Chapter 271: Chapter 271 – You made a promise

Voren’s fingers were already moving across his phone screen, the call half-dialed, when something slammed into his hand hard enough to send it crashing to the floor. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, but the phone was still intact.

"Voren." Seraphine’s voice didn’t rise, only threatening. "You made a promise."

He turned to look at her, jaw tight. "Yeah, and you got everything you wanted out of that promise." His eyes darkened, the muscle in his cheek jumping.

"Daisy crossed a line the moment she started wanting you dead. You really think she’s just going to stop? That she’s going to wake up tomorrow and decide she’s done?"

The truth was, something primal in him wanted nothing more than to find Daisy and make her pay, not quickly, not cleanly. He wanted to watch her suffer the way she had made Seraphine suffer.

The image sat behind his eyes, sharp and satisfying, but then Seraphine stepped closer and he saw it — that cold, calculated look she got when she was already five steps ahead of everyone else in the room. She had a plan, just as always.

"Daisy is exactly the kind of woman Ravyn deserves." The words came out of Seraphine’s mouth like she was reading a grocery list, flat, unbothered, almost bored. "Those two belong together." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Something about the way she said it hit different. Not the words themselves but what was underneath them, that hollow kind of calm that only showed up when a person had buried something too deep to dig back out. Voren felt it settle into his own chest, cold and uninvited.

His eyes moved over her face. "You won." His voice dropped. "You came out on top. So why do you still look like that?" He paused, hoping it wasn’t what he was thinking. "Are you still in love with him, Sera?"

He didn’t see it coming.

Her palm connected with the side of his face so hard his head snapped to the right.

This one had more behind it than the slap she gave him during the whole Santiago situation. This one had grief in it, and fury, and something close to desperation.

"In love with him?" Her voice broke at the top, climbing in a way that made the air in the room feel thinner. Her claws had already slid out, long and sharp at her fingertips, and for one second Voren genuinely thought Marsha was going to come tearing through.

But Seraphine pulled it back. Her wolf retreated, the claws slowly sliding back in, and what was left behind was just a woman cracked open and raw in the middle of a dimly lit room.

"They almost killed my child." Her voice dropped back down to almost nothing, which somehow made it worse. Tears spilled over before she could stop them.

"And even if somehow my baby survived, Ravyn still stood there and said she should be killed." Her throat worked. "Nobody even knows if she’s out there somewhere breathing or if she’s—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "And you’re standing here thinking what? That I still have feelings for that monster?"

Voren opened his mouth, then closed it quickly.

The guilt hit him fast and without warning, moving through him like something physical. He watched her shoulders shake and something in his chest that he had kept carefully locked away rattled hard against its door.

He closed the space between them before his brain signed off on it.

His arms went around her and she immediately pushed back, both palms flat against his chest, trying to create distance, but he held on.

Seraphine pushed again, but he didn’t move. And then, like a building finally giving way after too long under too much weight, she stopped fighting and let herself fall into him.

Her tears soaked through his shirt almost immediately.

"I’m sorry, Sera." Voren leaned down without thinking, his lips pressing to the top of her head, and he didn’t even realize he’d done it until he felt her go completely still in his arms.

She pulled back slightly, or tried to, but his arms tightened.

"Relax." His voice came out low, close to her ear. "I’m not going to take advantage of you while you’re hurting. That’s not what this is."

Whatever wall was still standing in her came down at that. Her whole body relaxed against his, going soft in a way that told him she hadn’t let herself rest in a long time.

His fingers moved slowly through her hair, working through it gently, and her breathing started to even out, the hard shaking in her shoulders fading to nothing.

She didn’t love Ravyn anymore.

Voren felt that truth settle over him like something warm, and he held onto it. That was all he had ever really needed to know, not for any scheme. Just for himself. Just to have that one thing confirmed.

One part of it was done.

Her breathing had gone slow and deep by the time the last of the crying stopped. When Voren tilted slightly to get a look at her face, her fingers immediately twisted into the fabric of his shirt and pulled. She wasn’t letting go, just like the old times.

So he didn’t make her.

He lowered himself back slowly, bringing her down with him onto the bed, careful and quiet like he was handling something that had already been through enough.

She curled into him without a word, her head on his chest, and within minutes her breathing told him she was out.

He stayed awake a little longer, staring at the ceiling, wondering what happened more than one and half decades ago when he visited the city for the first time and left her side.

Everything changed after he returned a few months later. Did she hurt him intentionally or was there something else he didn’t know? From the looks of it, Seraphine did not even remember him that way, and not for once had she apologized for what she did.

That night, sleep came differently for both of them, not the restless, surface-level kind that left you more tired than before, but the deep, heavy kind that pulled you all the way under.

Seraphine found herself somewhere strange in her sleep, moving through images that felt too sharp and too real to be random. There was a child in it. Small hands. A sound like crying that she couldn’t get to no matter how fast she moved.

Then her phone rang, and her eyes snapped open.

Pale yellow light was already cutting through the curtains in long, lazy lines across the floor. Morning. She had no idea how many hours had passed but the light said it had been a while.

And then she realized where she was.

Somehow, at some point in the night, she had ended up completely on top of Voren, her cheek against his chest, her legs tangled with his, his arms wrapped around her back like she belonged there. Her heartbeat picked up so fast she was almost certain he could feel it.

She moved carefully, trying to slide off without waking him, and his hand flattened against her waist and pressed her back down.

"Sera." Sleep was still thick in his voice, pulling it down low, and there was something underneath the roughness of it, something that moved through her in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely.

"Voren, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—"

His mouth found hers before the sentence had anywhere left to go.