Everybody eventually ended up gathered around the heavy oak dining table, exactly as if it were the only piece of furniture in the house brave enough to hold the immense weight of the moment.
Ashley's brilliant soup slowly went lukewarm in the ceramic bowls. Fresh, crusty bread sat torn and entirely untouched on a wooden cutting board. Ashley kept moving her silver spoon around in tight circles like it gave her something to do with her hands besides aggressively pointing at people. Ebony sat rigidly in her chair with her shoulders a little too tight, her silver eyes still heavy and tired, constantly drifting to Raphael's carved profile like she was desperately trying to make his presence make logical sense in her quiet life.
Dr. Marjorie Baptiste took the seat at the head of the table without actively claiming it. She just sat down smoothly, and it felt as if the architecture of the room immediately arranged itself around her gravity. Dr. Charles Baptiste sat directly beside her, incredibly calm as ever, one hand resting near his bowl, the other resting flat on the table like a physical anchor for his family.
Raphael stayed close enough to Ebony that his knee almost brushed the wooden leg of her chair. He wasn't holding her. He wasn't hovering over her like an oppressive spotlight. He was just… there. Solid. Unmoving. A massive, lethal wall between her and the front door.
Thiago and the rest of the pack took their seats exactly like heavily armed men who had been simultaneously invited to a chaotic family dinner and an incredibly hostile legal deposition.
Nobody reached for their cell phones.
That single fact alone felt deeply wrong for a Sunday afternoon.
Ashley forcefully cleared her throat, actively tried to be normal, completely failed, and then stubbornly tried again.
"So… hi," Ashley said, forcing a brittle little sliver of brightness into her tone. "Welcome home. I'm sorry the circumstances are… whatever the hell this is."
Marjorie's mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a genuine smile, but it was close. "We've certainly landed in worse situations, Ashley."
"Yeah," Charles added, his voice incredibly dry and flat. "We once had to eat a highly tense dinner in a UN tent while a local warlord violently argued with a goat outside."
Ashley blinked, her spoon freezing. "I'm sorry, what?"
Ebony's silver eyes widened slightly, a ghost of a real smile appearing like she'd completely forgotten this specific piece of family lore existed. "Dad—don't tell that story."
Charles shrugged his shoulders, acting exactly like it was nothing. "The goat ultimately won the argument."
That deadpan delivery got a small, genuine laugh out of Ashley—quick and profoundly relieved. Ebony smiled too, looking soft and deeply grateful, acting exactly like she'd been desperately holding her breath all morning waiting to see if her parents were still exactly who they used to be before the trauma.
Marjorie's intense gaze moved directly to Ebony. The formidable steel softened for one brief, maternal second. "How is your head feeling, baby?"
Ebony hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder gently, clearly not wanting to make a big deal out of it. "It's okay. I'm just… deeply tired."
Marjorie nodded slowly, looking exactly like she'd already successfully read the entire diagnostic scan just from Ebony's rigid posture and dilated pupils. "Eat two more bites of that soup. Then you have permission to be tired."
Ashley leaned slightly toward Ebony and muttered, speaking half in English and half in that broken, intimate Creole dialect they automatically slipped into when they were home-home: "Mwen di'w… she gon' boss you 'til you heal." (I'm telling you... she's going to boss you until you heal.)
Ebony's mouth twitched into a smirk. "Wi… I know." Charles lifted his dark eyebrows, acting exactly like a man who understood just enough of the dialect to be deeply amused. "You two girls still do that secret language thing."
Ashley sat up significantly straighter in her chair. "It's absolutely not a secret language thing," she said immediately, highly defensive.
Marjorie's sharp eyes slid lazily to Ashley. "It is exactly that thing, Ashley."
Ashley groaned loudly, dropping her head back. "Okay. Fine. It's exactly that thing."
The suffocating tension in the room finally loosened a microscopic fraction. It wasn't gone. It was just… breathing.
But Raphael's team didn't breathe any easier.
Not really.
Because the exact second Marjorie and Charles Baptiste had walked through the front door, something fundamental in the air of the house had profoundly shifted—and it absolutely wasn't just typical "protective parents are mad" energy.
Thiago's disciplined mental voice brushed lightly against the encrypted pack mind-link, heavily controlled but laced with sharp edge.
Boss… you feel that?
Raphael didn't look across the table at his Beta. He absolutely didn't need to.
