All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Lords of Kensington, Part 16
Word Count: 2111
Note: I didn't forget about the Coronation Masquerade, the high-society event that Katrina managed to convince Ryder to attend with her. Of course, black tie events require shopping and what better chance to show our dynamic duo acting like normal people, even with all the bizarre crap happening to them? This piece is ultra-fluff - we'll return to our gratuitous violence in the next section.
"Kitten?" Melissa Shan leaned up against the change room door. "Kitten, you have to come out of there eventually."
"There is no way in hell I'm going to be seen in public wearing this!" Katrina exclaimed from the other side. "I look like a sausage!"
"Oh come on, now, I doubt that. I took the measurements off the dress you wore to Sandra's wedding."
"Sandra's wedding? Mom, that was almost a year ago."
"You don't seem much bigger!"
"I've gained a good twenty pounds since then!" Katrina turned back and forth, staring at herself in the mirror with a look of barely-contained disgust. The dress was beautiful - a rich, shimmering teal lace over a form-hugging black slip - but she'd never felt fatter in her life.
"Twenty? I doubt that."
"Yes, Mom, twenty. If you don't believe me I can call the travel doctor in Rion Fell." She sighed, remembering her own shock when she stepped on the scale. "Wanted to punch him in the face for it..." she added under her breath.
"How on earth did you gain twenty pounds living in a third world country?" Melissa asked, shocked, then winced and twisted to look back at Ryder. "Sorry, dear," she said apologetically. Ryder, who was sitting in an armchair just outside the dressing rooms and watching groups of women agonize over dresses, just chuckled in amusement. "Kitten, you're being dramatic."
"I'm not being dramatic! The damn thing doesn't fit!" Katrina protested. She turned in front of the mirrors one last time, then sighed and slapped her hands against her sides. "Fine, I'll show you," she relented. "As long as Ryder's not there."
"He's gone across the way to get more coffee," Melissa said. "Just you and me and the ladies."
"Ugh, good," she said as she unlocked the door and stepped out. "I don't even have breasts and they're falling out of..." She looked up, spotted Ryder watching her, and shrieked before throwing herself back into the tiny room. "Goddammit, Mom!" she hollered, contorting herself to get her fingers on the zipper of the dress and yanking it down, releasing her torso from the smothering embrace of the fabric.
"You're right, you do look a bit thick in it," her mother admitted.
"I hate both of you," Katrina snarled, throwing the dress over the top of the door. Her cellphone buzzed as she tugged her jeans back on, and she tapped the screen to find a text from Ryder, consisting only of a picture of her from just moments before, looking in horror in his direction with the dress squeezed rather unflatteringly around her body. "Really cute, Ryder," she snapped, and heard both him and her mother laughing. "I'm glad you're both enjoying yourselves at my expense." She tugged her t-shirt on, gathered her purse, and straightened her hair quickly in the mirror before unlocking the door again and stalking out into the store. "Are we done here?"
"You still need a dress," her mother reminded, accepting her purse and jacket from Ryder as the three of them left the store. The mall was bustling - the Coronation Week celebrations were in full swing and every store was taking advantage of the school and business closure to promote an epic sidewalk sale.
"Can't I just wear a skirt?" Katrina asked, rubbing her forehead. She had a massive headache brewing, partly from the stress of shopping with her mother, and mostly because they'd not gotten home from the pack hall until nearly four in the morning, giving her only a scant three hours of sleep before her mother woke them to head to the mall. Four hours later, she'd tried on more dresses than she could count and was no closer to finding something to wear to the Coronation Masquerade than before. A couple dresses she could pull off in a pinch, though, but nothing that felt as magical as she was hoping.
Ryder seemed to be doing a much better job keeping his sense of humor than she was. His obnoxious text message aside, he'd been chatting with her mother the entire day, asking about her work and managing to be friendly even when he was expertly dodging her hugs. He'd vanished for about half an hour when they'd first arrived, but since then had managed to not only wait patiently in every dress store, but also the not-so-subtle fawning from women of all ages who were picking out their own dresses. More than once Katrina had walked out of the room only to find some young, pretty thing sweetly asking Ryder to help zip up the back of her dress, or give his opinion on a garter. The only comfort she got, really, was that he completely ignored them, but she was still feeling a little green-eyed after a few hours.
