Defying the Lycan King

"Sally! Table six needs you. Now."

Jessica did not roll her eyes, which she felt deserved some sort of award. It was the thousandth time, give or take, that Tina had called her by the wrong name.

She turned around with the sweetest smile she could manage. "Right away, Tina."

Her hands were already full. Anyone with eyes could see that. But Tina Marlowe, the owner of The Copper Lantern and the shrewdest woman in Orange Grove, was already walking away, purposely ignoring the fact that Jessica’s hands were filled.

Jessica dropped off her drinks, and loaded up a fresh tray for table six.

The men at table six were the usual sort who came in after work—broad shoulders, loud laughs, and the kind of stares that made Jessica’s skin itch. One of them looked her up and down as she set the drinks down, his eyes lingering far too long on places that had nothing to do with her serving skills.

"Four bottles," she said brightly. "Anything else?"

"Depends what’s on the menu, love," one of them said.

His friends laughed like this was the finest joke ever constructed by human beings.

Jessica kept smiling. She had a very good smile for these moments. It was the smile of a woman calculating exactly how many hours of her wages were currently sitting at this table and how quickly Tina would throw her out of the flat above the bar if she lost them.

She set the bottles down one by one.

"Bit slim, isn’t she," another one said, not quietly. "Reckon there’s something under all that apron though."

"Give us a twirl, sweetheart."

She did not give them a twirl. She gave them a lovely, professional nod, gathered her empty tray to her chest like a shield, and turned to leave.

That was when a large hand landed on her backside with a solid smack.

The sting shot straight through her. For a second the whole bar seemed to go quiet inside her head. Then the anger arrived, hot and fast. Jessica spun around and slapped the man across the face before her brain could remind her that this was a terrible idea.

The crack of her palm against his cheek was loud enough to turn a few heads.

The man’s expression cycled through shock, pain, and then a very dangerous kind of fury, all in the space of about three seconds. He shoved back his chair and stood.

"You little—" He was red now, redder than a tomato.

"Did you just hit me?"

"Did you just touch me?" Jessica shot back, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth. "Because I’d hate for either of us to be confused about the order of events."

"Tina!" the man roared. "TINA!"

Tina appeared like a storm cloud, face tight with pure fury.

"What in God’s name is happening here?"

"Your girl slapped me!"

"Sadie," she said, in that low, tight voice she used when she was about to be very reasonable and very cruel at the same time. "What have I told you about the customers? These men spend good money in my bar. You do not put your hands on a paying customer, do you hear me?"

Jessica’s hands curled into fists at her sides. The tears were already pushing up behind her eyes, and that made her angrier than anything else.

"You do not hit customers! You apologise right now!"

Jessica stared at her. "He grabbed me, Tina."

"I don’t care what he did! You do not react like that in my establishment!" Tina jabbed a finger toward the door. "One more stunt like this and you are out on the street, do you hear me, Sammy? Out. On. The street."

"My name is Sidonie," she said, voice shaking but clear. "Not Sally, Sadie, Sandra or Sammy!"

She did not wait for Tina’s answer. She stormed past the counter, blinking hard so the tears would not fall in front of everyone. Behind her she could hear Tina trying to calm the furious men, promising free drinks, apologising as if Jessica had been the one in the wrong.

Odelia, her colleague was already waiting behind the counter, eyes full of worry. She reached out and caught Jessica’s arm the moment she came close.

"Hey. Breathe. It’s not worth it."

Jessica leaned against the shelves, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. "He grabbed me, Odelia. I’m supposed to just smile and take it?"

"I know." Odelia’s voice was low and steady. "But this place... Tina will always choose the money. You know that."

Jessica sniffed and looked away.

"Come to Aethelwulf with me," Odelia said.

"Odelia."

"I’m serious. My cousin says there’s work everywhere. Proper work. Offices, hotels, shops that don’t smell of old beer. People there get paid in a week what Tina pays you in a month."

Jessica wiped at her eye with her sleeve and said nothing, which Odelia correctly interpreted as a crack in the armour.

"The city has actual opportunities. Actual salaries. Actual employers who know what their staff are called."

"The name of that city sounds completely made up," Jessica muttered.

"You’ve said that every time I mention it."

"Because it still sounds made up every time you mention it."

Odelia pressed on, undeterred. "You’re talented and you’re smart and you are absolutely wasted serving drinks to men who think a bar stool gives them a license to be disgusting."

Jessica stared down at her hands. It was not the first time she had thought about leaving Orange Grove. It was becoming less and less possible to think of reasons to stay.

The trouble was, she did not know anywhere except Orange Grove.

She had woken up in a room above this bar three years ago with a bandaged head, a body full of injuries nobody could explain, and absolutely nothing in her memory. No parents. No town. No name. Tina and Seb had told her the story often enough: an orphan girl whose parents had died when she was small, taken in out of the goodness of Tina’s own heart.

Jessica had never quite been able to believe Tina was ever kind to anyone else, except to herself. But Seb had been kind. Seb had been more than kind. Seb had sat with her through the worst of those first months.

He cooked for her on her days off, drove her anywhere she needed to go without complaint, and looked at her in a way that she had never quite known how to respond to, and you did not simply walk out on a debt like that because a man had slapped your backside.

And Seb hated the very mention of Aethelwulf. Every single time she brought it up, his face changed.

It’s a messed up place, Sid. Trust me. Nothing good happens there.

"Seb would never forgive me," she said quietly.

"He’d survive it," Odelia said. "That’s different."

The bar door banged open, and Sebastian Marlowe walked in out of the cold, still in his work jacket, dark hair damp from the rain, and did not so much as glance at the four large men currently shouting at his mother.

He was, objectively, a good-looking man. Dark-haired, broad-shouldered, the kind of tall that made him slightly out of scale with the rest of the men in Orange Grove. He had the easy, unhurried way of moving that came from being comfortable in your own body. Several women at the bar registered his entrance and adjusted their posture accordingly.

He came straight round the back of the counter, and stopped when he saw Jessica’s red eyes and Odelia’s hand still on her arm.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice quiet as he stepped behind the counter.

"Nothing," Jessica said.

"One of them, the brute in a brown hat put his hand on her," Odelia said at the exact same moment. "She slapped him. Tina’s more worried about losing the sale than about what he did."

Something cold settled over Sebastine’s face.

"Seb, don’t—" Jessica started.

He was already gone.

He crossed that bar in about four strides and reached into the middle of table six, closed his fist around the collar of the man wearing a red hat, and dragged him out of his chair like he was pulling a weed.

What followed was not something Tina would be able to charge to a damages bill, because it happened too fast. The first punch dropped the man. The second one was not necessary at all, and neither was the third, or the fourth, and every other one that followed.

"SEBASTIAN!" Tina shrieked, hauling at her son’s shoulder with both hands and getting absolutely nowhere. "That is a paying customer!"

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