I feel it.
Dante's voice chimed in, vastly lazier with his mental tone, but absolutely not joking around: That is definitively not normal-people energy in the room.
Mateo cut into the link fast, trying to rationalize it: Maybe it's just… their specific parental vibe. Some highly educated doctors just have that intense, commanding vibe.
Isaías' heavy presence in the link was short, dark, and incredibly blunt: No. Not a vibe.
Lucas wasn't physically sitting at the dining table—he was still hidden away at the safehouse, aggressively working the partial shipping clue and monitoring the bound survivor from the alley—but his clinical voice came slicing through the long-distance link like a clean, sterile knife.
They're not completely human. Neither is that detective Cruz. Your mate is entirely surrounded by unknown variables.
Raphael's jaw tightened so incredibly subtly that only Thiago caught the microscopic flex of muscle.
They are her adopted parents, Thiago shot back through the link, playing the voice of tactical reason. They actively raised her. They won't physically hurt her.
Raphael's mental response was low, freezing cold, and profoundly final.
I do not ever leave her unprotected around unknown power.
Mateo's mental voice got significantly softer, almost pleading with his Alpha not to start a war in a kitchen.
Boss… they raised her. They clearly love her. You can literally smell the affection on them.
Raphael's golden eyes flicked discreetly down to Marjorie's hands resting lightly on the table—they were incredibly steady. Absolutely not trembling. They were not the soft hands of a sheltered civilian. They weren't even the pristine, unblemished hands of a wealthy surgeon.
They were the heavily scarred, deeply calloused hands of a woman who had done incredibly dark, violent things in the name of survival.
He didn't answer Mateo. He absolutely didn't have to.
Across the wide table, Marjorie was casually talking exactly like the dining room wasn't actively full of massive men who moved exactly like apex predators.
She was acting exactly like it was just a normal Sunday dinner with a few extra folding chairs pulled up.
"We were in Saudi," Marjorie said, her tone simple and conversational. "Not on a luxury vacation. We were working."
Ashley leaned forward over her bowl despite herself, deeply curious. "Where exactly?"
Marjorie gave her youngest daughter a sharp, withering look that explicitly communicated you already know exactly why I am absolutely not saying the specific coordinates out loud in a room full of armed men.
Ashley immediately held up both her hands in surrender. "Okay. Yeah. My bad. Understood. Continue."
Charles took over the narrative without a shred of drama. "We were stationed at a highly secure safe house. A designated partner clinic. A massive amount of bureaucratic paperwork. A truly agonizing amount of waiting in the dark."
"And a young boy," Marjorie added, her strong voice going significantly softer without losing a single ounce of its underlying steel. "His name is Kian."
Ebony's exhausted gaze lifted from her soup. "He's okay?"
Marjorie nodded slowly. "He's incredibly stubborn. Frighteningly smart for his age. He absolutely doesn't cry easily, which honestly makes me want to physically fight whoever brutally taught him that specific survival trait."
Ashley's throat tightened painfully. She looked down at her ceramic bowl and actively pretended it was the steam from the hot soup making her dark eyes sting.
Marjorie's tone snapped right back into practical logistics. "We successfully filed the initial international forms. I'll probably fly back in a week or so if the commercial flights behave. Charles and I will officially finish the extraction process."
"You two are entirely insane," Ashley said, but it absolutely wasn't a sarcastic joke this time. It was a profound mixture of deep admiration and genuine, terrifying fear braided tightly together.
Charles's mouth curved slightly into a warm, paternal smile. "We are simply committed to the cause, Ashley."
Ebony's voice came out incredibly quiet. "You always do this. You run toward the fire."
Marjorie's dark eyes held hers fiercely. "We always show up when we are needed."
A beat of heavy silence passed.
Then Ashley—because she was fundamentally, psychologically incapable of sitting in emotional softness for too long without getting incredibly uncomfortable and wanting to hit something—pointed her wooden spoon directly at Raphael exactly like she was actively trying to reclaim control of her dining room.
"So," Ashley said, her voice careful but remarkably sharp. "Raphael."
Raphael's golden-brown gaze shifted to her face immediately.
Ashley swallowed hard once. "We genuinely appreciate you being here. Like… truly. We owe you. But I need to logically understand exactly what's currently happening without Ebony having to verbally relive the trauma."