"You absolutely cannot," her mother chided. "Really, Katrina, a skirt to an event like this? Why not just wear a pair of jeans while you're at it?"
"Don't tempt me," she muttered, leaning into Ryder when he put an arm around her waist in an attempt at comfort. "This is hopeless."
"What on earth happened to make you so sour?" Melissa asked, appalled. "My Kitten was never such a pessimist before."
"I'm just frustrated."
"Hormonal?" Melissa shot a warning look at Ryder. "If she's pregnant..."
"Oh my God, Mother!" Katrina whined, covering her face with her hands.
"She most definitely is not," Ryder assured, and blinked when Katrina gave him a shove. "What?"
"Please stop encouraging her."
"It's reasonable to worry about," her mother defended. "Sandra's two girls? Both of them are expecting, dropped out of school, one of them refused a tenure, and you wouldn't believe -"
"Don't you have a fitting to go to?" Katrina asked, checking the time on her phone.
"No, it's not for another..." Melissa checked her watch, then gasped. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "I'm late!"
"Surprise..."
"Okay, I'll be upstairs at Bella's, we'll meet up in an hour for lunch?" She kissed Katrina's cheek and scruffed her hand through Ryder's hair before taking off down the hallway for the escalators, not bothering to wait for a response. Katrina sagged against a pillar, watching her go.
"I forgot how exhausting she is," she muttered, digging in her purse for the tube of aspirin she kept there. Ryder was quiet, watching the throngs of shoppers flowing past them on either side.
"What's with the color?" he asked.
"Hmm?"
"Everything you've tried on has been..." He paused, obviously looking for the right word. "Garish."
"Thanks," she said, dry-swallowing a pair of pills. "It's a celebratory holiday. People aren't keen on black." She made a face, scraping her teeth against her tongue to try and rid the acrid taste from her mouth. "My father's wearing a blue tux, apparently. My mother wanted me to order you a red one." When she sat his startled look, she laughed and patted his arm. "Don't worry. I didn't." She sighed and looked around. "I guess I should just keep -" She squawked in surprise as Ryder grabbed her hand and hauled her away from the pillar, pushing through the crowd toward a small store tucked into a corner beside a coffee shop. The sign over the top read Ravens in blood red neon, and she balked at the doorway. "Um, what are you -"
"Humor me," he said, pulling her inside. The girl behind the counter, a pretty thing in a red corset and tulle miniskirt, her hair pulled up in piles of neon pink dreds, raised a thin eyebrow at them as Ryder released Katrina's hand and swept through a rack of jet-black dresses.
"Ryder," Katrina said, trying to catch his attention over the music blaring from the ceiling. He ignored her, flipping the tags to read the sizes. "Ryder, I can't wear these."
"I said humor me," he responded, and gave her a warning look that suggested it was not in her best interest to argue with him. "I've spent hours listening to you whine about your mother's taste in dresses. It won't kill you to try one I suggest." Finding what he was looking for, he pulled a dress from the rack and passed it to her. "Try this on," he said.
The dress was the complete opposite of anything her mother had picked out - instead of shimmering satin, sequins, and rhinestones, the dress was a simple brocade corset-style bodice with a cascading skirt beneath, beautiful uneven layers of mute silk and delicate lace that gave the dress a slightly chaotic, almost tattered look. The back was mostly open, covered only by the lace of the corset, the rope delicately woven with strands of silver that were the only decorative piece on the dress.
"I..." She rubbed one hand across the bodice, feeling the smooth, luxurious material. "I'm not sure -"
"We just got that in," the salesgirl said, leaning around Katrina and smiling brightly at Ryder. "Let me get you a room." She plucked the dress from Katrina's hands and headed to the back of the store.
"That is going to look awful on me," Katrina sighed. Ryder rolled his eyes, took her by the shoulders, and guided her toward the change room.
"Enough pouting," he ordered. "Just try it on."
Getting into the dress proved an entirely different type of adventure - unlacing the bodice was one thing, trying to find the tiny, delicate zipper hidden in the layers of the skirt was something else entirely. After a few minutes of cursing she managed to shrug it on, shocked at how comfortable it was once she managed to get it in place, and then realized she had no way to lace up the back.
"Are you still out there?" she asked, staring at herself in the mirror.
"Yes," he replied.
