She Serves Me

The formal dining room was built to make people feel small.

The table ran almost the length of the room, set with silver, crystal, and white roses. Candles burned in tall silver holders. Above it all, three chandeliers glittered like frozen stars.

Nightreach sat on one side. The Aurexians sat on the other.

And I stood behind Fenris’s chair, in my crisp blue skirt, holding a bottle of wine I’d fetched from the cellar three hours earlier.

Across the table, Dax sat at Fenris’s right. Every time I glanced up, he wasn’t looking at me. Very carefully not looking at me, and somehow that felt worse.

“Wine,” Fenris said quietly, without turning.

I poured. Dark red, exactly to the line. Set the bottle back. Folded my hands.

Across the table, my mother laughed at something Alpha Hale said. She hadn’t looked at me once since stepping out of the car. My father had, once, during the soup. It was the kind of look you gave a stain you couldn’t get out.

“Your home is extraordinary, Alpha Fenris,” my mother was saying. “We’ve always admired the Aurexian estate. And the roses! Are they from your own gardens?”

“Yes,” Fenris said.

That was all. She waited for more. It didn’t come.

She smiled harder.

“And the arrangement,” my father said, clearing his throat. “I trust everything has been satisfactory? With the debt settled, I mean.”

I felt it like a slap. The arrangement. Not our daughter. Not Flora. The arrangement.

Fenris lifted his wine glass and looked at it.

“Satisfactory,” he said.

Down the table, Rhys hid a smile behind his napkin.

The main course came out. Lamb, herbs, potatoes roasted gold. Greta had outdone herself. The staff moved around the table in silence, and Nightreach ate like they hadn’t seen food this good in years. 

I watched Draven pick at his plate. He’d barely eaten. Every few minutes, his eyes drifted up to me, then away again, like he couldn’t help it.

Nyssa noticed.

I saw the moment she did. Her red lips thinned. Her hand tightened on her fork.

Then she smiled, bright and sweet, and set down her glass.

“Alpha Fenris,” she said, loud enough to turn every head at the table. “I hope you won’t think I’m being forward.”

Fenris looked at her. Waited.

“I couldn’t help noticing Flora standing back there all alone.” She tilted her head toward me, eyes sparkling. “Would you mind terribly if she poured for me? It would feel just like home.” A little laugh. “She was always so good at serving.”

A few Nightreach wolves laughed. My mother smiled into her napkin.

The table went quiet.

And every head turned to Fenris.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. My hands stayed folded, knuckles white.

I knew what was coming. I’d known since Orion’s text. He’d say yes. Of course he would. I was a servant in his house, and she was a guest, and that was how the world worked.

I’d pour for her. I’d keep my chin up. I’d survive it.

I’d survived worse.

Fenris set down his wine glass. Slowly. Precisely.

“No,” he said.

The single word dropped into the silence like a blade into wood.

Nyssa’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”

“She serves me.” Fenris didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every candle flame in the room seemed to lean toward him. “No one else at this table.”

Nyssa laughed, a little too high. “I only meant...”

“I know exactly what you meant.” His gray eyes moved from Nyssa to Alpha Hale, then to my parents, one by one. “But she isn’t Nightreach’s to command anymore. You gave her away. Remember?”

Nobody spoke.

Draven had gone pale. Nyssa’s face flushed so red it clashed with her gown. At the end of the table, my mother’s napkin had stopped halfway to her lips.

And behind Fenris’s chair, I stood very, very still, because if I moved, I thought I might cry, and I would rather have died than do that in front of them.

She isn’t Nightreach’s to command anymore.

No one had ever said anything like that about me. No one had ever said anything like that for me.

Rhys leaned back in his chair, swirling his wine, amber eyes glittering. “Well,” he said cheerfully. “This lamb is delicious, isn’t it?”

Dax said nothing at all. But when I finally risked a glance across the table, he was looking at me. Just for a second.

Something in his eyes was almost fierce.

---

Alpha Hale tried to recover over dessert.

He talked about the alliance. About shared borders. About how the hunting had been hard this year and Nightreach would be grateful, so grateful, if the Aurexians considered extending their protection another season.

Fenris let him talk for a long time.

Then he said, “You could have paid your debt.”

Hale stopped mid-sentence.

“I went through your accounts,” Fenris said calmly, cutting into his tart. “Your eastern timber rights would have covered it in full. Not easily. But fully.” He took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. “You chose not to sell them.”

Hale’s smile had frozen. “Alpha, the timber is our future.”

“So I gathered.” Fenris turned his gaze, slow and deliberate, to the end of the table. To my parents. “And your daughter offered herself before anyone asked. No, I’m mistaken. You offered her.”

My mother’s face went white beneath her pearls.

“I suppose,” Fenris said, “you valued the trees more.”

The silence was deafening.

Down the table, Nightreach wolves were staring at my parents now. Not at me. At them. Whispering. I watched my father’s ears turn red. I watched my mother look down at her plate, her hands trembling for the first time in my life.

I’d waited twenty years to see that.

I’d thought it would feel better.

It felt like something cracking open in my chest. Not breaking. Opening.

---

Dinner ended earlier than I thought it would.

Nightreach didn’t stay for coffee. They filed back toward the front hall in tense, angry silence, Nyssa stalking ahead with her chin in the air, my parents walking stiffly behind Hale like they were being marched somewhere.

I slipped into the side hallway to clear the empty glasses. Away from all of them. I just needed one minute to breathe.

“Flora.”

I turned.

Draven stood at the end of the hallway. Alone. His tie was loose. He looked tired and confused and young.

“What do you want?”

“I just...” He ran a hand through his hair. “Are you okay? Here? Are they treating you all right?”

“Why do you care?”

He stepped closer. “You look different. You look…” He swallowed. “You look beautiful, Flora.”

I stared at him.

A week ago, those words would have meant everything. I’d have replayed them for months.

Now they sounded like nothing at all.

“Go back to your Luna, Draven.”

“Flora, wait.” He reached for my arm.

His fingers never touched me.

“Touch her,” said a voice behind him, low and rough and deadly calm, “and lose the hand.”

Draven froze.

Dax stood at the other end of the hallway, sleeves shoved back up to his elbows, tattooed arms loose at his sides. His eyes were pure gold.

And the look on his face said he wasn’t joking.