Ebony automatically opened her mouth—probably to politely say it's fine, I can handle it—and Marjorie expertly cut her off with a gentle wave of her hand.
"Let your sister talk, Ebony," Marjorie said firmly.
Ebony immediately closed her mouth. A profound wave of relief visibly flickered in her silver eyes, looking exactly like a woman who had desperately wanted someone else to step in and carry the crushing weight of the interrogation for five minutes.
Ashley nodded once, deeply grateful for her mother's flawless backup.
Raphael didn't soften the hard lines of his face, but his deep voice remained highly controlled. "Ask your questions."
Ashley's eyebrows jumped up in mild surprise. "Okay. That was… unexpectedly direct for a guy who won't tell me his actual job title."
Raphael said absolutely nothing in response. He just sat there and waited.
Ashley nervously glanced at her intense parents, then at Ebony's pale face, then directly back to Raphael's eyes. "What exactly do you know about James Knighton? Like… how long was he actively watching her before Friday night?"
Raphael's entire tactical team went completely, terrifyingly still inside the psychic mind-link.
Thiago: Be careful, Alpha.
Dante: Do absolutely not say too much. We don't know who they work for yet.
Mateo: Don't say nothing either, man. That'll just make them wildly suspicious of us.
Raphael answered out loud, his tone measured and incredibly precise. "He was watching her long enough to formulate a flawless plan."
Marjorie's dark eyes narrowed slightly, zeroing in on the phrasing. "He specifically planned the exact restaurant."
Raphael's gaze flicked to her—a quick, highly analytical, sharp movement.
Marjorie's tone didn't change a single degree. "Detective Cruz explicitly told us in the hospital. The high-end reservation was made two full weeks ago."
Ebony blinked rapidly. "Two—" She swallowed hard, her throat clicking. "He… he actively told me at the table that he just got lucky with a cancellation."
Ashley's face tightened with pure, unadulterated disgust. "Of course the sociopath did."
Raphael didn't look at Ebony when he finally spoke. He actively kept his deep voice entirely steady so she absolutely wouldn't hear the homicidal, world-ending rage vibrating just under it.
"He wasn't lucky," Raphael said flatly. "He was incredibly patient."
The profound silence that followed that statement was the specific, suffocating kind that made the tiny clink of a spoon against a ceramic bowl feel entirely too loud.
Charles's voice came incredibly calm into the void. "And the black van."
Ashley's head snapped violently toward her dad. "Wait, you actually knew about the van?"
Charles nodded once. "We received a highly detailed call from the precinct while we were waiting on the tarmac. We got a thorough briefing. We got enough of the picture."
Ebony's bruised hands curled tightly into fists on the wooden table. Her voice went incredibly small, stripping away the academic armor. "There was… there was really a van waiting in the alley?"
Ashley reached blindly under the table and squeezed Ebony's knee once. A quiet, physical tether. I'm right here.
Raphael's golden eyes tracked the small, comforting motion exactly like it profoundly mattered to him. Like every single touch Ebony received in her life should only come from someone entirely safe and vetted.
Marjorie spoke without looking away from Ebony's pale face. "Yes, baby. There was a van."
Ebony's breath finally left her lungs in a long, slow, shuddering exhale that sounded exactly like she'd been desperately holding it since Friday night.
Raphael's heavy jaw flexed violently again.
Inside the mind-link, Thiago actively tried to pull his Alpha back from the ledge.
Boss. Hold the line. She's currently processing the trauma. Do not aggressively flare your aura right now. You'll terrify the room.
Raphael's mental reply was a terrifying, subsonic growl made entirely of thought.
I am perfectly fine.
Mateo, whispering quietly in the link: You're absolutely not fine, Boss.
Dante: He's literally never fine.
Isaías: He's contained. That's what matters.
Contained. That was the absolute best anyone in the pack could say about the Alpha right now.
Ashley aggressively lifted her silver spoon again, looking exactly like she desperately needed something physical to do besides shake with rage. "Okay," she said, her voice growing steadily steadier. "So what exactly happens now? Like, what's the actual, actionable plan?"
Raphael's golden eyes stayed locked entirely on Ebony's face while he answered Ashley. "High-end security. Localized cameras. My men will actively rotate shifts on the perimeter."
Marjorie leaned back slightly in her chair, crossing her arms. "And what about you."
