Chapter 8
Piper
The dining room was much like the one back at the house. The table filling the middle of the room was longer than ours and held more people, but it was not any less creepy. There were no utensils or plates on the table, which made me more nervous than I already was.
Marcus sat to the right of Boris with one empty seat between them. Wynn was next to Marcus, looking lazily about the room. Rayne pouted where he sat by Wynn, with Allister taking up the furthermost seat at the end. On the other side, next to Allister, sat his brother and then Theresa, followed by Valentine with one empty seat between him and Boris.
Everyone knew. If it wasn't written all over my face, then the scent of what Antoine and I just did was still on both of us. It was clear from the way the occupants of the dining room stiffened and sniffed the air. There was a mixture of feelings that came along with it. Amusement, arousal, and anger. And that was just from my masters.
Theresa didn't seem bothered one way or the other, and was too busy giving Wynn moon eyes to care about me. Boris, who sat at the head of the table but who had stood for my arrival, had a delighted smirk on his lips. I wasn't sure what that was about, but I didn't care for it either. Anything that made that monster happy was something I wanted nothing to do with.
Then there was Valentine.
It was stupid of me to think he wouldn't show up. That perhaps he would be off gallivanting and terrorizing someone else while I was here. But there he was, sitting to the right of Boris with one seat between them. A look around the table gave me a bad feeling about that spot. The only other one was on the left side of Boris, and I had a nagging notion that it wasn't for me.
Surprisingly, the only person not at the table was Darren.
As if reading my mind, Antoine murmured, "Darren will be dining with the staff tonight."
My mouth puckered into an ‘O’ shape and I stopped walking, forcing Antoine to halt as well or drag me. "Well, then, I should join him. I wouldn't want him to get lonely."
"Nonsense," Boris called out with a wave of his hand. "A lovely creature such as yourself should never dine with the rabble. Besides, you got all dressed up and I wouldn't want you to waste such a lovely dress. Our Antoine seems to have already enjoyed it. It wouldn't be fair to rob the rest of us the chance to gaze upon your beauty."
I'd have blushed had the words not come from a grotesque monstrous being, whose only interest in me was torturing his underlings. Forcing a demure expression on my face, I gave a slight nod of my head. "Thank you for your compliments."
"Well," Boris chuckled, a sound that made my skin crawl, "they aren't free." My head jerked up at the words. "Please, come sit with me." He gestured to the chair between him and Valentine. Bile rose in my throat as Antoine squeezed my arm in warning.
With a tight nod, I let Antoine guide me around the dining table and to the seat Valentine had hurried to pull back for me. I tried to ignore him, but he was insistent, taking my hand in his as he pressed his lips to my knuckles.
"You are as beautiful as I remembered, Miss Billings," Valentine purred, stroking my hand with his fingers as I took my seat.
Antoine took my hand from Valentine's grasp with a vicious flash of fangs. "Durand. Piper is now a Durand and you will treat her as such."
Not wanting to question Antoine's words in front of our enemies, I watched their exchange with bated breath. Valentine's brows shot up to his hairline and a small smile curled over his lips. But he didn't seem enraged, as I had thought he'd be. If anything, he seemed...pleased.
"My mistake. I had heard you had gained another human servant, but I hadn't been sure if it was true or if it was the same one I had tried to buy off of you recently." There was a bite to Valentine's words that made me want to be far, far away from him. When those brown eyes locked on my form, I couldn't repress a shiver. "If I'd known, I'd have offered more."
"She's not property you can just buy, you scum sucking, bottom feeder." Rayne shoved his seat back and slammed his hands on the table, only seconds away from crawling across it to attack Valentine.
Valentine laughed at Rayne, but turned his gaze to Antoine. "I thought you had better control of your household. Perhaps I was mistaken. Again." Those eyes, full of barely contained fury, whipped back over to me.
Aren't I lucky?
Antoine didn't rise to the bait. Adjusting his coat, Antoine walked smoothly around the room to his seat on the right side of Boris. Something that I had an inkling wasn't done on accident. Taking his seat, Antoine lounged back in his chair as if he didn't have any care in the world. But the hardness to his voice when he spoke told a different story. "Rayne is young. I cannot be held responsible for the heightened emotions of a vampling such as himself. Especially, not one who has fallen so deeply in love with my servant."
I swallowed my gasp, my eyes darting to Rayne, who didn't bother denying it. His fists were clenched on the table and if his jaw got any tighter, he'd break it. Those amber eyes though, when they fell to my face and softened, I knew it was true.
Rayne loved me.
A clap of hands to my right, and a low chuckle followed by a dreamy sigh, jerked all of our attention to the head of the table. Boris grinned from ear to ear as he took in the scene before him. "Ah, young love. Is there anything so sweet? So exciting? I remember the first time I fell in love. Of course, I was human then, but still, there's really nothing quite like it. Don't you think, Theresa?"
Theresa pulled her eyes away from Wynn long enough to meet her master's gaze. With a small smile and a nod, Theresa murmured, "Of course, master. The greatest of things." My other masters—Wynn, Marcus, Allister, and Drake—were silent in their observation of the events around them. Either they were better at pretending to keep it together than I was, or they really weren't affected. A quick glance to the fork in Drake's hand, which had been bent in half, made me bet on the former.
"And what about you, my dear?"
My head swiveled back to Boris. "What?"
Boris gave me a large, razor-sharp grin before gesturing to Rayne. "Do you return the young lad’s affections?"