The Outlander Fae and the Tattered Wolf Prince

As Flattered As You'd Like

I don’t expect to see the others until dinnertime, but I end up seeing Jesse again only a few, short hours later.

A few, short hours was as long as I could make it in that cottage without growing utterly stir-crazy. My cook was already working on dinner despite it being hours away, and my poor housemaid didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; she just kept bustling around with a feather duster. I wished I could speak to them and tell them to take a load off, but, knowing that I couldn’t, I left the house, instead, and headed for the stables to visit Apollo.

Which is how Jesse and I ended up running into each other.

He glances cautiously around for any sign of the stable hands when he sees me, then relaxes when he seems to deduce that they’re out. “We should speak in Signa, to be safe,” he warns me as I approach him. He’s wrapping his own horse’s legs, I note with a hint of pleasure—the same way I wrapped Apollo’s.

“Sure,” I say easily, taking a seat on the tack truck near him.

“What are you doing here? Sick of your fancy cottage already?”

“Easy, Symone,” I tease, which earns a laugh out of him. “And yes, honestly—there’s nothing to do there, and the cook and maid make me nervous. Is there any way I can politely decline having them around?”

“Not without raising too many eyebrows.” He looks sympathetic. “You said you didn’t have slaves where you’re from. You didn’t have servants, either?”

I think of my father, and of the dozens of house staff he kept on hand at that ridiculous mansion in Buffalo. Even Hunter kept a maid and cook. “I guess you could say we had them,” I admit glumly. “But I never wanted them.”

He finishes the final wrap on his horse’s leg, then takes a seat next to me. “You seem quite determined to take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” I laugh weakly. “Guess I picked the wrong world for that, huh?”

“Perhaps.” He eyes me thoughtfully. “But what’s so scary about accepting help?”

I hold his gorgeous, blue-gray gaze for as long as I can stand before breaking eye contact and rising to my feet. I turn away from him entirely, stepping over to Apollo’s stall before asking him a new question: “Can all Shifters talk to animals?”

I hear him stand up, too, though I don’t turn back toward him. I don’t want him to see my blush. I don’t want him to know why it’s so hard for me to accept help. “No,” he says as he steps toward me. “It’s a… rarer gift.”

Somehow, I had guessed as much. “Can you tell me what he told you?”

 He comes to a stop next to me, though his eyes are on Apollo. “He said you aren’t like other people. That your heart is much bigger, and your soul is much braver.”

I’m overwhelmed with the urge to burst into Apollo’s stall, throw my arms around his neck, and cry, but I do my best to maintain my composure. “Is that all he said?”

It’s been bothering me since I saw Jesse whispering to him. I tell Apollo everything; he’s the only therapist I’ve ever known. If he wanted to, he could have told Jesse everything.

“He said that you were hurt in your world,” Jesse says softly, turning to look at me. “That you were broken. And that he hoped this place would mend you.”

This time, I don’t maintain composure—at least, not entirely. I can’t hold back the tears.

I want to hate Apollo for telling Jesse that, but I don’t. I can’t.

“How can it?” I whisper to Jesse. “I can’t even openly speak your language. I don’t belong here.”

He lifts a hand to my cheek to gently wipe away my tears with his thumb. For the first time, I don’t flinch at all.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

- - - - -

When I return from the stables, I find my housemaid rifling about my closet, hanging and folding various items of clothing. When she sees me, she smiles widely and gestures to a pretty, blue frock that looks to be somewhat appropriate for a dinner party. “You like?” she asks eagerly in Shiftran.

I smile politely and nod, which causes her whole face to light up. She grabs my arm eagerly and guides me to the bathroom, where she has apparently drawn me a bath. The steam implies that it’s still hot from whenever she drew it.

I smile gratefully and wait for her to leave the bathroom, but she doesn’t; instead, she proceeds to undress me then and there. I consider stopping her, but decide against it; after all, I’m very much in need of a bath at this point.

She shrieks when she sees my stomach, which is even more badly bruised than my face. She rushes off to get some sort of medicine, and I settle into my bath, closing my eyes and just… floating.

When all is said and done, my sweet housemaid has not only bathed me, but also given me oils and medicine for the pain, brushed and styled my hair into some sort of braided updo, and helped me get into the evening dress—“help” being a generous term for the extreme pain she put me through as she yanked my corset far tighter than it was yesterday.

“What is your name?” I ask her in Old Vitalian, hoping she might know enough of the language to answer me. I really hate to keep thinking of her as “my housemaid.”

To my surprise, she seems to have no trouble deciphering what I said. I hope she isn’t fluid in the language; having a translator available probably wouldn’t be smart, given my underdeveloped backstory. “Mariana, Mistress. Mariana Bingley.”

I like her, I decide then, despite her overzealous nature. If I truly have to employ a maid, I should at least do my best to be decent to her. Still, when the knock sounds on the door, my heart pounds with excitement at seeing my new friends again.

Okay, mainly at seeing Jesse again. 

I freeze in my tracks when I see him. He’s foregone the tattered soldier’s clothes in favor of a dapper, red velvet waistcoat, distractingly snug, black trousers, a smart, white cravat (that's sort of like an ascot, if you were wondering), and a gentlemanly hat. He’s even washed that matted, oily hair of his.

He’s somehow gone from looking like a rugged, sexy brigand to a clean-cut, refined prince, and frankly, I’m not sure which look I like more. But both of them certainly make me squirm with a kind of pleasure I’m not remotely used to or comfortable with.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Symone tells me as she shoves her way past me and Jesse, who both seem to be incapable of moving. “He had to clean up, anyway, for tomorrow’s feast. You’ll see him like this once in a blue moon.”

Ollie and Briggs step inside, too, but Jesse doesn’t. He glances behind me at Symone with an annoyed expression, then murmurs softly to me, “You can be as flattered as you’d like, Echo. And you look absolutely breathtaking.”

I actively have to fight back the shudder of pleasure that shoots through me at that, but thankfully I don’t have to come up with a witty response before he continues, “I’m afraid we have a problem.”