"I need lacing," she told him, unlocking the door and twisting the knob to open it. There was a couple second's pause, and then the door pulled open - she could see him behind her in the mirror, and stuck her tongue out when he smiled at her. "Only you would pick a dress that needs a personal assistant to get into."
"Life is so hard," he replied, his fingers plucking at the laces and pulling the bodice tight to her body. She turned back and forth, looking at herself in the mirror, but he took her hand and pulled her out of the room. "Better mirrors out here," he said, showing her the angled semi-circle of reflective glass just around the corner from the room.
"Wow," the salesgirl breathed. "That looks fucking awesome on you." Katrina rolled her eyes, not convinced, and stepped up onto the small carpet-covered box in front of the mirrors. She fussed with the skirts a moment, straightening them when they didn't need to be straightened, and finally looked at herself in the mirror.
For a moment she didn't recognize the woman who looked back at her. The dress hugged and accentuated curves she didn't know she had, shaping her normally rectangular torso into something feminine, the bodice following the smooth sweep of her ribs and delicately lifting her breasts without making her look unnatural or pinched. The skirt fell to her knees in the front and just slightly lower in the back, and as she turned the gauzy layers floated around her, practically no weight at all. A smile tugged at her lips as she held her arms out and marveled at the way the garment hugged her, and jumped a little as Ryder appeared behind her, his hands sliding across her waist.
"I don't hear any complaining," he told her, smiling. The box gave her a few extra inches of height, but she was still shorter than him - though it was considerably easier to look him in the eye when she turned around.
"You're remarkably good at picking out dresses," she teased.
"Mmm." He slid his hands along her ribs, the silk whispering under his palms and his touch sending a shiver through her. "More like I got lucky."
"You mean, more like you wanted to see me in corsets and lace?" she asked, amused.
"What can I say, I'm entirely predictable," he replied, and she couldn't help but laugh.
"Predictable?" She giggled and patted his cheek. "I don't think I would ever go that far." She looked down at herself, picked at the skirt again. "Good enough to be seen in public with me?"
"Good enough for..." he started, and then cleared his throat and chuckled slightly, a hint of flush rising in his cheeks. "Yeah," he agreed. "It's perfect."
Word Count: 2111
Note: I didn't forget about the Coronation Masquerade, the high-society event that Katrina managed to convince Ryder to attend with her. Of course, black tie events require shopping and what better chance to show our dynamic duo acting like normal people, even with all the bizarre crap happening to them? This piece is ultra-fluff - we'll return to our gratuitous violence in the next section.
"Kitten?" Melissa Shan leaned up against the change room door. "Kitten, you have to come out of there eventually."
"There is no way in hell I'm going to be seen in public wearing this!" Katrina exclaimed from the other side. "I look like a sausage!"
"Oh come on, now, I doubt that. I took the measurements off the dress you wore to Sandra's wedding."
"Sandra's wedding? Mom, that was almost a year ago."
"You don't seem much bigger!"
"I've gained a good twenty pounds since then!" Katrina turned back and forth, staring at herself in the mirror with a look of barely-contained disgust. The dress was beautiful - a rich, shimmering teal lace over a form-hugging black slip - but she'd never felt fatter in her life.
"Twenty? I doubt that."
"Yes, Mom, twenty. If you don't believe me I can call the travel doctor in Rion Fell." She sighed, remembering her own shock when she stepped on the scale. "Wanted to punch him in the face for it..." she added under her breath.
"How on earth did you gain twenty pounds living in a third world country?" Melissa asked, shocked, then winced and twisted to look back at Ryder. "Sorry, dear," she said apologetically. Ryder, who was sitting in an armchair just outside the dressing rooms and watching groups of women agonize over dresses, just chuckled in amusement. "Kitten, you're being dramatic."
"I'm not being dramatic! The damn thing doesn't fit!" Katrina protested. She turned in front of the mirrors one last time, then sighed and slapped her hands against her sides. "Fine, I'll show you," she relented. "As long as Ryder's not there."
"He's gone across the way to get more coffee," Melissa said. "Just you and me and the ladies."
"Ugh, good," she said as she unlocked the door and stepped out. "I don't even have breasts and they're falling out of..." She looked up, spotted Ryder watching her, and shrieked before throwing herself back into the tiny room. "Goddammit, Mom!" she hollered, contorting herself to get her fingers on the zipper of the dress and yanking it down, releasing her torso from the smothering embrace of the fabric.
