069 A Date

It was just a simple dinner at the bar of The Fort, well, "simple", as Curtis put it.

"How do you like your steak?" Curtis asked when Kitty put down her fork and took the red wine for a sip.

"It's good." Kitty shrugged with a simple answer. The steak was obviously not her focus of this dinner.

"Well maybe it's because The Fort's chief is not good enough. Let me take you to--" Curtis grinned.

"It IS not as good as my mom's cooking." Kitty cut him off coldly.

"I--" Curtis smiled off his awkward, "I guess I cannot compete with that."

"Curtis, I'm grateful for your help, which is why I agreed to this dinner. But I don't like you attacking him at every chance you can." Kitty signed, "He is important to me, period."

"You are right, I'm sorry." Curtis changed into a serious tone that he rarely uses.

Being a prince living at Palace that he needed to worry about his safety constantly, he often masked himself with a careless laugh.

It was his fault that he had being taking Kitty as just another girl, dying to marry a prince. He was a prince. So what was the hardship in that?

But Kitty was not.

"Didn't expect a girl to have a brain? Or feelings?" Kitty said, watching him falling into deep thoughts in shock.

"I AM sorry--" Curtis said and suddenly stopped where he was. He began to think Kitty as his wife only after he knew she possess great power that she didn't know yet.

The idea that she WOULD marry him and that power were to be his was so natural to him that he hadn't really been seeing Kitty as equal, or independent. Not even when he tried to woo her by giving her her mom's old notebook.

The notebook that was lying in Kitty's bed at this moment, the one she had been reading like crazy for the past week, the one, that got her into this dinner with him.

It was only in this dinner that he realized some people do not fall into the catalogue that money can buy.

"It's that..." Curtis started with another sentence. Maybe it would be easier if he just tells her the prophecy? There's no fighting against that. She would know, she won't have a choice.

He looked up, into her eyes, looking for the right words to break that news to her.

She was his! She WILL be, no matter what.

Kitty watched him as he struggled with himself and stammered with half sentences with patience. She didn't interrupt, or lose focus on him. There was this calmness in her eyes that made Curtis changed his mind in the last second.

That calmness was saying: it IS her choice, no matter a prophecy or what any other force were to be against her will.

It was a calmness of power. Even though she didn't have it yet, it was born with her.

And all of a sudden, his plan of wooing her and taking her for himself regardless his deal with Erebus looked so stupid and implausible.

Now that he began to see her as equal with respect, that line of moral suddenly stroke him, hard.

"I mean, you are right." Curtis managed to nod after a seemingly LONG and complicated process of thinking, "I had been holding him hostile out of jealousy. I apologize for that. Can we start again? I'm Charles Kalani, the prince of the werewolf Kingdom."

"I'm Kitty." Kitty gave him a praising smile as she took his hand, "Daughter of Lilith. I cannot solve the jealousy part, but it’s sweet to know. Although I have to mind you, I'm only seeing you as a friend, for I cannot take two souls into my heart at the same time."

The other was obviously Erebus. And this thought frustrated Curtis, or should I say, Charles, a lot.

"I respect your decision." Charles said, "It's good enough that you are accepting my friendship, FOR NOW."

His stressing on the "for now" made Kitty laugh, and the dinner was finally rid of that shred of tension.

...

"You really don't have to do this." Kitty said as Charles walked out of the elevator with her, "I literally live IN this hotel."

"It's a gentleman's duty to take the lady home." Charles said with a grin. It was hard to tell whether he was joking or serious.

"I believe that home means the building, and you are allowed to their rooms only if invited." Kitty shook her head with a smile as they walked towards her room.

"How could I put the pressure on the lady to hand out the invitation?" Charles said, "So long as you don't say no, I'll be here."

"I AM saying--" Kitty laughed and started protesting, but she noticed that Charles was not looking at her.

Erebus.

He was leaning against the wall by Kitty's room, obviously waiting for her.

"Why are you here?"

The two men both asked at the same time with the same question.

Kitty: "..."

Isn't that her line instead of Erebus's?

"I'm invited." Charles said with that annoying grin, knowing Erebus definitely heard he and Kitty when they walked out of the elevator.

Erebus: "..."

He was shocked speechless by Charles's shameless lie.

"Do you have time?" Erebus turned to Kitty with a much-softened look, "I have stuff that I want to talk to you about."

"Sure." Kitty nodded and went to open the door.

"I'm still here." Charles said aggressively to Erebus with his arms held in from of his chest and leaned against the wall with his right shoulder: he was NOT leaving.

"You should leave." Erebus said in a calm, but dominating tone. While his alpha's tone cannot control a royal, Charles was certainly awed into silence. It was obviously taking him effort to reject Erebus's order.

Standing in the door and looking at Erebus with a challenging look, Kitty suddenly said:

"We ARE on a date."