Chapter 238 – Better than Daddy

Voren kept his eyes anywhere but on Seraphine’s face, which was probably the most sensible thing he’d managed all morning. And for the first time since he’d arrived at the Centenary pack, he was genuinely grateful for Damon’s presence because Damon’s voice cut across the moment before it had a chance to fully ignite. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Sera."

Seraphine scooped Bryan up in one clean motion, settled him against her hip like she used to do when she lived at the pack, and walked toward Damon with the unhurried authority of someone who had already made a decision and was simply letting the world catch up to it. "No matter what happens today," she said quietly, "you are driving me back to the hotel tonight."

"Not gonna happen," Voren said from somewhere behind them, his voice carrying the relaxed ease of a man with his back against the hood of his car and nothing particular to prove. Like he was reading something mildly interesting. Like this was a completely ordinary Tuesday morning.

Seraphine turned and looked at him. The look was precise. "I wasn’t talking to you."

"Neither was I." His eyes moved past her to Damon. "I was talking to him. Unless he can take me in the ring and actually win, he’s not driving you anywhere."

The arms Seraphine had around Bryan tightened before she caught herself, and she eased her hold before Bryan felt it, but the tension was real.

Something about Voren, the ease of it, the total absence of apology in the way he moved through every single space he entered, had started to feel less like confidence and more like something territorial.

Like he had quietly decided something without ever saying it out loud and was now just operating from that place, fully and without hesitation.

’Don’t be upset,’ Marsha said softly in Seraphine’s mind. ’His wolf genuinely likes us, and he’s nothing like his human.’

That was precisely the part Seraphine had no interest in hearing right now. ’I can’t let his wolf make decisions about my life.’

Bryan’s arms tightened around her neck, and something inside her unwound just slightly the way it always did when he was this close. She carried him through the doors and focused on his face. "How was your night, Bryan?"

"Bad. I had a nightmare." He looked at her with absolute seriousness. "Can you take me with you when you go back to the city?"

Something locked up tight inside her chest. She kept the smile exactly where it was. "I’d love nothing more, but you’re being trained to be an Alpha. Your place is here with your pack."

"What if I don’t want to be an Alpha?"

"You have to be, my little pup." She said it gently, without pulling away from it. "And one day, I genuinely believe this with everything I’ve got. You are going to be a great one."

"Like daddy?" he asked, with the wide-open, uncomplicated innocence that only very small children can manage without effort.

Seraphine swallowed everything that question reached and kept her face exactly where she needed it to be. "Better than daddy."

She set him down carefully and turned — and walked straight into the full weight of two dozen pairs of eyes, all of them already watching, all of them already having decided something before she’d gotten through the door.

The discomfort hit fast and physical, the way it always does when a room has already made up its mind about you before you arrived.

Then Diane’s voice came from somewhere to her left, sliding into the open air of the gym like a blade being drawn slowly. "She finally crawled back. Trying to steal the co-Luna’s spot in the Alpha’s son’s heart."

She was training to be a warrior and one of the people Daisy had put in place to torment Seraphine at the gym.

A warrior pushed off the wall to her right, arms crossed, posture radiating the specific kind of arrogance that belongs to someone who is absolutely certain the room is standing behind him. Kevin. "No shame at all. Here was I, thinking she’d finally gotten the message that our Alpha has no interest in her being here."

Seraphine’s gaze moved. Traveled the full length of the room until it landed exactly where she’d expected it to land. Daisy, holding down the far corner with an expression of quiet satisfaction that she wasn’t even bothering to disguise.

Another voice, Fred, one of the younger warriors, threw in his part from somewhere to the left. "She’s probably running low on funds. Bet she doesn’t get everything handed to her out in the city the way she did when she was here."

The gym filled up with laughter. Not the loose, unthinking kind. The pointed kind, the kind that has a target.

Damon’s jaw pulled tight. He was already stepping forward when Seraphine put her hand on his arm and stopped him without even looking at him. "Let them talk," she said, her voice completely level. "Talk is cheap." A beat of silence. "I’m just glad some of them have relatives in the hospital."

The laughter cut out. The room didn’t go quiet exactly. It went uncertain, which landed worse. Then Seraphine caught it. The slight blankness moving across Daisy’s face, the tell-tale stillness of someone mid-mindlink.

A second later, Audrey’s voice came through it. "Leave it alone. Doctor Raymond is more than capable of handling our relatives just fine."

The laughter tried to pick itself back up, but it didn’t quite catch the same way.

Bryan’s small voice rang out clear above all of it. "Don’t talk about my mother like that!"

Daisy’s expression dimmed, her mind already moving toward a response, but then the door at the back of the gym swung open.

Ravyn and Voren walked out of the changing room side by side, and the look on both their faces said everything the pack members weren’t anywhere near ready to receive.