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Throughout his speech a frown pinched my forehead. “This sounds like a blessing.”
His face twisted in what one might generously call a smile. “Polly once pointed a gun at my head for making Viola cry. And Jack was the one who helped me see sense with my Hartwell. Consider this passing on advice from one alpha to another, or rather a pair.”
“A threesome.” Puck’s voice was all satisfaction. “Jude is an alpha.”
The duke’s laugh had him bending over at the waist. When he righted himself, his cheeks were stained with tears. “Dammit. You’ve lost me a bet. A hundred pounds and a speech in the lords about abolishing the omega price.” I looked over my shoulder to see Puck blinking. “Viola told me at our wedding that they were a mated pair and he’d managed to hide his scent by some witchcraft. Never bet against a Hartwell, you’ll never win.”
“What have kind of family have we gotten involved with.” Puck muttered. “Never wanted to be associated with the gentry.”
“Oh, a wild one,” the duke answered. “I can see you are as little prepared to mate a Hartwell omega as I was.” Then his face grew serious and at once he appeared to be an alpha to be reckoned with. “Now assure me she is well fed, not breaking things, and has not been raped and I can return to my wife and relieve her fears.”
Puck’s growl met mine and they deepened in displeasure.
“Dare you say that? That we would rape her?” I asked rising and ready to throttle the man, no matter that he was larger and known to be good with his fists. No matter that I had Puck at my back, I’d rip his throat open for the insult. “Dare you say that!”
“I dare.” The duke looked damned lazy, but his eyes flashed. “There are alphas out there who’d not care how they knotted an omega. And the one you’ve got is wild and free. You’ve got her locked up somewhere. Fine. To each their own. But Hippolyta is not one to stay prisoner.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You chose her. Kidnapped her. Don’t return the goods–”
“You are insulting to our omega, sir.” The snarl that came from deep within me was far more animal than human.
“Dammit. You’re more sanctimonious than I could have imagined. Not being insulting to her! Those damned omegas can’t be insulted, far too thick skinned! No. I mean for you to know this is not some game for you to play. She’s a woman. A human being with feelings and desires and fears, same as anyone. Not some rarified creature or freak of nature with her mirrored-gold eyes. Have a care, will you?”
Alpha aggression clogged the air and an irrational part of me wished for my little bird who could no doubt set this hulking member of the aristocracy tuck tail and flee. Puck would do as well but the sight of Polly doing it was far sweeter. “Puck, dearest. Show our unwelcome guest out. Make sure not to trip him on the stairs. He’s ugly but I doubt if his duchess will like us to send him back completely unrecognisable. And then ensure that our little bird has not broken anything.”
Puck moved swiftly for my command served both of us well. Puck could manhandle the duke and perhaps throw a punch at the highborn alpha, which would soothe his roiling passions. Mine, however, were alleviated by lobbing a delicately made clock with intricately decorated enamels made by an Austrian jeweller into a priceless Italian chandelier. The great glittering thing swung with the impact, the drops tinkling and flashing as if an earthquake had shaken the foundation of the building. To my delight, the timepiece had become caught. I’d tell the servants to leave it when they lowered the chandeliers to light the candles. It would be great sport if it should break the skull of some popinjay or dandy as they fritted away their inherited fortune.
I ran my hands through my hair, pushing the thick stuff off my face. My body and mind were restless. With Puck gone for the moment, I could not demand he whip my demons away. The only other outlet was far less satisfying. Work. I’d drown myself in the stuff until the dust had settled and I could visit my guests. Yes. I’d take the edge off with the accounts and sifting through information gathered by my whores. Then I would go and see how my pets were doing. I had planned for years. Yes, I had been patient. A few more days or weeks were nothing.
11
Polly
Imade it through the past three days and nights by sucking on cloth soaked in laudanum brought to me by Puck before the Hell’s guests arrived. Goddess, it grated that he continued to supply me as he had no doubt supplied Jude. A pair of addicts needing drugs to make it through the day. Except I was no addict but oblivion was better than my racing thoughts and the humiliation that my own thrice damned pride kept me here. Their cage could not hold me without more precautions. No, all that prevented my escape was my promise that in exchange for my sister’s safety I would sell myself to a pair of men who were nothing more than alphas who owned a gambling den and managed an army of whores.
And with the sweet floating feeling, Jude’s words of three days ago were lost to time. No matter that I wanted to act as if they’d never been spoken, I could not recall more than the wrenching of my heart out of my chest and watching that delicate organ, so carefully guarded, crushed by the one person I had trust more than any other.
Oberon’s words, however, had been burnt into my psyche. Alpha’s bane is a poison, Hippolyta. Think, Jude here has been poisoning himself for five years that he might stay by your side.
Poisoning himself? Poisoning my soul, more like. Making me love him, being grateful that he was a beta, and that I had not been seduced by an alpha’s scent and knot. Was I so weak willed or my dynamic’s influence over my body and mind so strong that against my desires I had been drawn to the first unrelated alpha with whom I had spent any time with?
Memories filled my dreams. Our first kiss on a hot June day when he’d walked in on me naked as I wrote letters to my sisters. My sitting room was cramped with boxes and trunks full of items pilfered from alphas and my belongings sent by my mother after she had kicked me out of her house. The scent of the air before a storm filled the space–perhaps that was his alpha nature fighting against the alpha’s bane–and I’d felt slick gather between my legs. That day I’d stood to my full height, put back my shoulders, and stared him down. And goddess the hunger in his eyes made my dynamic immaterial. Those were the eyes of a man looking on a woman he desired.
“You should have knocked. The disrespect–”
“You’re naked.”
“As you can see.” I had wondered if he could hear my heartbeat for it beat so hard and fast I could feel my pussy throb.
“You’re dripping slick.” His so low and rumbling it could have been mistaken for an alpha’s growl. The sound, the way his strides ate up the distance between us until I could smell the sweet musk of man and feel the heat of his body. Our eyes met, souls leaving our bodies and twisting together. Goddess, it had reminded me of those moments of madness when the world came to a standstill. Mirroring each other faster than my beating heart, we had moved into an embrace so natural I had thought we’d fused into one. The kiss had been a raw meeting of mouths. He’d picked me up, urging me to wrap my legs around his waist, squeezing my thighs tight around him, arms clutching him close while he fumbled with his breeches. We became locked together without the swell of a knot. And the stretch of his cock that had become an addiction.
He had been my true north.
Even then, I’d an inkling he was not quite a beta. Perhaps, like me, he felt caught between dynamics. I was called apex omega, but easily they could have called me a defective alpha whose ruts were more like heats. No, I’d not let those voices intrude. I was an omega. A powerful omega not something defective or unnatural.
“I’ll go and see him,” I told the silence. “I must confront him.”
The sharp scrape of the bolt being thrust back had me running fingers over my hair. The last I’d seen the alphas, I’d demanded a comb or brush. They’d promised a delivery of all the necessities I might need while in their care. Today those things were supposed to arrive.
But instead of Puck or Oberon, Moth was the one to step through the door with a frown on his brow as he took in my surroundings.
