Chapter 251 Let Them Talk
ADRIANA
It hit me like cold water.
The dinner party. The invitations we’d sent out weeks ago as a trap to collect the Alphas’ seals. I had completely forgotten that those invitations existed, that they’d gone out with a date attached, that the date was tomorrow.
Hazel came through my office door with the expression she reserved for things that required immediate damage control.
“We have a problem.”
“The party,” I said.
“We have one day.” She set her tablet on the desk and pulled up the guest list. “One day, Adriana. For a formal event with every Alpha and nobleman on the invitation list. What were we thinking when we set this date?”
“We were thinking we’d have the seal matched by now and cancel it quietly.” I stood up. “We can’t cancel it. If we cancel it now, whoever we’re looking for will know something shifted. They’ll start covering their tracks.” I picked up my phone. “We’re doing it. One day. Let’s figure out what we need.”
What followed was the kind of organized chaos that I hadn’t experienced since the early days of running the household, before things had settled into systems and I’d learned which staff could be trusted with which responsibilities.
I went to the kitchen first and found the head chef already halfway through his evening prep, looking up from his workstation with the cautious expression of someone who sensed an unwelcome request approaching.
I gave him the full picture.
He stared at me for a long moment. Then he exhaled through his nose, turned to his team, and started issuing instructions in rapid succession. I left before he could find a way to tell me it was impossible.
The decorating team was mobilized within the hour. I pulled three guards off rotation to assist with furniture arrangement and table setup, which the head of security disapproved of and I overrode.
Hazel contacted a catering firm she’d used before who confirmed they could have additional staff and prepared appetizers on site by morning. I walked through the main hall and the reception rooms marking what needed to move and what needed to be added, and by the time I finished that circuit, the first decorating crew was already halfway through the entrance hall.
“The cake,” I said, catching Hazel on her way past with a clipboard.
“Baker confirmed. Here by ten tomorrow morning.” She didn’t slow down.
“Dresses—”
“There’s no time for a designer.” She did stop then, turning to look at me. “Pick something from what you have. You have an entire wardrobe of things you’ve never worn.”
“The Moonlight Celebration dress,” I said. “I never got to wear it.”
Something crossed her face, relief that I wasn’t about to fight her on this. “Perfect. I’ll pull it tonight.”
We worked until midnight. I lost track of the individual tasks and started operating on momentum alone. moving from one room to the next, checking things off, redirecting people, solving the small fires that kept igniting at the edges of the operation. By the time the last garland was fixed and the last table runner was smoothed into place, the house looked like it had been prepared for a week rather than assembled in an afternoon.
I sat down in a chair in the corner of the main hall and immediately understood why the chair was comfortable.
“Go to bed,” Hazel said, appearing from somewhere with two glasses of water and handing me one.
“I just need five minutes.”
“You’ve been saying that since nine o’clock.” She sat across from me. “The kitchen is running. The hall is done. The caterers are briefed. Everything that can be done tonight is done. Go upstairs.”
“The seating arrangements—”
“Done.”
“The welcome drinks—”
“Handled.” She leaned forward. “Adriana. Go to bed. You cannot receive a hall full of Alphas tomorrow looking like you’ve been awake for thirty hours.”
She was right. I knew she was right. I closed my eyes for what I intended to be a moment.
I woke up in the same chair.
The light in the hall had shifted completely, morning light coming through the high windows, the sound of activity already underway in the kitchen corridor. My neck had opinions about the angle I’d slept at, loud opinions, all of them painful.
Hazel was already moving through the hall with the caterers when she saw me sit up.
“I told you,” she said.
“I heard you.” I pressed my hand against the side of my neck and stood carefully. “How much is done?”
“Most of the food. The flowers arrived twenty minutes ago. The cake comes in an hour.” She handed me a glass of water that was already waiting on the table beside the chair, which meant she’d expected exactly this scenario. “Go upstairs. Take a bath, sleep for two hours, eat something. The makeup artist is coming at three.”
“I can’t sleep again—”
“Two hours. The house is running without you for two hours. I promise.” She pointed toward the stairs. “Go.”
I went.
The bath helped. The sleep helped more. When Hazel came to wake me, the neck pain had reduced from excruciating to manageable and I felt approximately like a person again.
The makeup artist arrived with the focused efficiency of someone given a specific brief and a tight window, and I sat still and let her work while Hazel stood in the doorway of the dressing room with the Moonlight Celebration dress on its hanger — deep emerald, structured, the kind of thing that had been made for exactly this kind of occasion.
“You look like you’ve been planning this for weeks,” Hazel said, watching the artist work.
“I have,” I said. “Just not this specific week.”
She almost smiled.
“They’re going to talk about Damon tonight,” I said. “I know they’ve heard. News like that travels faster than anything we send by official channel.”
“Probably.”
“Good.” I looked at my reflection — the dress, the hair being arranged above it, the face being made into something that said Queen with complete authority. “Let them talk. It saves me the trouble of bringing it up myself.”