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.

under this roof. When she shared a room with me." He paused, and what came out next carried more weight

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.

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

edge because I didn’t get

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

just doesn’t add up why

end of the bed, tucked into the dark of a shared room, Daisy lay completely still with

moment the night passed without a single word coming

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

find out the culprit is inside this pack, I will drive my claws through their chest myself

even. Kept her body completely still. Gave him

Voren said through the line. "And before you hear it somewhere else, I’m pulling capital from four other companies to put

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