The timing of it had been practical, nothing more. Bryan's hunger had announced itself somewhere between walking through the hospital entrance and the first ward, and Seraphine had looked at Damon with the quiet, wordless appeal of a mother who was trying to be in two places at once and needed someone she trusted to handle the second one.
Damon had gone without complaint, and the arrangement had been simple enough: Voren would drop him at the packhouse, Damon would collect his own car, and he'd bring Bryan back once the boy had eaten something. Clean, easy, sorted.
Voren had returned to the hospital expecting to find things roughly as he'd left them.
What he found instead was Seraphine's voice, sharp, strained, carrying Damon's name, and the specific quality of that voice told him everything before he'd fully cleared the doorway.
Inside his mind, Bloodfang had already made his assessment. 'He has to die.'
