Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 235 - Can you convince Seraphine to join training?

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.

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 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

whatever quiet suspicion had been building at Voren’s end of the line, and the

on edge because I didn’t get to deal with them myself. But I’ll set a

from a job because it got complicated once. Whoever had paid them had bought commitment, and that commitment didn’t expire until the

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

the dark of a shared room, Daisy lay completely

the night passed without a single word coming back, but hearing it

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.

I will drive my claws through their chest

her body completely

line. "And before you hear it somewhere else, I’m pulling capital from four other companies to put into MindNest. You’re

it, the kind that meant something was landing and being processed.