Chapter 7 Blood on the Doorstep
POV: Seraphina
The door did not open. It came off its frame entirely.
One second I was standing with Ragnar on my left and Axel on my right, the three of us still working through what Danny's phone call had meant. The next second, wood split, hinges screamed, and the door of the clubhouse swung hard into the wall and four wolves walked through the gap like they had already measured it.
My body moved before my mind did. I was on my feet with Caelan pressed flat behind me, my hand against his chest, feeling the small rapid beat of his heart against my palm. My wolf rose up inside me like a fire being opened to air, hot and immediate and absolute.
The man at the front was not large. That was the first thing I noticed. Average height, lean through the shoulders, with a jaw that sat flat and unimpressed. His eyes were the colour of cold water and they moved through the room the way a weapon moves, cataloguing, measuring, dismissing. He wore a black riding jacket with a silver crest on the left shoulder. A wolf snarling over a carved stone wall.
Stonecrest.
Every wolf in the northern territories knew that crest. Three generations of bad blood between them and Ironfang. Two wars that the history books called territorial disputes and the people who survived them called something else entirely.
"My name is Callum Vex," the man said. His voice was unhurried. Almost pleasant. "Senior enforcer for the Stonecrest pack. I am going to need everyone in this room to stay very still while we sort out a simple matter."
Axel's men did not stay still. Three of them were already on their feet, chairs scraping back, hands reaching for things on belts and tables. Brone moved to Ragnar's left shoulder. I heard the low shift in the air that meant Ragnar's aura had expanded, and two of the men nearest to him stepped back a half step without seeming to notice they had done it.
"You walked into the wrong building," Ragnar said. His voice was completely level, which meant he was furious.
Vex looked at him with something that sat just on the pleasant side of contempt. "Alpha Voss. I expected you to be further back down the road. You move fast for a man who spent five years looking in the wrong direction." His cold eyes moved to me. Then they dropped to Caelan, who was behind me and very still. Something settled in Vex's expression. Not satisfaction exactly. Recognition.
The room erupted.
It was not a clean fight. Nothing about it was clean. It was furniture and bodies and noise all happening at once, a collision of people who were afraid and people who were angry and people who were both. One of Vex's wolves went at Brone and took a table down with them. Axel moved fast and low and caught another one across the throat with his forearm. I heard glass breaking somewhere behind me, heard someone curse in pain.
One of Ragnar's men shifted partially. His hands changed, knuckles extending, something in the shape of his face going wrong in the way that made humans freeze. Two of Axel's riders stumbled back from the sight of it. Then they planted their feet and swung anyway. I would think about that later, about what it took for a person to see something impossible and decide to stand their ground regardless. Right then I did not have time.
Vex came for me directly.
He was faster than he looked. He had the practised economy of a man who had been in enough fights to stop wasting motion. I pushed Caelan hard toward the bar corner, where Axel's barkeeper had already gone to the floor behind the counter, and then Vex's hand was at my collar and I drove my elbow back and twisted, using his own grip against him, and we hit the bar counter hard enough that the glasses rattled and two of them fell.
He recovered faster than a human would. He always would. That was the thing about fighting another wolf. They did not stay down the way you wanted them to.
"We are not here to cause damage," he said. His breathing had not changed. "We just need the boy. You hand him over and everyone in this room walks away."
"You are not touching my son."
I put him on the floor. He rose. I put him there again and something cracked in his shoulder and he rose again. My wolf was screaming in my chest, not fear, it was past fear, it was the clean white fury of a mother who has run out of patience.
Behind me, Ragnar's voice cut through the noise of the room, low and absolute, carrying the weight of his full authority. The wolf who had grabbed my arm from behind released me immediately, stumbling back three steps without meaning to. Even Vex paused. Not long. A breath. But long enough.
Ragnar had not shifted. He did not need to. His aura alone was doing things to the air in the room that no human word quite described. It was pressure without weight. Command without sound.
Vex's wolves pulled back. Not fleeing. Retreating with discipline, moving toward the broken door in formation, covering each other the way trained soldiers covered each other. Vex himself straightened his jacket. His shoulder was sitting wrong but he was not acknowledging it. He looked past me with those flat grey eyes and found Caelan, who had come back out from behind the bar counter and was standing three feet behind me, his small hand gripping the back of my jacket.
Vex looked at my son the way a person looks at something they have already decided to come back for. Not a threat. Worse than a threat. An intention.
He turned his eyes to mine.
"Stonecrest has already sent word to three other packs," he said. His voice was quiet now. Conversational. The voice of a man who did not need to shout because he was certain of what came next. "You have maybe forty-eight hours before they all arrive."
He turned and walked out through the door he had destroyed.
The room was very still. Someone was bleeding on the floor. Someone else had not stood back up yet. The air smelled like adrenaline and spilled beer and something sharper underneath both.
Axel was at the window, watching the lot. His face gave nothing away.
I turned and crouched in front of Caelan. I put both hands on his face, checking him, looking for any mark, any fear. He was unharmed. He was watching me with those old grey eyes, not afraid, just taking it all in with the particular focused calm he had when the world was doing something he needed to understand.
"Mama," he said quietly. "That man looked at me like I was something he was going to come back and collect."
I pulled him against me and held him. Over his head I looked at Ragnar.
Ragnar was already moving. Already thinking. Already calculating.
We had forty-eight hours. The clock had started.