Chapter 263: 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.

Chairs scraped. People found reasons to be somewhere else. The far end of the restaurant emptied with the kind of efficient, unhurried speed of people who knew exactly what an Alpha wolf’s energy felt like when it crossed a line and had zero interest in being nearby when it finished crossing.

Voren’s claws had come out.

They were in the manager’s stomach before Seraphine fully registered the movement. Not yet deep, but enough to make the point.

Enough to make the man understand in a very direct and physical way that the conversation he’d been planning to have was not a conversation he was going to have.

His face had gone the color of old paper.

Voren’s expression hadn’t changed at all. That was the part that made it worse. He looked exactly the same as he had thirty seconds ago, 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 torso.

He was about to pull out the manager’s intestines and end him there and then but-

"Voren."

Seraphine’s voice snapped through the room like a crack of electricity, sharp and clear and carrying every ounce of authority she had, which, it turned out, was considerable.

Voren’s hand went still.

One second. Two. And then slowly, with the kind of control that made it clear it was a choice and not a reflex, he pulled back.

His claws retracted, finger by finger, until his hand was just a hand again, human and unhurried, like nothing had happened. He stepped back from the manager and straightened his jacket.

The manager folded 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, his whole body focused on the single task of managing pain.

Seraphine was already moving. Every medical instinct she had fired at once and she was halfway out of her seat before Voren’s voice hit her.

"No." It came out harder than a word usually needed to be.

She froze. Looked at him.

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

She wanted to argue, the words were right there, stacked up and ready. But even as she opened her mouth, she could already see the slow, faint knitting beginning at the manager’s side.

The wolf healing was already taking place, though slower than usual, stitching things back together the way wolves always did. She watched it for a moment and then slowly, with great personal effort, sat back down.

One of the 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 divorce.

With Voren being a best friend to Ravyn, he never expected this level of possessiveness from him and now, he wouldn’t be doing that again.

The waiter from their last visit appeared at the table thirty seconds later, order pad in hand, expression professionally blank in the way that meant he’d seen enough of tonight and had decided his job was to act like he hadn’t.

Seraphine waited until he was gone.

Then she turned to Voren with her arms folded and looked at him the way a person looks at someone who has just done something completely unreasonable and knows it.

"What is wrong with you?"

Voren met her eyes. Something in his gaze settled, went softer around the edges in a way it didn’t usually. "You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who enjoys being looked at like that by men she doesn’t know."

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

He wasn’t wrong, and she hated it. The way certain men looked at her, like her divorce had rearranged something about what they were allowed to want. Like availability was an invitation. It made her skin crawl every time.

But still.

"You could have just given me a heads up," she said finally, unfolding her arms. "Before the claws came out."

"I’ll consider it."

She looked at him for one more second, decided that was probably the closest thing to an apology she was getting, and picked up her water glass.

The food came and it was exactly as good as she remembered. Better, maybe, because she was hungrier than she’d been the last time and hunger had a way of making everything taste like a decision you made correctly.

She ate with genuine enthusiasm and didn’t bother pretending otherwise, working through each dish with the focused appreciation of someone who had been running on adrenaline and cold air for most of the day and badly needed this.

Voren ate steadily and watched her from across the table, saying very little, which was fine. The quiet between them had stopped feeling like something that needed to be filled.

She finished her dessert to the last bite and then leaned back in her chair and yawned faintly, ready to call it good night but Voren had other plans. It was time to lure back the rogue assassins. Whoever sent them, must pay heavily.