"You're right, you do look a bit thick in it," her mother admitted.
"I hate both of you," Katrina snarled, throwing the dress over the top of the door. Her cellphone buzzed as she tugged her jeans back on, and she tapped the screen to find a text from Ryder, consisting only of a picture of her from just moments before, looking in horror in his direction with the dress squeezed rather unflatteringly around her body. "Really cute, Ryder," she snapped, and heard both him and her mother laughing. "I'm glad you're both enjoying yourselves at my expense." She tugged her t-shirt on, gathered her purse, and straightened her hair quickly in the mirror before unlocking the door again and stalking out into the store. "Are we done here?"
"You still need a dress," her mother reminded, accepting her purse and jacket from Ryder as the three of them left the store. The mall was bustling - the Coronation Week celebrations were in full swing and every store was taking advantage of the school and business closure to promote an epic sidewalk sale.
"Can't I just wear a skirt?" Katrina asked, rubbing her forehead. She had a massive headache brewing, partly from the stress of shopping with her mother, and mostly because they'd not gotten home from the pack hall until nearly four in the morning, giving her only a scant three hours of sleep before her mother woke them to head to the mall. Four hours later, she'd tried on more dresses than she could count and was no closer to finding something to wear to the Coronation Masquerade than before. A couple dresses she could pull off in a pinch, though, but nothing that felt as magical as she was hoping.
Ryder seemed to be doing a much better job keeping his sense of humor than she was. His obnoxious text message aside, he'd been chatting with her mother the entire day, asking about her work and managing to be friendly even when he was expertly dodging her hugs. He'd vanished for about half an hour when they'd first arrived, but since then had managed to not only wait patiently in every dress store, but also the not-so-subtle fawning from women of all ages who were picking out their own dresses. More than once Katrina had walked out of the room only to find some young, pretty thing sweetly asking Ryder to help zip up the back of her dress, or give his opinion on a garter. The only comfort she got, really, was that he completely ignored them, but she was still feeling a little green-eyed after a few hours.
"You absolutely cannot," her mother chided. "Really, Katrina, a skirt to an event like this? Why not just wear a pair of jeans while you're at it?"
"Don't tempt me," she muttered, leaning into Ryder when he put an arm around her waist in an attempt at comfort. "This is hopeless."
"What on earth happened to make you so sour?" Melissa asked, appalled. "My Kitten was never such a pessimist before."
"I'm just frustrated."
"Hormonal?" Melissa shot a warning look at Ryder. "If she's pregnant..."
"Oh my God, Mother!" Katrina whined, covering her face with her hands.
"She most definitely is not," Ryder assured, and blinked when Katrina gave him a shove. "What?"
"Please stop encouraging her."
"It's reasonable to worry about," her mother defended. "Sandra's two girls? Both of them are expecting, dropped out of school, one of them refused a tenure, and you wouldn't believe -"
"Don't you have a fitting to go to?" Katrina asked, checking the time on her phone.
"No, it's not for another..." Melissa checked her watch, then gasped. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "I'm late!"
"Surprise..."
"Okay, I'll be upstairs at Bella's, we'll meet up in an hour for lunch?" She kissed Katrina's cheek and scruffed her hand through Ryder's hair before taking off down the hallway for the escalators, not bothering to wait for a response. Katrina sagged against a pillar, watching her go.
"I forgot how exhausting she is," she muttered, digging in her purse for the tube of aspirin she kept there. Ryder was quiet, watching the throngs of shoppers flowing past them on either side.
"What's with the color?" he asked.
"Hmm?"
"Everything you've tried on has been..." He paused, obviously looking for the right word. "Garish."
"Thanks," she said, dry-swallowing a pair of pills. "It's a celebratory holiday. People aren't keen on black." She made a face, scraping her teeth against her tongue to try and rid the acrid taste from her mouth. "My father's wearing a blue tux, apparently. My mother wanted me to order you a red one." When she sat his startled look, she laughed and patted his arm. "Don't worry. I didn't." She sighed and looked around. "I guess I should just keep -" She squawked in surprise as Ryder grabbed her hand and hauled her away from the pillar, pushing through the crowd toward a small store tucked into a corner beside a coffee shop. The sign over the top read Ravens in blood red neon, and she balked at the doorway. "Um, what are you -"
"Humor me," he said, pulling her inside. The girl behind the counter, a pretty thing in a red corset and tulle miniskirt, her hair pulled up in piles of neon pink dreds, raised a thin eyebrow at them as Ryder released Katrina's hand and swept through a rack of jet-black dresses.
