Chapter 303 - 304 You known how to really twist the knife?

Chapter 303: Chapter 304 You known how to really twist the knife?

Aria’s POV

After Damian proposed to me, we had dinner together at home. When we finished, he suggested we go grocery shopping together.

The evening light was fading outside as Damian and I strolled through the aisles of the big chain grocery store near my apartment, our arms linked, the cart rolling lazily ahead of us.

He hadn’t brought a single guard. No Rick, no security detail trailing three steps behind. Just him and me, blending into the crowd like any other couple picking up dinner.

I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. The Alpha King of the entire Blackwood Kingdom, a man whose name made grown wolves lower their eyes, pushing a squeaky shopping cart and squinting at the ingredient list on a jar of pasta sauce like it was a peace treaty.

But I understood why he loved this. He’d told me once, late at night with his voice gone quiet the way it only did in the dark.

When he was a boy, he spent most of his time surrounded by servants and guards, with no one his own age to truly call a friend.

What he’d envied most wasn’t the wealth other packs had. It was the sight of an ordinary family shopping together. Kids arguing over cereal. A wife tucking something into the cart while her husband pretended to protest. All of them going home together afterward.

For Damian, being a cold, untouchable heir to the throne had never meant a thing. What he’d wanted was so much smaller. To be a husband with someone on his arm, someone waiting to walk home beside him.

"Babe, this looks amazing." I reached up and grabbed a new flavor of pudding cup off the shelf, holding it out to him. "Do you want to try it?"

I knew perfectly well he wouldn’t. The man had the palate of a stubborn wolf and thought anything neon-colored was an insult to food. But I looked up at him anyway, my eyes full of hope, biting back a grin.

He raised one dark eyebrow. "Aria. That’s the color of a highlighter."

"That’s what makes it fun."

"Nothing about that is fun. That’s a dye they use for hazard signs."

I burst out laughing, and I couldn’t stop, my cheeks going warm. He was so serious about it, this ruthless man who could level a room with a single look, standing here debating the merits of pudding with me like the fate of the world hung on it.

He plucked the cup right out of my hand.

Then, before I could say anything, he swept an entire row of them straight into our cart. A dozen of them, clattering down among the vegetables and bread.

"Damian." I caught his wrist, trying to stop him. "I said one, not the whole shelf—"

"You wanted it." He shrugged, utterly unrepentant. "Now you have it."

Neither of us could keep a straight face. He reached over and ruffled my hair, then leaned down and brushed his cheek against mine, slow and warm, like there wasn’t a single other person in the store.

And there might as well not have been. In that moment it was just us. Him looking at me like I hung the moon, me looking up at him with my heart doing something ridiculous in my chest.

I felt someone staring.

Not the curious, passing kind. The kind that pressed against the back of my neck like cold fingers. A couple of shoppers had slowed near the end of the aisle, and I heard a woman murmur something to her partner, envy plain in her voice. But that wasn’t it.

I turned to put back the dozen pudding cups Damian had smuggled in, keeping only the two nicest looking ones, and as I straightened up, my whole body went still.

My pupils shrank.

Ethan was standing at the far end of the aisle. Not a hundred feet away. A cigarette hung forgotten between his fingers, and the ash had crumbled off onto the polished floor without him noticing.

He was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost.

I knew that look. I’d spent two years cataloguing his every expression, back when I still believed they meant something. But I’d never seen this one. Hollow. Gutted. Like the ground had opened up under his feet and he was still falling.

For one instinctive second, I turned to leave.

It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. But the moment my eyes landed on him, the old memories came rushing back, all of them at once. The false marriage certificate. The nights I’d defended him. The way I’d told myself he was protecting me while he mothered a child with another woman under the same roof. My stomach turned, a wave of pure physical revulsion rolling through me. I didn’t want to breathe the same air as him.

But behind me, Damian didn’t move an inch.

His hand caught my arm, firm and unhurried, and instead of letting me go he pulled me back against his chest and turned me around to face Ethan again.

"Damian..." I whispered.

"Ex meets current." His voice was low against my hair, calm, almost lazy. But I heard the edge underneath it. "So which is it, sweetheart? Am I not impressive enough to show off? Or are you still carrying a torch for him?"

I felt the muscle in his jaw tighten where it pressed to my temple.

Every single time we’d crossed paths with Ethan, I’d never given the man so much as a polite nod. Damian knew that. But he was jealous anyway, the possessive streak in him bone-deep and impossible to hide.

"Are you kidding me?" I tilted my head back to glare up at him, keeping my voice down. "Neither. I just can’t stand the sight of him."

I ground the words out through my teeth.

The reason I’d flinched wasn’t Ethan himself. It was what he dragged up in me, the reflex of a body that remembered too much. And it was the humiliation, knowing he’d keep circling back, keep making a scene, keep trying to worm his way into a life he’d thrown away.

But with Damian’s arm anchoring me, my head cleared and the instinct settled.

Ethan was the one who’d lied. Ethan was the one who’d forged a marriage and hidden a family and used me as a shield for two years. If anyone in this store deserved to feel small right now, it was him. Not me.

And I couldn’t let Damian misread a single second of this. He noticed everything. I wasn’t about to let one flinch plant a doubt in a man who’d already given me his whole guarded heart.

"You know how to really twist the knife?" Damian murmured against my ear, his breath warm along the curve of it.

Then he tipped my chin up with one finger, and kissed me.

"Aria!"