AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I sat on the edge of his bed, a hand on his knee. But Pax was so enraptured by her innocent shoes that he seemed oblivious to my scent, my arousal. My sympathies were with him. Beatrice Hartwell drew alphas like a moth to a flame. But played us all for fools. We were not moths, but Icarus flying too close to her sun.
While my first response to his desire was primal satisfaction, I’d lived too long with what attraction to Trix meant. Knowing she would always be mine (however abruptly I’d left her, she would be my mate until the day we died), I buried the truth and told him something quite different.
“Don’t, Benedict,” I warned him. “She is not for you. She is dangerous to your sanity.”
“I mean to have her,” he growled, becoming agitated when I refused to back down. Beatrice despised submitting to alphas, allowing them to control her. She and Pax would be like oil and water. And I? Where would I fit in this strange domestic scene? The Hartwells had barred me from their door. My pride… I did not desire to meet with any of them again. Ever. Yet Beatrice had always been my greatest weakness. As an omega could be for any alpha. The desire to hold and protect. The need to be needed. I’d seen alphas throw away all their self respect as they jockeyed for an omega’s attention.
“Don’t, Benedict. Don’t try to make her yours. Not when I can promise you that the Hartwells, that Beatrice will not accept an alpha who won’t let her run wild. It ain’t in your nature to allow a lass like her to be free. She’s beyond your ken. She’s beyond mine despite knowing her from a babe.”
“No, I want her. I’ll have her. I’ll write and demand—”
I snarled, jerking towards him. “You’ll leave her be, Pax.”
Of course, if he truly desired, Pax could walk right into the Hartwell residence and put forward his suit. After all his name was old, even if the fortune was new. None would consider Lord Benedict Paxton, Baron Mote, a poor choice for Miss Beatrice Jane Hartwell. Mrs Hartwell would fall over herself to secure such a mate and spouse for her favourite daughter.
Our circumstances were Goddess willed but by the old faith of the Lady… What foolish nonsense. I did not believe in prayer to change the fortunes of men. Nor could I resent Paxton’s luck in being born the son of a lord while I was the son of a printmaker. A mere accident of birth.
His suit might be considered worthy of Beatrice Hartwell, but I was the alpha she had chosen. She’d been a foolish girl, and I too young and too in love with her to protect her from my alpha instinct to claim the omega I’d always known belonged to me. I should have walked away when I’d found her on the brink of her heat. Instead, I gave in to that feral alpha who needed to help his omega through her heat. I had taken her future. An omega with so much promise and who had seen so little of the world. We were better off without each other. I told the world my mate had died. Goddess knew what she told people.
The lie didn’t erase the memory of her from my body or soul.
I mentally stumbled, looked about me.
Pax’s bedroom. A place I’d spent enough nights trying to forget her, and now she was here in this room. Her scent. Mine. Pax’s. All of us together.
I needed to remove myself before I said anything.
Fresh air.
I left him contemplating her shoes as if they held the answers to every Goddess blessed mystery in the universe—as if he’d forgotten I was even in the room. Inside, I was even more at war with myself. My knot demanded I hunt down my mate and rut her. And then what? The Hartwells would refuse me. And Beatrice, who had shot Pax by accident, would find my heart and put a hole through it as soon as she’d take her next breath. I’d even pull the trigger myself if she hesitated.
I’d been responsible for my own actions. I’d none of Pax’s inborn arrogance, nor the security of his birthright.
My accent might be masked, but my hands retained calluses and my every choice predicated on a youth of hard labour and balancing the books, pinching pennies so that my family would survive.
She’d tempted me to put aside my responsibilities, do what I wanted to do, take on the greatest responsibility an alpha could, and they’d taken my mate from me.
Then I had left my mate. I could have, should have, protested. Whatever the reason, the fault would always be mine.
If Pax couldn’t cure my sour mood, there was one solution I fell back on without fail. Fight. A punch up. A duel. A physical battle. Alpha on alpha or my alpha against however many betas it took to bring me to my knees. Physical pain: the great medicine when the pain in my mate stain and soul couldn’t be fixed by other means.
I made my way across town to a haunt of prostitutes and thieves. A place for rough men and women and those foolish enough to think themselves superior because of their birth and wealth. The doorman let me in with a gruff ‘hullo’ and word that the gaming rooms were crowded tonight. But that wasn’t my aim. I ran up the steps to the back office, where I knew I could find Puck, one of the age’s great prize fighters. He’d give me a bout to remember.
The door was ajar, and I pushed in. The alpha lay back in his chair, his eyes closed, a look of bliss on his face. Easy to understand why given with sounds coming from beneath the desk and the smell of sex in the air.
I knew the moment my scent reached him, for his eyes flashed open and a possessive growl rumbled through the room.
“Come back later,” he growled. “I’m busy.”
“You and me. A prize fight,” I told him. He grinned, though in pleasure or because of my proposal, I did not know. Then his eyes went sharp.
“You mean it?”
I nodded.
“Later beauty,” he patted the hidden head which revealed to belong to a pretty blonde-haired beta who didn’t seem pleased at the interruption, and frowned at me as they left.
Puck took his time putting himself back together. With his dark black skin and heavily lidded eyes, he seduced with a twitch of his full lips as he watched the beta leave. Combined with the heavy scent of arousal and lust that filled the room, I shifted uncomfortably under his assessing gaze.
