident that Alpha Voren won’t—" Damon stopped himself. Cut the sentence clean. After that encounter in his room with Voren earlier, he knew the man was more dangerous than met the eyes.

"Forget it. If you say he’s good then I’ll take that." He adjusted his weight against the tree at his back. "But I’ve been thinking about timing."

"Go ahead," Seraphine encouraged him.

"The moon festival." He said it and let it breathe. "If you’re ever going to bring Daisy’s whole operation into the light, that’s the room to do it in. Everyone who needs to see it would be standing right there."

Seraphine had already been circling that idea before he said it out loud. But something snagged on it every time she got close.

"I haven’t found my daughter yet." Her voice went quiet and flat and certain all at once. "Until she’s in my arms and I know she’s safe, Ravyn can sit in whatever mess Daisy has built around him. He built some of it himself."

"So if you find her before the festival, you’d come?"

"I’d come." No hesitation. "But she stays hidden. Ravyn doesn’t find out she exists. I will never let him put his hands on someone he decided didn’t deserve to live." The last few words came out harder than the rest, the kind of hard that comes from somewhere old and deep. "Never."

The call ended, and the room settled back into quiet.

Voren stayed where he was on the couch, forearms on his knees, eyes on Seraphine. He watched her set the phone down carefully, like she was buying herself two extra seconds.

"I heard you," he said. "I understand every single reason you have." He waited until she looked at him. "But Ravyn deserves to know the truth about his son. He deserves the chance to throw Daisy out of his life for good."