Chapter 34: The Morning After

The morning felt different.

Olivia could not explain it exactly. The corridor looked the same. The palace smelled the same. The water in the cauldron was the same temperature it always was at this hour.

But everything felt different.

“Stay,” " he had said. And she had said yes.

She stood outside his chamber door with the correspondence in her hands and took one quiet breath before knocking.

"Come in."

She entered. Set the letters on the left side of the desk in the correct order. Turned toward the bathroom to check the bath she had drawn twenty minutes ago.

"The water will be cold," Josh said without looking up.

"I drew it only twenty minutes ago, your majesty."

"I said it will be cold."

Olivia pressed her lips together and said nothing. She went to the bathroom and tested the water with her wrist. It was perfectly warm. She came back to the doorway.

"It is not cold, your majesty."

Josh looked up at her then. Something moved across his face.

"I will be the judge of that," he said.

He was impossible. He had always been impossible. Last night had apparently changed nothing about that.

Good, her wolf said, which was unhelpful.

She waited outside the bathroom while he bathed. When he called her in to dress his hair she came and stood behind him at the vanity table and began her work in silence.

She could see his face in the mirror. He was looking at hers.

The moment she noticed, he looked away.

She bit the inside of her cheek and focused on his hair.

"Too tight," he said.

She loosened it.

"Now it is too loose."

She redid it.

He said nothing the third time, which meant it was acceptable. She set the brace and stepped back.

Their eyes met in the mirror again. Just for a second. Then he stood up and reached for his coat and the moment was gone.

"Breakfast at the dining table," he said. "I have guests arriving this morning."

"Yes, your majesty."

++++

The guests arrived before the breakfast plates had been cleared.

There were four of them. Noble she-wolves from two of the neighbouring packs, escorted by their fathers and brothers who were shown immediately into Josh's council room. The women were left to wait in the main hall.

Olivia saw them as she came down the corridor with a fresh tray.

They were exactly what she had always imagined noble women looked like. Tall. Beautifully dressed. Hair arranged in elaborate styles that must have taken hours. They wore the kind of jewellery that was not decorative, it was a statement.

One of them stood slightly apart from the others. She was the most striking of the four. Dark hair, sharp eyes, a jaw that could have been carved. She carried herself the way people carried themselves when they had never once been told they were not enough.

She noticed Olivia at the same moment Olivia noticed her.

Her eyes went from the tray, to the uniform, to Olivia's face. The kind of look that assessed and dismissed in the same second.

Olivia kept walking.

"You there."

She stopped.

She turned.

The dark-haired woman was looking at her with a pleasant smile that did not reach her eyes at all.

"You are the Alpha's maid, yes?"

"Yes, my Lady."

"Hmm." She tilted her head. "How interesting that he brought you all the way from…" she paused, "...wherever it is you came from. You do not look like you are from around here."

"I am not, my Lady."

"No." The woman's smile did not waver. "You do not quite look like you belong here either, if I am honest." She glanced at the other women, who were watching with the quiet attention of people who knew something entertaining was happening. "But I suppose the Alpha has always had peculiar taste in his household arrangements."

The hall was very quiet.

Olivia looked at the woman.

Two weeks ago she would have bowed her head and apologised and walked away quickly and cried about it later in her small room where no one could hear.

Something stirred in her chest.

Warm. Low. Certain.

Her wolf.

"Thank you for your observation, my Lady," Olivia said. Her voice came out very steady. "Will there be anything else?"

The woman blinked. She had clearly expected something different. Tears, perhaps. Or stammering. Or the immediate retreat of someone who knew her place.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I asked if there would be anything else," Olivia said. "I have duties to attend to."

The silence stretched.

The dark-haired woman's pleasant smile had gone somewhere else entirely. Her eyes had gone sharp and cold and she opened her mouth to say something that Olivia suspected was going to be significantly less polite than everything before it.

"Lady Seraphine."

Josh's voice came from the far end of the corridor.

Every head turned.

He was standing at the entrance to the hall with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the group of women with the particular expression he wore when he was being polite and did not particularly want to be.

"The council is ready for your fathers," he said. His eyes moved briefly, very briefly to Olivia. Then back to the women. "My staff will show you to the sitting room while you wait."

"Of course, your majesty." Lady Seraphine's voice had turned soft and warm the moment he appeared. She gave a deep and graceful bow. "We are honoured to be received."

"Mmhm," said Josh, which was not exactly a warm response.

He did not look at Olivia again as she walked past him with the tray.

But just as she turned the corner, she heard him say behind her, very clearly and to no one in particular.

"The staff here are under my protection. All of them."

Olivia kept walking.

She was smiling by the time she reached the kitchen.