"Ryder," Katrina said, trying to catch his attention over the music blaring from the ceiling. He ignored her, flipping the tags to read the sizes. "Ryder, I can't wear these."
"I said humor me," he responded, and gave her a warning look that suggested it was not in her best interest to argue with him. "I've spent hours listening to you whine about your mother's taste in dresses. It won't kill you to try one I suggest." Finding what he was looking for, he pulled a dress from the rack and passed it to her. "Try this on," he said.
The dress was the complete opposite of anything her mother had picked out - instead of shimmering satin, sequins, and rhinestones, the dress was a simple brocade corset-style bodice with a cascading skirt beneath, beautiful uneven layers of mute silk and delicate lace that gave the dress a slightly chaotic, almost tattered look. The back was mostly open, covered only by the lace of the corset, the rope delicately woven with strands of silver that were the only decorative piece on the dress.
"I..." She rubbed one hand across the bodice, feeling the smooth, luxurious material. "I'm not sure -"
"We just got that in," the salesgirl said, leaning around Katrina and smiling brightly at Ryder. "Let me get you a room." She plucked the dress from Katrina's hands and headed to the back of the store.
"That is going to look awful on me," Katrina sighed. Ryder rolled his eyes, took her by the shoulders, and guided her toward the change room.
"Enough pouting," he ordered. "Just try it on."
Getting into the dress proved an entirely different type of adventure - unlacing the bodice was one thing, trying to find the tiny, delicate zipper hidden in the layers of the skirt was something else entirely. After a few minutes of cursing she managed to shrug it on, shocked at how comfortable it was once she managed to get it in place, and then realized she had no way to lace up the back.
"Are you still out there?" she asked, staring at herself in the mirror.
"Yes," he replied.
"I need lacing," she told him, unlocking the door and twisting the knob to open it. There was a couple second's pause, and then the door pulled open - she could see him behind her in the mirror, and stuck her tongue out when he smiled at her. "Only you would pick a dress that needs a personal assistant to get into."
"Life is so hard," he replied, his fingers plucking at the laces and pulling the bodice tight to her body. She turned back and forth, looking at herself in the mirror, but he took her hand and pulled her out of the room. "Better mirrors out here," he said, showing her the angled semi-circle of reflective glass just around the corner from the room.
"Wow," the salesgirl breathed. "That looks fucking awesome on you." Katrina rolled her eyes, not convinced, and stepped up onto the small carpet-covered box in front of the mirrors. She fussed with the skirts a moment, straightening them when they didn't need to be straightened, and finally looked at herself in the mirror.
For a moment she didn't recognize the woman who looked back at her. The dress hugged and accentuated curves she didn't know she had, shaping her normally rectangular torso into something feminine, the bodice following the smooth sweep of her ribs and delicately lifting her breasts without making her look unnatural or pinched. The skirt fell to her knees in the front and just slightly lower in the back, and as she turned the gauzy layers floated around her, practically no weight at all. A smile tugged at her lips as she held her arms out and marveled at the way the garment hugged her, and jumped a little as Ryder appeared behind her, his hands sliding across her waist.
"I don't hear any complaining," he told her, smiling. The box gave her a few extra inches of height, but she was still shorter than him - though it was considerably easier to look him in the eye when she turned around.
"You're remarkably good at picking out dresses," she teased.
"Mmm." He slid his hands along her ribs, the silk whispering under his palms and his touch sending a shiver through her. "More like I got lucky."
"You mean, more like you wanted to see me in corsets and lace?" she asked, amused.
"What can I say, I'm entirely predictable," he replied, and she couldn't help but laugh.
"Predictable?" She giggled and patted his cheek. "I don't think I would ever go that far." She looked down at herself, picked at the skirt again. "Good enough to be seen in public with me?"
"Good enough for..." he started, and then cleared his throat and chuckled slightly, a hint of flush rising in his cheeks. "Yeah," he agreed. "It's perfect."