Raphael didn't hesitate for a fraction of a millisecond. "I stay right here."
Ebony's pale cheeks warmed rapidly again, and she desperately tried to hide the flush by lifting her bowl and taking a small sip of broth.
Ashley easily caught the blush and made a highly exaggerated face at the ceiling exactly like she was praying, God help me with these two.
Charles watched Raphael intensely for a long, heavy moment, then finally spoke. His tone was incredibly gentle—but it was highly dangerous in its own quiet, unspoken way.
"You constantly keep saying 'stay' like you've already unilaterally decided that you permanently belong here in this house."
Raphael's molten gaze met his without flinching. "I do."
That bold statement absolutely should have sounded entirely ridiculous coming from a stranger.
It didn't sound ridiculous coming from him. It sounded like an unbreakable law of physics.
A wooden chair creaked loudly as Mateo shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable with how incredibly sharp and territorial the conversation at the table was getting.
In the mind-link, Mateo whispered: Boss, they're aggressively grilling you like it's a Sunday school interrogation.
Raphael's mental reply was immediate and brutal: Quiet.
Thiago's mind-voice came in significantly steadier: We can politely leave. Give the family some breathing space to process.
Raphael didn't even entertain the tactical suggestion.
No. I am not leaving.
Dante's mind-voice slipped smoothly into the link with the absolute worst possible idea, because of course Dante did.
If we're currently dealing with an unknown, potentially hostile magical power in these parents, we should bring in Seraphine to sweep the house. Let the witch sniff the room and tell us what they are.
Thiago's mental response was a hard, immediate wall: Absolutely not. Negative.
Mateo: Hell no. She's crazy.
Isaías: No witches near the mate.
Raphael's mind went entirely, freezing cold.
Do not ever invite that witch to this property.
Dante's mental voice stayed characteristically careless and arrogant. We wouldn't formally invite her. We'd simply consult her as an asset.
Thiago: It is the exact same thing, idiot.
Raphael's intense eyes stayed locked entirely on Marjorie and Charles, but his heavy jaw visibly tightened as if he could physically feel Seraphine's dark, suffocating presence just from the passing thought of her name.
Marjorie, meanwhile, had relaxed completely back into her chair, acting exactly like she was just casually listening to everyone talk about the weather.
Acting exactly like she wasn't actively tracking every single microscopic shift in the room's barometric pressure.
Acting exactly like she wasn't currently hearing the unsaid.
She laughed suddenly—a soft, incredibly warm, perfectly timed sound—at something Ashley mumbled under her breath in rapid Creole.
Ashley blinked, confused. "Wait—Mom, you actually understood that dialect?"
Marjorie smiled, a slow, highly mysterious curve of her lips. "I understood absolutely enough of it."
Then Marjorie's dark, striking eyes slid lazily over to Raphael—looking straight at him, staring directly into his golden-brown irises—looking exactly like she was effortlessly peering through his bronze skin and heavy bone, looking straight into whatever ancient monster lived underneath the human suit.
She didn't raise her voice a single decibel.
She didn't change her relaxed, maternal expression.
She just spoke out loud into the room exactly like it was normal, polite dinner conversation… and at the exact same millisecond, her terrifying words landed violently inside Raphael's head with ringing, crystal clarity.
Do not ever invite a dark witch to my daughters' home.
Every single supernatural spine sitting at Raphael's side went completely, rigidly straight.
Thiago's dark eyes widened a fraction of an inch in genuine shock. Dante's breath hitched audibly. Mateo literally froze mid-blink. Isaías' massive hand instantly curled into a tight, ready fist underneath the wooden table.
Raphael absolutely didn't move.
He didn't physically react.
But deep inside his chest, the massive jaguar violently lifted its heavy head—now fully, aggressively awake.
Marjorie kept smiling pleasantly, acting exactly like she'd just finished telling a funny, lighthearted story about a goat.
She casually took another small sip of her lukewarm soup and added, her mental voice still terrifyingly calm, still almost darkly amused—
You can certainly try.
A heavy beat.
But they will absolutely not cross my threshold alive.
The entire dining room stayed completely quiet.
But it absolutely wasn't awkward, polite quiet anymore.
It was the profound silence of absolute, paralyzed shock.
Because Dr. Marjorie Baptiste hadn't just magically heard their highly encrypted pack link.
She'd been casually, effortlessly listening to them the entire damn time.