No lingering at the door like 20th-century teenagers tonight.
“Good night,” I say quickly before disappearing into the room and crawling straight into bed. There I concentrate on falling asleep, but I’m not going to lie, it takes a while.
The next morning, I set a plate of steak piled high, and a carton’s worth of eggs in front of him. Just like I planned.
His delighted smile makes my wolf whinny inside of me, as I sit down across from him with a steak of my own.
Stop it. Bad girl, I say as I make a big show of trying to cut up my steak with a butter knife.
“That looks impossible,” Damianos says after a few seconds of watching me, just like I was hoping he would.
“I mean, I’m going to have to make do. I couldn’t find anything sharper in the silverware drawer.”
Damianos frowns. Tilts his head, then rises from his seat.
I watch him pull open a few cabinets. Then he disappears from eyesight and the next sounds I hear are of the doors beneath the island being pulled open.
When he rises again, it’s too plunk a butcher block filled with knives down on the island counter. “Colby did not do a very good job of following my instructions to hide these.”
I seize on Colby to keep my mate bond from relaying my excitement. “He probably didn’t think you’d ever let me out of my room,” I say, trying as hard as I can to sound like myself. Not somebody plotting something.
He pulls two small steak knives from the butcher block’s lower slots. Then he comes to sit down across from me with them. There’s a tension in the air between us, and I can’t tell if it’s coming from me or him.
Probably me. Stay cool, you’ve got to stay cool, I warn my wolf.
He holds up the steak knife, blade down. But instead of extending it to me, he says, “That chapter of our story is over now. You understand that I only wish to revere you for my remaining days upon this planet, and you have no plans to ruin this peace between us, correct?”
I almost quickly lie and agree yes. Tell him we’re all kumbaya now, no harm, no foul, just to get him to trust me. But the real Ola would never do that, and I can’t go too far with the Uncle Kyle act. I’m pretending I’ve warmed up to him, not gotten a total lobotomy. So I take the risk…
“It’s kind of hard to feel revered with this collar around my neck,” I answer, holding his glowing gaze. “You say you no longer think of me as a dog, that you want some kind of future together for us, but here I am, still your prisoner.”
He holds my eyes for a second or two, but then dips his huge head, looking away from me.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I say into his silence.
Then I reach across the table and pluck the knife out of his hand. “C’mon, let’s just eat before the food turns cold.”
I don’t try to stab him. Not that week. Or the next. I still don’t have access to my internal bioclock, but time…I’m definitely biding it.
I act like I believe he’s a changed dragon. I laugh and talk with him over meals like I totally don’t see that butcher block of knives he left out on the island counter. And I pretend that I’m perfectly happy with the new routine he’s established.
Bath in the morning, breakfast made by me, several laps around the house, followed by a series of squat exercises that Damianos says I’ll need for when it comes time to “lay our hatchling.” (I know from watching Fensa’s C-section that there won’t be any actual eggshells involved, but it still skeeves me out every time he refers to it that way).
After exercising, we have lunch, followed by a nap for me. Then comes an early dinner. Tons of meat for Damianos and a little meat and whatever carbs I want for me. And lastly, we end the evening with either an action film or a historical documentary.
You’d think I’d be going out of my mind after a month of this. My days as a Queen-in-training used to be non-stop, and the first week the feeling that I should be working hangs over me. But a few weeks into the short pregnancy, making breakfast, lunch, and dinner, really begins to take it out of me. Even with my afternoon nap, Damianos often has to wake me because I’ve fallen asleep in front of the television and it’s time to go upstairs.
“You must allow me to god speak another manservant,” he says when we stop outside my door, one such night. “Much of your energy will go to growing the baby over the next two moons, and I do not wish for you to overtire yourself.”