The Billionaire Alpha's Hidden Luna

Chapter 7: Dinner Instead

CHAPTER SEVEN: Dinner Instead

Emily had been entirely prepared for many things tonight.

Embarrassment.

Crushing regret.

Terrible life choices. Possibly an evening in a local prison cell.

She had not, under any circumstances, been prepared for a regular dinner. An actual dinner. A completely normal dinner.

Well... as normal as a dinner could possibly be when it directly involved a man like Ryan Blackwood.

The powerful executive was currently sitting directly across from her in a lavish private dining suite, calmly eating a plate of pasta like an ordinary, regular human being.

It felt incredibly suspicious. Very suspicious.

Emily narrowed her eyes behind her long lashes, watching him closely.

Ryan looked up from his glass of red wine, catching her intense gaze. "What?"

"You eat pasta," Emily noted, her tone laced with accusation.

He blinked once, slightly taken aback. "...Yes."

"Voluntarily?"

Ryan just stared at her.

Emily pointed a rigid finger dramatically across the table. "You own private jets, Mr. Blackwood."

"Yes."

"Probably an entire private island."

Ryan hesitated for a split second, a look of mild amusement crossing his sharp features. "...Two, actually."

Emily slapped her hand flat against the table. "Exactly!"

Ryan looked genuinely, thoroughly confused. "What exactly does my asset portfolio have to do with carbohydrates and pasta?"

"You seem like the kind of person who only consumes aggressively expensive things."

The corner of his lips twitched upward. "And what exactly do expensive people eat, Emily?"

"I don't know," Emily shrugged her shoulders, leaning back. "Caviar. Gold flakes on toast."

Ryan nearly choked on his wine.

Emily looked immensely pleased with herself. For some strange reason, the sheer, unfiltered expressions on her face made him want to laugh out loud again. It was becoming a dangerous trend, mostly because Ryan Blackwood rarely ever laughed in his daily life. Yet, somehow, this clumsy literature student had managed to provoke it multiple times in a single evening.

A waitress in a crisp uniform arrived at the table, setting down the menus. Emily immediately straightened her spine, trying to look sophisticated.

Then, she opened the leather-bound book, noticed the pricing, and completely stopped breathing.

Ryan noticed the sudden stillness in her frame immediately. "Emily."

She looked up at him, her brown eyes wide with genuine shock. "Why does a single bowl of soup cost eighty dollars?"

Ryan closed his eyes, a quiet sigh escaping his lips.

The waitress looked thoroughly horrified by the question. Emily, however, looked personally and deeply offended by the font on the page.

"Eighty dollars," Emily pointed her finger at the menu item, her voice rising slightly. "For liquid soup."

The waitress slowly began backing away toward the kitchen doors. Ryan wanted the ground to swallow him.

Emily continued, entirely oblivious. "My monthly utility bills are literally cheaper than this soup."

The waitress fled the dining room. She actually fled.

Ryan watched the double doors swing shut, then slowly turned his head back to look at Emily. "You scared her away."

"I asked a perfectly logical question about broth."

"You interrogated her, Emily."

Emily gasped dramatically, pressing a hand to her chest. "Those are two entirely different concepts."

"They really aren't."

For a silent moment, they simply looked at each other across the white tablecloth. Then, a laugh escaped them. Together. The sound felt strangely natural in the quiet suite. Comfortable.

Ryan wasn't remotely used to comfortable. Most human beings in his world either feared his absolute authority or desperately wanted to manipulate something out of him. Emily did neither of those things. She just looked entirely confused by his biological existence. Which was oddly, profoundly refreshing to his inner beast.

The actual dinner arrived shortly after. Real food. Thank God. Emily had been secretly terrified that the portions would be microscopic and artsy. Fortunately, they were normal.

Ryan watched silently as she took her first bite, then another, then another. The rigid tension in her expressive face completely softened, a small, genuine smile appearing on her lips.

Something inside Ryan's chest tightened into a hard knot.

Mate.

Deep beneath his skin, his inner wolf sounded unusually calm. Happy. Rested. Ryan ignored the animal. Mostly.

"So," Emily swallowed her food, looking across the table. "What exactly do billionaires do all day?"

Ryan considered the question carefully. "Work."

She stared at him, deadpan. "No."

"Yes, Emily."

"No."

"Emily, I run an entire global conglomerate."

"You own islands," she countered, leaning her chin on her hand. "You could literally spend the rest of your life doing absolutely nothing."

