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The stairs were narrow, and in running down them, I almost ran into another small omega. This one also had fiery red hair but wore a scandalously cut red dress and smelt of… so many alphas and betas and possibly other omegas that I couldn’t place her own scent.
“Do you want to be run into?” I asked, grabbing her arms so that she didn’t fall.
“Unhand me. I am Hippolyta Hartwell, and you are Lord Benedict Paxton. I suggest you stay away from my family. From my sisters. Do you understand me? I don’t want you near my sister, to make her…” She sucked her lips between her teeth. “Leave. Leave now.”
“Are you sure you’re an omega?” I couldn’t help myself. But this aggression? No omega should be like this. Even so there was no mistaking her mating gland on her shoulder.
“I am.” Her lips twisted into a sneer. Damn these Hartwell omegas to the seven hells. Could there be a more unnatural family? “I am the apex of all dynamics.”
“Some subtext that I am missing?” Apex? What did she mean? There seemed to be some importance in her words and I didn’t know what to take from that. “Am I to—”
“Leave before I have you thrown out. Leave! You and the Colonel! I never want to scent you near any of my sisters ever again.” Her eyes flared with anger. I blinked. Her eyes were mirrored gold. The sign of a feral alpha on what could only be an omega.
“Go!”
It was not submission that had me continuing down the last few stairs, brushing past her and those deadly eyes. More animal instinct that she was not so civilised. I didn’t take my eyes off her. Not afraid, but wary. Omegas could be violent if their children were threatened. There was an omega’s Blaze, a kind of madness where they attacked alphas without care for their own wellbeing. But it was more rumour and myth than anything. But if ever there was an omega who could possess such a madness? This Hartwell omega seemed a prime candidate.
I was half out the door when I heard her call my name.
“Paxton.”
I couldn’t tell why I stopped for an omega, but something compelling—almost like a bark— had me pausing.
“My sister is deserving of something more perfect than what you alone have to offer her. If she rejected you, when you smell of her like you do, then perhaps consider that you on your own are lacking.”
Her words haunted me, confusion at my encounter building into a fury that I’d failed, thwarted by omegas who seemed impervious to alphas.
I banged through my front door and ran up to my drawing room. Somewhere there was a painting to suit my mood. Somewhere. I just needed to find it. But I could smell Beatrice everywhere. Her scent lingered in the room. I flicked through canvases. I stopped on a depiction of a sleeping Samson while Delilah cut his hair.
“Pax, get out of it.” Jack leant against the demilune I’d stood near with Beatrice just yesterday night. To a stranger he would appear relaxed, but one look at his hands gripping the table’s edge until they turned white told a different story. This was an alpha doing all in his power to restrain himself.
“What has you in this mood? I thought you’d be happy to know you’d found yourself a mate.” His light tone masked those emotions, and more than anything that made me angry.
“She won’t have me. Plans to go to Paris to play hostess for her mother.” I told him. I’d yet to comprehend her reason. There could be none except that the omega was mad. Crazed for what could hold her back from accepting my hand?
“I’m lacking,” I sneered at the word Hippolyta had used.
“Thank Goddess for that.” Jack laughed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
“I’ll be glad if I never have to deal with a Hartwell ever again.” A half-lie. I’d happily deal with a bound and gagged Beatrice, deal her enough orgasms that she begged for my knot and anything else I might choose to give her. If only Titian were still alive to paint her… Must my every desire connected to this omega be thwarted?
I looked around and saw that my servants hadn’t cleared the tea tray from the night before. I picked up one of the used cups and threw it at the mirror that reminded me so much of the brief, heated assignation. Glass and porcelain shattered with a satisfying crash.
“Benedict, careful you don’t let that rage rise so close to the surface. Won’t do you any good. That omega is in Paris… There is no reason to think our paths shall ever cross again. Goddess bless us for that,” he laughed. “Come. We can make a toast of it. No more Hartwells. They are more like to bring you bad luck than that mirror you just broke.”
If I didn’t know him better, didn’t notice the glassy look in his eyes, I’d take him at his word. He liked a joke and snipe, but beneath that existed a plain speaking alpha who’d come from humble beginnings and had no real interest in hobnobbing unless he absolutely must. Which was how I knew there was more to his relationship with the Hartwells than he wanted to reveal.
But on this occasion, I saw the wisdom of his pronouncement so did not challenge something I knew he did not mean. My alpha pride was pricked. But he had a point, and I’d no interest in handing my balls over to a delicious omega, who’d drive me mad within a fortnight.
“I vow it. Beatrice Hartwell is a ghost relegated to the shelf. A spinster who’ll never take a knot like a good omega.”
He started to say something, composed himself, and with a grin that spoke of mischief, raised an empty glass he’d plucked from the sideboard. “Fill her up, Pax. Fill her up til the cup runneth over.”
Dammit but now I could only imagine Beatrice Hartwell overflowing with cum.
This omega would be the death of me. And my friend would laugh at me on the road to damnation.
Jack
