Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 229 - You were going too slow. I was helping

Voren heard her. That much was obvious. He just wasn’t going to answer.

He picked up the menu instead, giving it the kind of focused, unhurried attention that belonged to a man who had unilaterally decided the subject no longer existed and was moving forward accordingly.

His eyes tracked down the laminated page like he was genuinely weighing his options, which under different circumstances, with a different person sitting across from him, might have actually been convincing.

"Dragon stew, Nebula platter, crystal forest salad, volcano dumplings," he told the waiter without looking up, "and the aurora dessert sphere at the end."

Seraphine stared at the side of his face. "You should’ve let me order."

The annoyance in her voice was real, and only partly about the food. He’d dismissed her question with such complete, unrattled composure, hadn’t fumbled, stalled, or even had the decency to pretend he hadn’t heard it.

He’d just decided it didn’t exist anymore and kept moving, and that specific brand of control was somehow worse than if he’d gotten defensive about it. Defensiveness she could work with. But this, she couldn’t.

"You’ve never eaten out here," Voren said, setting the menu down. Reasonable. Patient. Like he genuinely believed he was doing her a favor. "I’ve been here plenty of times with Ravyn, actually so just trust me on this one."

Seraphine rolled her eyes and quietly made herself a promise that she would find something wrong with every single dish. It would’ve been a satisfying plan to hold onto if the food hadn’t arrived looking and smelling exactly the way it did.

The waiters arranged everything across the wide table with practiced efficiency, and the aromas that rose up from the dishes hit her somewhere deep, layered and complex, nothing like anything she could place or compare to something she’d had before.

the faint, knowing patience of someone who had already sat across from this exact reaction before and was in no rush. "Whatever you like most, we can get more

first. Tall glass bowl, crunchy greens and candied nuts and fruit that caught the light like something cut from gemstone, dry ice mist curling lazily up from the base and dissolving before it reached anything, the whole thing looking like something out of a fairy tale that had figured out its own specific aesthetic and committed to

Her face made a genuine effort to stay neutral about it, but it didn’t

actually incredible," she

The satisfaction in Voren’s voice was quiet, but it was absolutely there. "Try the

curl of fragrant heat rising up from the red dipping sauce, and lifted one toward her

as, to anyone paying attention. His hand moved before the thought

Seraphine went completely still.

pull back and the quiet, inconvenient awareness that there

for the food and offered it the way you offer something to someone you’re comfortable with without checking first whether the comfort was mutual yet, without running it through any filter at

wolf was operating somewhere considerably ahead of his brain on this one, and

from

from three different tables,

back to her plate with considerably more composure than the moment probably

One clean, sharp recalibration. ’What did

sound at least somewhat sheepish about it. ’You were going too slow. I

is not what it looked like