Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 263 - You could have just given me a heads up

Voren felt it too, quickly walking around the front of the car and falling into step beside her without a word, and they walked in together.

The same table was open. The one tucked slightly back from the main floor, with the good sightlines and the low light. Neither of them mentioned it. They just walked to it and sat down.

Seraphine picked up the menu and looked at it without reading it.

She felt the change in the room a moment before she identified the cause. The approaching footsteps were too smooth, not a regular server’s gait. She lowered the menu.

The man standing at their table was more polished than a regular waiter, wearing the kind of jacket that didn’t belong on the floor staff. He smiled at both of them with the practiced warmth of someone very accustomed to managing impressions.

"Good evening." His eyes moved between them with open appreciation. "How can I help you tonight, Alpha Voren and Luna Seraphine?"

"Just Sera is fine," Seraphine said automatically.

Voren ordered the same things as last time, easy and unbothered, and the manager made a note of it and then stayed exactly where he was, pen hovering, his attention drifting back to Seraphine with a little too much ease. "And for you, Luna? Anything additional I can—"

"She’ll have what I ordered," Voren said, his voice flat.

"Of course." The manager’s smile didn’t waver. He turned back to Seraphine with something warm and practiced in his expression. "If there’s anything else you need, please don’t hesitate. My name is—"

The sound that came next was quiet. Almost polite.

The customers nearest to them heard it first, that specific stillness that falls over a room when something old and instinctive in the human brain registers danger before the brain had finished processing what the eyes are seeing.

kind of efficient, unhurried speed of people who knew

had come

the movement. Not yet deep, but

physical way that the conversation he’d been planning to have was not

had gone the

calm, unhurried, slightly bored, except for his eyes, which had gone that deep absolute black again, and his hand, which was currently inside another man’s

the manager’s

"Voren."

the room like a crack of electricity, sharp and clear and carrying every

Voren’s hand went still.

made it clear it was a choice and not a reflex, he

again, human and unhurried, like nothing had happened. He stepped back from the manager and straightened

toward the floor in slow motion, one hand pressing against his side, his face the color of old wax. He was breathing in short, careful pulls,

medical instinct she had fired at once and she was halfway out of her seat before

harder than a word usually needed to

froze. Looked at

will handle it." There was no room in his tone for a follow-up question.

stacked up and ready. But even as she opened her mouth, she could already see the slow, faint knitting beginning at the manager’s

healing was already taking place, though slower than usual, stitching things back together the way wolves always did. She watched it

floor staff appeared from somewhere near the kitchen, wide-eyed and careful, and helped the manager up by the elbow. The man went without a word, not looking back. He’d heard the rumors about Seraphine’s

being a best friend to Ravyn, he never expected this level of

pad in hand, expression professionally blank in the