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“Would you like to freshen up in the shower?” he says. “I have several dresses for you to try on for the dinner tonight.”
“There’s a dinner tonight?”
“There’s one every night, but yes, this one is a little more special than most. The pack is excited to meet you in an official capacity.”
I groan and sink down in the bed. I don’t much feel like being met in an official capacity. I liked leading the Runaways. There was no pressure there. The ones who looked up to me came from even more desperate circumstances than I am. Or at least, just as bad.
The Regent pack are not from those backgrounds. The wolves who grow up in this pack are funded. They go to good schools; they are raised well. They share in the proceeds of the profits from all of Regent’s proceeds. Essentially, everything I am trying to build for the Runaways has already been built here generationally.
The covers are removed from me forcibly, which is very annoying.
“Where is Rex?”
“The alpha is in a meeting,” Fescue says. “He will be here to dress shortly, but I suspect you will take longer to prepare. Please go shower. You are still scuffed. There are fresh sets of underwear in your size in the bathroom, and towels.”
I go and do as I am told. I do feel scuffed, as Fescue puts it.
I’m going to hold my own tonight, I decide.
No matter how unsuitable I feel on the inside, I know once I get my hair done and my makeup on, I’ll be untouchable.
When I get out of the shower, I dress in underwear, pat my hair dry, and pad out to the bathroom where the dresses were.
Fescue is still here.
I thought he’d be gone by now. I assumed he was not going to stand around and dress me up like a Barbie doll. Apparently that is precisely what he intends to do.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you dressed.”
“I know how to dress myself.”
Fescue gives me a dour look. “You know how to don basic clothing,” he says. “I do not think you truly know how to dress, all respect.”
“I run a fashion line, my guy.”
“Indeed,” he says. “A crisp white dress might suit you well. I’ve booked a hairdresser. She will have the arduous task of taming that color into something more suitable.”
“Suitable for what?”
“To be seen in public, for starters,” he deadpans.
I scowl, offended. “I don’t need to stand here and listen to this. I like my hair. I like my clothes.”
“Your clothes were covered in blood when you came in,” he says. “And I hear tell you ruined a bespoke shirt by likewise shedding sanguine essence.”
“Sanguine essence? Who talks like that?”
“Someone who has read a book,” he says.
I am losing this round of verbal fencing, and he is not even trying.
“Just give me the little black dress and leave me alone,” I tell him.
Fescue looks surprised. “A good, conservative choice,” he says. “Classic and timeless. Perhaps you are not a complete lost cause.”
“Get out or I’ll ask for something in purple and rip a slit up the side and go to dinner looking like I just escaped from an asylum,” I threaten him.
