Chapter Eight - Charity Benefit
1157 Words
~Elara~
After the drama with Avery, Uncle Rowan doesn’t ask my father about getting her a job. Maybe it will come up another time, but for now, I’ve stopped it from happening.
It’s the first of many things I’ll be stopping.
When the visit is over, I head back to my room to finish trying on the rest of the dresses. As I walk through the door, my phone rings and Isabeau’s name flashes across the screen.
“Hey, what’s up?” I answer cheerily.
There’s a slight pause on the other end. “I wanted to check if you were okay after yesterday, but you sound like you’re in a good mood.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I told you yesterday: I’m not hurt. We’re young and healthy, so why not be happy?”
“Okay, Miss Philosopher,” she giggles. “In that case, what do you think about coming to the charity benefit with me tomorrow? I can still get you a seat.”
It takes me a second to remember what she’s talking about. Our pack has a big charity benefit every year to raise money for children left orphaned by the battles our warriors fight to protect us. The Alpha and Luna will be there, along with my parents and all the other ranked families of the pack.
I’ve never attended.
“I know you don’t like being the center of attention, so you don’t need to go,” Caspian always assured me. “I’ll just be talking business all night anyway. You’d be bored.”
He had a hundred different reasons why I wouldn’t want to go, and since I trusted him to look out for me, I always agreed to stay home. Isabeau would pass on the gossip the next day about who wore what and who sat with whom, until she stopped going too.
Now, I realize that Caspian intentionally boxed me out, keeping me in a cage as he isolated me from anyone who might legitimately have my interests at heart.
However, he doesn’t control me anymore. I can do what I want, so I give Isabeau my agreement. “Sure. I’d love to go.”
“Are you serious?” she sputters in surprise. “You’ll actually come? Don’t toy with me, Elara!”
“I’m not,” I promise. “In fact, I have a bunch of dresses here that we could wear. Why don’t you come over and pick one?”
“I’ll be right there!” she squeals in excitement, hanging up before I can get another word out.
By the time she arrives, I’m wearing another of the dresses from the shop, a floor-length sparkly green dress with a slit up one leg. It makes my hazel eyes look greener, and it twinkles beneath the lights every time I move.
Isabeau’s jaw hits the floor when she sees me. “Where have you been hiding that?”
“The shop sent over a few evening dresses for me to try on,” I explain, gesturing to the other garment bags on my bed. “I haven’t chosen one yet. I need your help, you know what people usually wear to these events.”
“I’m not talking about the dress,” she corrects me. “Look at your curves! Your waist, your hips, your ass! Your regular clothes don’t do you any justice, Elara. You’re hot!”
Her exuberance makes me laugh, but she has a point. My parents always encouraged me to dress modestly, and so did Caspian. I went along with it because I wanted to be the obedient daughter, the obedient wife, but as I examine my body in the mirror in the flattering green dress, I realize this was just another way of controlling me. There’s power in beauty, and he wanted me to be powerless.
“Come on, let’s see what else you’ve got,” Isabeau encourages. “You’re going to be the belle of the ball!”
Over the next two hours, we both try on every dress the shop sent over, keeping up a steady stream of chatter.
“You had me really worried yesterday,” she tells me as she tries on an ivory dress that makes her ebony hair shine. “It felt like you were flirting with Atticus Ellington, of all people!”
“Why ‘of all people’?” I ask mildly, examining my own dress in the mirror. This one is pink and a little too sweet. I want something striking, not just pretty. “What’s wrong with him?”
“What isn’t wrong with him?” she retorts. “He’s so serious all the time. He has no friends, and no one knows anything about his real family. Everyone says he goes through women like popcorn.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “Popcorn? Really? That’s the best you can come up with?”
Isabeau throws a pillow at me. “You know what I mean. He’s never been seen with the same woman twice. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
“He’s handsome,” I point out, but Isabeau only snorts.
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
She doesn’t need to tell me that. Caspian has the whole world fooled, including her.
I’m not ready to tell her about my deal with Atticus yet, so I change the subject. “Is Riley going to be at the benefit?”
She scoffs again. “So what if he is? It makes no difference to me.”
The color in her cheeks suggests otherwise. Isabeau had a crush on Riley all through school, and in our senior year, her widowed mom got mated to his divorced dad, one of the pack Deltas. That made Riley her step-brother, and Isabeau was sure that living in the same house would finally make Riley notice her.
It didn’t work. He ignored her even more than before, and as soon as he graduated, he left the pack to train in a special leadership program at another pack. As I remember, at this point in time, he just got back a week ago and they haven’t seen each other yet. The first time they’ll meet again is at my mating ceremony, and that’s when they’ll discover they’re fated mates.
She has no idea, and I won’t spoil the surprise. Doing my best to cover my smile at her insistence that she doesn’t care about seeing him, I pull on the next dress, and Isabeau gasps. “That’s the one! It’s perfect.”
I have to agree. Running my hands over my flat stomach, I turn to examine myself from all angles, looking for a flaw, but I can’t find any. It doesn’t even need any alterations. It fits me like a glove.
This is the dress that will announce to the whole pack that it’s time they pay attention to Elara Preston.
- Writer
