Dinner With The Devil
1245 Words
REIGN POV
A knock sounded on my door before it opened.
Petra slipped in quietly, already moving with purpose. "My lady. It's time to get you ready for dinner."
"Okay." I set down the curtain I'd been staring past and turned around.
"Let me run your bath."
The bathroom was enormous. Marble floors, a deep soaking tub, fixtures that gleamed without trying. Nothing like the cramped utility bathroom I'd shared with three omegas back home where the hot water ran out in four minutes if you were lucky.
How rich were these lycans.
Petra moved to start the tub and then turned to me with her hands clasped. "I'll bathe you, my lady."
"That's alright. I can manage."
"I insist —"
"Petra." I kept my voice gentle. "I'd like my privacy please."
She held my gaze for a moment then nodded once and stepped out, pulling the door behind her.
I undressed slowly. When my shirt came over my head I didn't look in the mirror. I already knew what was there — the yellowing bruises across my ribs, the older marks that had faded to silver lines on my skin.
I stepped into the bath.
The hot water hit every sore place on my body at once and I exhaled something I'd been holding since the car ride here. Maybe longer. The tension in my shoulders, my neck, the permanent brace I carried in my spine from years of making myself small — it loosened, just slightly, in that water.
I let myself have five quiet minutes.
Then I got out.
Petra had laid a royal blue dress on the bed while I was in the bathroom. Simple, fitted, and elegant. Beside it, a set of silk underwear — surprisingly my exact size.
I dressed quickly.
Petra returned right on time and gestured to the vanity chair without a word. I sat and she got to work on my hair with practiced hands, pinning it up in a way that felt effortless and looked intentional.
Then she reached for the makeup and stopped.
Her eyes found mine in the mirror.
"My lady." Her voice was careful. "How did you get this bruise?"
I held her gaze in the reflection. "I fell. Hit my face hard."
A beat of silence.
We both knew that wasn't the kind of bruise you got from falling. The shape of it, the depth of the color — that was something deliberate. Something with a hand behind it.
She didn't push.
She picked up the concealer instead and worked it gently over the bruise until it disappeared. A soft brush of color on my cheeks. A peach gloss pressed lightly to my lips.
She stepped back and assessed her work. "All done." A small almost-smile crossed her face. "We should go before Mrs. Holt has something to say about it."
"Who is Mrs. Holt?"
"Chef and Head of staff." Petra's almost-smile became something warmer. "She was His Highness's nanny when he was small. He still gets an earful from her when he skips meals."
I blinked. "Truly?"
"Truly." She moved to the door. "Even princes are not immune to Mrs. Holt."
I followed her out thinking that was the first genuinely amusing thing I'd heard since arriving here.
The dining room was long and quiet.
A dark table that could seat twenty sat mostly empty. Candles burned at the center. The kind of room that was designed for important meals and said very little about warmth.
Ares was already seated at the head of the table.
He didn't look up when I came in. A staff member showed me to my seat — not beside him, several places down, which suited me perfectly — and dinner began without ceremony or conversation.
The food was extraordinary. I ate carefully and tried not to show how long it had been since I'd had a meal that tasted like someone had actually cared about making it.
"Leave us."
Ares' voice cut through the quiet. The staff moved out efficiently and the doors closed and then it was just the two of us and the soft sound of cutlery against fine china.
The silence stretched.
He cleared his throat.
I looked up.
"I had your background reviewed," he said without preamble. "Your formal education stopped at secondary school." His eyes were steady on mine. "Why."
Not a question. A demand dressed as one.
Something in me — the same something that had kept me alive in my father's house by knowing exactly when to be quiet — told me to answer politely.
I ignored it.
"Why what?" I held his gaze. "If you reviewed my background you already know why."
The temperature in the room dropped three degrees.
His hand came down flat on the table — not a full slam but close enough. The silverware jumped. So did my heart.
And my body betrayed me completely.
I flinched.
It was small. A barely-there tightening of my shoulders, a reflex I'd spent years trying to train out of myself. But he saw it. I watched his eyes catch it and something unreadable moved through them before his expression locked back down.
"You will speak to me with respect. Sinclair."
I steadied my breathing. "It was my father's decision," I said. "My education."
The word father felt strange in my mouth. Wrong. Like calling someone by a title they hadn't earned.
Ares looked at me for a long moment. "Or because you're his bastard child," he said. "A dirty little secret he preferred to keep invisible. That's why he sent you here like discarded trash."
The words landed exactly where he aimed them.
My face moved before I could stop it. Something cracked open behind my eyes — not tears, I refused tears — but the hurt was there and it was real and it crossed my face in the half second before I could put my walls back up.
I looked down at my plate.
"That changes nothing," he continued, his voice losing none of its edge. "Bastard or legitimate — my thoughts about your bloodline doesn't change."
I picked up my fork. "What else do you want to know?"
A pause.
"Have you been f****d?"
I choked.
Not elegantly. Water went down wrong and I pressed my napkin to my mouth and spent an undignified moment trying to recover while Ares watched me without a single change in his expression.
I set the glass down. "I beg your pardon?"
"Have you had s*x before." His voice was completely clinical. "Or are you a virgin."
The audacity of this man to sit across a dinner table and ask me that with the same energy someone might ask about my scheduling preferences.
My chin came up. "Yes."
His eyes didn't move from mine. "Yes you have or yes you haven't."
Heat crawled up the back of my neck and I hated it. "Yes I'm a virgin," I said flatly. "Is that going on the report too?"
Something shifted in his jaw. A brief tension. Gone quickly.
He looked back down at his plate and picked up his fork like that entire exchange had been entirely unremarkable.
"Good," was all he said.
I stared at him.
Good. Like I was an asset he'd just confirmed was undamaged. Like I was inventory.
I turned back to my food and ate in silence and told myself the heat on my face was anger.
Just anger.
Nothing else.
- Writer
