Chapter 25
1343 Words
RAPHAEL
The pack is quiet. Everything seems quiet today.
Most of the lights in the main building are off. The night staff are at their posts but the corridors are empty.
I'm in my study room going through the latest report Damon left on my desk when the knock comes.
It was soft and unhurried, almost like whoever is knocking has a lot of patience to wait.
I already know who it is before I open the door.
Serena stands in the doorway with a small smile and two cups of warm drink.
Her hair is down.
She's dressed casually and she looks comfortable and familiar and I bet she knows exactly how she looked.
Hot. Sexy. Beautiful.
"You're still working," she says, stepping inside without being invited. "You always did this. Even years ago. Last one awake in the whole pack."
I move back to my desk. "What do you need, Serena."
"Nothing." She sets one of the cups on the corner of my desk and takes the chair across from it. "I just saw your light. Thought I'd check in."
I look at the cup.
Don't touch it.
She settles back in the chair and crosses her legs and looks around the study room with an expression of quietness. More like familiarity.
Like she belongs in this room.
Like she has been in this room many times before.
Which she has. That's the thing about Serena. She knows this pack and she knows me and she uses both of those things deliberately.
"Remember that night during the eastern border dispute," she starts. "You were here for three days straight. Damon had to physically remove you to get you to eat something."She smiles , her words bring back the old days .
I keep my eyes on the report.
"You kept that terrible lamp," she continues, glancing at the corner. "The one with the cracked base. I told you to replace it three years ago."She said, her voice was calm .
"It still works," I replied without looking up.
"It's ugly," she says warmly. Like we're old friends catching up. Like nothing has changed. Like Nora doesn't exist and the investigation Damon is running doesn't exist and the specific reason Serena showed up at my pack after years of distance doesn't exist.
She's good at this.
She's good at keeping things away from me like she always does.
If that's what she wants,I'll give her that.
She keeps talking and moving through our shared memories with the specific skill of someone who has rehearsed this.
The eastern border dispute.
The pack gathering two summers ago.
The argument between me and Damon that went on for four days.
Small things.
Specific things.
Things that are real and true and carefully selected.
Each one is a reminder.
I knew you before her. I know you better. I am familiar in ways she isn't yet.
I hear all of it.
I put the report down and lean back in my chair and look at her properly.
She meets my gaze with that warm open expression.
Nothing defensive in it.
Nothing that would give her away to someone who wasn't watching closely.
I couldn't place my head on what she might be up to or what she's thinking.
"You still do that," she says, tilting her head slightly. "The staring without speaking. Damon used to say you were either thinking about something important or about to say something nobody wanted to hear."She added, and smiled slightly.
"He's usually right," I tell her.
A small laugh escaped her lips,more like a chuckle.
She wraps both hands around her cup as I watch her closely.
"I've missed this," she says. Her voice is void of emotion this time, I catch a glimpse of hurt in her face, which she quickly wears off.
"Just talking,like before."
Before.
She lets that word sit in my chest .
Before, is doing a lot of work in this conversation.
I watch her face.
She's not looking directly at me anymore.
She's looking at the lamp in the corner with a soft expression.
A woman visiting a memory.
A woman who is comfortable here.
A woman who wants me to feel the comfort of her familiarity and remember what it was before everything got complicated.
And for a moment, just a moment, it almost works.
Not because I want Serena.
Not because what she is building here is real and normal.
But because familiarity has a pull to it that has nothing to do with feeling.
It's just the specific comfort of something known.
Something uncomplicated.
Something that doesn't come with a mate bond and a baby with eyes that keep asking a question I'm not ready to answer and an investigation that could change everything.
Just for a second.
Then I close it off.
"It's late," I tell her, my voice even. "You should go."
She looks back at me and our eyes meet for a brief moment, she nods once like she was expecting this and finishes her cup and stands.
"Of course." She picks up her cup and leaves mine untouched on the desk. "Get some sleep, Raphael. You look tired."
She walks out and the door closes, behind her.
I stay at my desk and don't move for a moment.
Then I pull Damon's report back toward me and stare at it without reading it.
*****
Serena walks back to her room and keeps the smile on her face until she's inside with the door closed.
Then she lets it go.
Not because it didn't work.But, because it worked exactly as much as she needed it to for tonight.
She didn't come for a result.
She came to plant something,at least that's what she thought.
She needed something to hold onto,or something that would sit in the back of his head when he went to bed and when he woke up and when he looked at Nora across the breakfast table in the morning.
Before.
That word.
She put it there deliberately.
Before Nora.
Before the mate bond.
Before the complication of a woman with no background and a baby with impossible eyes and questions nobody has answered yet.
Before ,was simple.
She's offering him simple words to hold on to.
And that's the memory of the past , the time they used to be something deep with flings and emotions they had once built.
She sits on the edge of her bed.
Raphael is not an easy man to move. She knows that better than anyone. He is controlled and cold and he thinks before he acts and he does not bend easily.
These are facts she has known for years. She is not trying to bend him. She is trying to make him question small doubts that she had carefully placed on the surface of Nora and Rapheal relationship.
The investigation into Nora's background is still ongoing.
She knows this too and if what she suspects is true then the results are going to complicate things significantly.
A woman with no origins suddenly acquiring very significant ones is going to shift the dynamic in this pack in ways that are harder to work against.
She needs to be further along before that happens.
She picks up her phone.
And sent one short message, to a number she has had for years and has used carefully.
It reads: Moving faster now. Stay ready.
She puts the phone down and lies back on the bed and stares at the ceiling.
Raphael in his study room right now is probably telling himself tonight meant nothing.
That he closed it off before it went anywhere.
That he is not affected.
But the lamp is still there.
She mentioned it and he didn't deny it meant something that he kept it.
Small things.
That's how this works.
Small things, over time, add up to something larger than the person carrying them realises until it's already too late to put down.
She closes her eyes.
Tonight was exactly what it needed to be.
- Writer
