Back at the restaurant, the waiter came back to the table with the careful, composed expression of someone carrying information he wasn't completely sure how to deliver.
"Alpha." He kept his voice low. "They're gone."
Voren's face didn't change. But something behind his eyes did. A single, quiet recalibration that came and went fast enough that you'd miss it if you weren't paying attention.
He set his glass down and looked at the waiter for just a beat longer than he needed to.
That was not how rogue assassins behaved. Not the real ones. Real assassins didn't turn around because somebody dropped a name at them, not unless someone had paid them more to expose whoever sent them than they'd been paid to finish the job.
Or unless they'd genuinely had no idea who was in that restaurant, and the name had rattled them enough to pull back and reconsider.
"Did you get anything? The name of whoever sent them?"
