Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 264 – Voren’s ‘surprise’

"Ready?" Voren asked, standing from his chair.

"Bed," she said simply as she rose to her feet. They got into the car, Voren pulled out of the parking lot and turned in the wrong direction.

Seraphine watched the road for a moment, cross-referencing it against the route back in her head. "This isn’t the way."

"No."

"Then where are we going?"

He glanced at her sideways, and the faintest suggestion of something crossed his face. "Surprise."

She looked at him, thought about pushing it, but there was approximately zero times in her experience that pushing Voren on something had produced a result she wanted.

She turned back to the window.

"Fine," she said to the glass.

The drive was long enough and warm enough and the hum of the engine was steady enough that her eyes started going heavy before she’d fully decided to let them.

She told herself she was just resting her eyes, and was asleep within four minutes, coming back to consciousness all at once.

The sound of lots of water moving fast, pulled her up out of sleep before she’d even finished deciding to wake up. She straightened in the seat and blinked, and the world came back in pieces.

Moon overhead. Trees all around, taller than the ones near the packhouse, older-looking. And that sound everywhere, filling the

"We’re here," Voren said.

windshield. And then she

off her tongue half-finished. She was already reaching for the door

down from a height she couldn’t fully gauge in the moonlight, white and silver and loud, breaking against the rocks at the

directly above it, throwing light across the whole thing in a way that made the water look like it was lit from the inside. The air around it was cold and clean and tasted like something she couldn’t name, something that reached back into her chest and

of the car before Voren had fully

he called after her, stepping out

was already moving toward the water, arms slightly out for balance on the uneven ground, and the smile pulling at her face was the kind she didn’t

voice lifting slightly over the rush of

fingers drag through the cold current where it spread thin and fast across the flat rocks at the base

Voren stopped

face lasted only a second before something heavier moved through it and replaced it.

her crouch there in the moonlight with her hair loose and her shoes getting wet and her whole face open in a way it almost never was, and he didn’t answer her question because the answer wasn’t something

not

He let it go.

the falls

up beside her, looking up the same line she was following. "Not even

over with the expression she got when a fact didn’t quite line up with her internal

started making his way up the side, careful, picking his path, using the rocks that had held long enough to

She followed.