Reign of a King (Kingdom Duet 1)

It takes me a good ten minutes to make myself appear somewhat presentable.

When I go back, Kenza has already found her phone. She jokingly tells me she thought I was the one lost.

If only she knew how true that statement is.

We sit in tables of five for dinner. The dick, Layla, puts me with Jonathan, Ethan, Elsa, and Agnus. And Jonathan is right beside me.

“What?” Layla said when I almost strangled her. “I can’t deny requests made by those who write large cheques. Think of the cause, mate.”

She’s now waving at me from her table, where she’s seated with her parents and two old ladies from their community. Layla’s doctor brother is in Africa, her two British Army brothers are captains in Afghanistan, and her fourth brother couldn’t make it tonight.

While she gets to sit in a familial atmosphere, I’m stuck here. To say the atmosphere is tense at my table would be like saying my life is normal.

It doesn’t help that — true to Jonathan’s words — I can’t sit straight. My arse stings and the lack of underwear makes the friction at my core unbearable.

Usually, after one of Jonathan’s sessions, I sleep on my side or on my stomach until the burn goes away. Not now.

Agnus focuses on his mobile phone, seeming oblivious to the war of gazes going on between Ethan and Jonathan. If this were a few centuries ago, they would’ve gotten their swords out and gone at it right here, right now.

Elsa seems as bothered by the tension as I am. She digs into the couscous Kenza cooked and plasters on a smile. “This is so delicious. How do they make it?”

“Kenza says it’s a family secret. She won’t give away her special recipe.” I pick up my spoon and pretend I’m a functioning human and that Jonathan isn’t sitting beside me like a gloomy shadow straight out of a horror film.

“Do you like cooking?” Elsa asks me.

“Not really,” I tense as I say the words.

Jonathan leans over to whisper so only I can hear him, “One of the habits you gave up for your rebirth?”

“Shut up,” I hiss, then smile at Elsa.

Ethan takes a spoonful of the food and chews leisurely. “Alicia used to love these types of exotic dishes, too. Didn’t she, Jonathan?”

My tyrant remains unaffected, as if he were expecting the blow.

It’s Elsa who gasps, “Dad!”

“Was he supposed to ignore the elephant in the room?” Agnus speaks for the first time in the last hour, but he still doesn’t lift his head up from his screen.

Elsa glares at him from across the table like she wants to jump or punch him. Or both.

“It’s okay,” I try to calm the atmosphere. “I know I look so much like her.”

Ethan continues chewing, his attention never straying from Jonathan. “Is that why? You do know she’s not her, right?”

My grip tightens around the spoon as Ethan’s hostility rolls off my skin. It’s not that he’s attacking me directly. He’s saying those words to provoke Jonathan, and yet, I’m the one who’s stung by them with no warning.

But why?

I’m not Alicia. I don’t want to be Alicia.

Why can’t everyone stop comparing me to her? Or is this perhaps the karma I have to endure for abandoning Aiden when he was a young boy?

I was only sixteen at the time. I didn’t understand anything past the need to run, to shed my armour, and get the fuck out of Clarissa Griffin’s skin.

If I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d be there for Aiden. However, that means being in Jonathan’s entourage from such a young age. So thinking about it again…no, thanks.

I can barely handle him now. If at all.