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“Please, Jack.” I felt Beatrice more than I heard her. That reassuring warmth in my arms. “I want to go home.”
“Of course.”
We reemerged into the ballroom to find our fellow guests riveted to the dance floor
Our hostess, Lady Mountview, stood in the centre of the gathering, surrounded by her five female alphas. Not just surrounded. One of them held her in a tight embrace, lavishing kisses on her mate. The others watched on, stroking each other’s bodies, whispering in each other’s ears as they watched. As we all watched. For other than the orchestra playing softly in the background, the whole room had gone silent.
It was not some vulgar sexual display. Lady Mountview was not going into heat. The pack had merely decided to show affection, but Goddess, it was a sight from any omega’s or alpha’s wildest fantasy. A blatant yet subtle claiming in front of all society.
It did not matter that their marks were on her skin. In front of the world, they proclaimed her theirs. For now, she was passed—dazed and needy—to another two of her alphas. One almost tenderly spotted kisses along the slim column of her omega’s throat before biting and sucking on the lacework of mating bites on her exposed shoulder. Lady Mountview arched into her lover’s body, trying to find as much pleasure as she could. Another alpha gently cupped her breasts, leant in close, and placed two chaste kisses on the swell of her bosom before capturing the little omega’s mouth in a deep, commanding kiss.
Around us there were the soft murmurs as mates found each other. But we all remained captured by the spell of the pack before us.
“Mine,” one of the remaining alphas growled and pulled her little mate into her arms. “Say it, little omega. Who do you belong to, sweetheart?”
“You, all of you.”
The breathless answer was rewarded with a kiss, but this alpha was fiercer than her fellows. Nipping at already tender lips and putting out a possessive growling purr. The final alpha watched on, a patient smile on her face as she stroked her mate’s back. At last, the omega was released. She spun into the last alpha’s arms, cuddling close before sweetly raising her head, asking for a kiss. The one she received would remain with me for my entire life. I had never before nor never would ever again see a kiss so simple, yet so full of passion. Its beauty transcended everything and perfectly demonstrated that a pack’s lusts were not the driving force in their displays of physical affection. Each of these women had given the same devotion, but in their own way.
But theirs was an explicitly standard pack. The omega loose and submitting in her alpha’s arms. So unlike my own dynamic with Trix and Pax.
The three of us played a game. After her trip to the modiste, Beatrice was refused to leave the house without one of us—though occasionally Meeker was deemed a suitable companion. At times, I thought we’d made up the ground we’d lost after her injury. Then she would say she was going for a walk without us, and we’d raise voices with a slammed door ending the argument. But every night we joined her in her nest. Soft words whispered and promises to find compromise.
She had an alpha’s need for independence and we had an alpha’s need to protect our mate—especially after she’d been injured and the culprit still at large.
Pax lifted his chin, catching my eye, and a small part of me relaxed. I wasn’t going to fight this battle of protecting her alone. It would be both of use together. We would forever be unconventional. Perhaps, I realised, as I watched the Mountviews pull apart and once again mingle with their guests, that was not such a bad thing.
I bent to sniff my mate’s natural omega perfume. Roses and whiffs of Pax and my own scent on her skin. Ours. The world, which seemed prepared to throw us off course, righted itself once again.
But when I looked up, I happened to see Eliza Brown shooting arrows with her eyes at me. Instinct warred with the need to show the world I was a civilised alpha. The constant push and pull that made society so unbearable to me. On the battlefield, alphas could be alphas. But in a drawing room, where the stakes were so much lower, we must conform to these petty rules, which decided an omega must be quiet and weak and an alpha dominating but not an animal. As if we, as humans, could not know the difference between instinct and how to respect our fellows. Wasn’t that the crux of it? Society demanded what we should give naturally. I should suppress the urge to pluck my mate’s friend—I sneered at the word—eyes from her head because it was wrong, not because society demanded I behave in such-and-such a manner.
Given the choice, I would choose instinct. The alpha that coveted my mate would be blind and regret the day she spoke to my mate disrespectfully. My attention returned to our hosts. I pulled Trix close, bent closer still, and whispered in her ear. “Look. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Jealousy flared briefly in her eyes. Her meaning clear. How dare I think any “they” were beautiful, but it dissipated just as fast when she saw who I meant.
“Kiss me,” Trix leant back into my arms. “Kiss me or I shall go mad with jealousy. Everyone else is kissing.”
“They looked beautiful together, didn’t they?” I smiled down at my beautiful mate.
“Alpha…”
The bitter taste left in my mouth by Trix’s old suitor disappeared as I relished the sweetness of her kiss. I felt a hand on my back and withdrew just enough to allow Pax to slot in. The great difference in our heights would make the kind of three way kiss the Mountviews had indulged in, were still indulging in, impossible. But I kissed Pax briefly that he might taste Beatrice.
“Home,” he ordered. And like good lovers who were learning which fights to pick, we followed him.
“How well did you know her?” Pax asked once we were in the carriage.
“She courted me,” she heaved a sigh. “I thought better of her then. Nothing would ever have come of it. I was mated to Jack. Nothing would ever come of anything with any alpha but Jack.”
“You wound me, Vixen,” Pax huffed from his place on her right.
“You, sir, didn’t give me much choice. You were a packaged pair.” She had the temerity to stick out her tongue.
“I could say the same of you.”
Incrementally, my body relaxed as they bickered.
The house was dark when the carriage rocked to a stop. Pax jumped down first and plucked Trix, setting her on her feet before offering me a hand to help me down.
