Ravyn woke up from sleep the way you do when a dream has been working you over without your permission, blinking into the dark, disoriented, the tail end of it still clinging to the inside of his skull like smoke that hadn’t quite cleared.

And the first coherent thought that pulled itself together the moment full consciousness caught up was Voren. Specifically, the version of Voren he’d been on the phone with not long ago, whose whole energy had been sitting wrong from the beginning of the call.

"Voren, what has gotten into you?" He’d asked it genuinely, not as an accusation, but more like a question he was putting out into the open to hear how it sounded. Though it could have been Bloodfang running unchecked again in Voren’s mind.

That wolf had a particular habit of riding Voren harder than most wolves rode their humans, and the warning signs were familiar enough by now that Ravyn could recognize them even half-asleep, and even from the other end of a phone call.

He turned it over for a moment, working through it slowly, and then let it settle. He already knew what Voren’s reason was for being anywhere near Seraphine. The investment. The protection of capital. Clean and simple, and nothing else needed reading into it.

Reminding himself of that smoothed everything back down.

"Why would I want her dead when my parents love her the way they do?" His voice carried that particular undercurrent of bitterness he never quite managed to keep out of it when the subject came up, the kind that lived in his throat and rose whether he wanted it to or not.

"If I’d wanted her gone, I had every opportunity when she lived under this roof. When she shared a room with me." He paused, and what came out next carried more weight than he’d meant to put into it. "I could have done it the same time I took her child."

He couldn’t bring himself to say ’our.’ The guilt that one word would have dragged up was already clawing around inside his chest without any additional help. "Not now. Not when she’s working on a cure for my pack."

That explanation did exactly what it needed to do, clearing whatever quiet suspicion had been building at Voren’s end of the line, and the quality of the silence on his side changed.

"I’m sorry," Voren said. "I’m just on edge because I didn’t get to deal with them myself. But I’ll set a trap."

He knew how assassin rogues operated. They didn’t walk away from a job because it got complicated once. Whoever had paid them had bought commitment, and that commitment didn’t expire until the mission was finished or the money ran out, whichever came last.

"If you need backup, say so," Ravyn offered. "I’ll run my own investigation from here. It just doesn’t add up why would anyone want her dead when she’s here specifically to help us?"

At the other end of the bed, tucked into the dark of a shared room, Daisy lay completely still with her eyes pressed shut.

She’d heard enough. The rogues had failed. She’d already known that the moment the night passed without a single word coming back, but hearing it confirmed out loud.

How Ravyn’s voice went calm and analytical and started building toward the next move like this was just another problem to be managed, made it undeniably, uncomfortably real, and she hadn’t been prepared for that. And then came the part that pulled her blood cold and kept it there.

"If I find out the culprit is inside this pack, I will drive my claws through their chest myself and rip out their heart."

She kept her breathing even. Kept her body completely still. Gave him absolutely nothing.

"Good," Voren said through the line. "And before you hear it somewhere else, I’m pulling capital from four other companies to put into MindNest. You’re the only exception."

A silence fell on Ravyn’s end that had real texture to it, the kind that meant something was landing and being processed. Voren was investing that heavily? In her? In Seraphine?

The bitterness that climbed his throat was immediate and entirely involuntary, rising before he could get in front of it. When he spoke, his voice had gone dry. "I’m just wondering how she managed to convince you to go that far."

"She didn’t," Voren said, with the flat steadiness of a man stating something he has no interest in debating. He knew Ravyn would find out about the capital movement the moment certain stock values started moving. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Such things barely stayed invisible for long. Better to say it plainly right now, in the right context, than let it surface sideways later. "I actually forced her to accept it."

"You what?" Ravyn pulled the phone away from his ear slightly, like a few extra inches of distance would somehow help him process that. "It must be Bloodfang. That wolf of yours needs serious work, and I’m going to help speed up the mate bond restoration. I’ll have a word with your shaman the next time I’m at your pack."

Voren didn’t refuse. The business side of it had been entirely his own call, clear-headed, calculated, nothing impulsive about it. But the mate bond restoration was something he actively wanted, had been wanting for a long time.

Every night Bloodfang went wild in his mind was a night Voren spent with the sensation that the walls were pressing in from every side. He wanted peace. He wanted one full night of sleep that didn’t feel like a negotiation with something inside his own chest.

"I’ll arrange it. But right now I need to get whatever sleep I can manage and make sure nothing gets anywhere near her. I’ll see you at training tomorrow."

He was a breath away from ending the call when Ravyn’s voice came back one more time. "Can you convince Seraphine to join training?"