Ryan leaned back in his leather chair. "I happen to enjoy working."

Her face clearly suggested she didn't believe a single syllable coming out of his mouth.

Ryan let out a quiet sigh. "I started my very first company when I was twenty years old."

Emily blinked, her eyes widening. "What?"

"I built it from scratch, then sold it."

"Why would you sell it?"

"Because someone offered me a ridiculous, absurd amount of money for the patents."

"Then what did you do?"

"I started another one."

Emily looked completely offended on behalf of the working class. "That is highly unfair."

Ryan raised a dark eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because some of us out here struggle to keep a basic, low-maintenance cactus alive."

A deep, chest-rumbling laugh escaped him. Emily pointed an accusing finger at him, pouting her bottom lip. "Don't laugh at my pain!"

"You killed a desert cactus, Emily?"

"It died very dramatically," she insisted.

"How dramatic can a plant death be?"

"I cried for ten minutes, Mr. Blackwood."

Ryan laughed even harder, the rich sound surprising both of them. Emily stared at him, her heart doing a strange, irregular flutter against her ribs. There it was again—that laugh. Warm. Real. Distinctly human. For a split second, looking at the crinkles around his eyes, she forgot who he was. She forgot about the agency, the contract envelope, and the intimidating penthouse.

Then, Ryan’s eyes softened, his tone turning quiet. "What about you, Emily?"

The sudden shift caught her completely off guard. "What about me?"

"What do you want?"

Emily frowned slightly, looking down at her silverware. Nobody ever asked her that question. Not really. People always asked what she was studying at the university. What jobs she was working. How her mother’s health was doing. But nobody ever asked her what she actually wanted out of life.

The answer came slowly, her voice dropping into a vulnerable whisper. "I want my mom healthy."

Ryan's golden undertones flared subtly, his expression turning deeply serious.

Emily kept her eyes on her plate. "I want her to stop pretending she’s perfectly fine when she’s clearly suffering."

A heavy silence settled between them in the private room. It wasn't awkward this time; it was quiet, honest, and raw.

"I want to finish my university degree," Emily smiled faintly, a distant look in her eyes. "And maybe... maybe become a literature professor someday."

Ryan listened to every single word. Every dream. Every hope. He absorbed them as though they were the most important pieces of information in the city. Because to his wolf, they were. More than she could ever realize.

Emily took another bite of her pasta—and suddenly froze.

Ryan's sharp eyes noticed the instantaneous shift in her posture. "What's wrong?"

She tilted her head to the side, her smile completely disappearing. A strange, heavy feeling was creeping over her skin. Her nose wrinkled, her nostrils flaring subtly.

A distant scent. Sharp. Acrid. Burning.

Smoke.

"Do you smell that?" Emily whispered, looking around the walls.

Ryan frowned, inhaling deeply through his own nose. "Smell what?"

"Smoke. Something is burning."

The private room went entirely still. Ryan's wolf suddenly stirred behind his ribs, its ears pinning back. Something about the absolute certainty in her tone felt wrong. Terrifyingly different.

Emily looked toward the ceiling vents. "That's so weird."

"What is?"

"The smoke. It's getting thicker."

Ryan slowly set down his fork onto the porcelain plate. His jaw locked. Because as an Alpha werewolf with hyper-advanced senses... he couldn't smell a single thing in the air. Neither could his inner wolf. The ventilation system was completely clear.

Yet, Emily looked entirely certain. Absolutely certain.

Exactly thirty seconds later—

The hotel’s advanced emergency fire alarms violently exploded throughout the entire building.

Emily jumped in her seat, gasping. The elegant lights of the private dining room instantly shifted, flashing a harsh, rhythmic red. Loud speaker announcements began blaring down the corridor, and the sound of panicked staff rushing into motion rattled the walls.

Ryan stood up slowly, his dark eyes fixed entirely on her face. Emily stared back at him, her chest heaving, her mind completely bewildered.

"...Okay," she swallowed hard, her voice trembling under the blaring alarm. "That was incredibly weird."

Ryan’s wolf went entirely dead quiet inside his skull, its eyes locked onto his mate. Because somehow... a supposedly human girl had smelled an electrical fire deep inside the building's infrastructure a full half-minute before the most advanced thermal sensors in the city could even register the danger.

And for the very first time, looking at his clumsy, nearsighted mate, Ryan wondered if there was a dark, ancient secret to Emily Hart that even she didn't know yet.