"Sir… what if it's that woman from yesterday?" Pete asked carefully, his voice low and measured, as though afraid the walls themselves might overhear. He swallowed, seeing no reaction from his boss, and added, "She gave you twenty-four hours, and the servers started collapsing right on time."
Voren froze this time. It was the first time since the crisis began that his composure cracked.
The room, once filled with frantic motion and overlapping voices, seemed to shrink around him as doubt crept in, cold, invasive, and unwelcome.
His mind reeled back to Seraphine's calm, almost amused expression when she had issued that warning. Twenty-four hours, precise, and yet unyielding.
Could it really be her? No, Voren clenched his jaw. That was impossible. Seraphine had always been pack business, politics, power, loyalty, but not this.
