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And I certainly didn’t trust myself to make any good decisions on an empty stomach. And, since the Hell was locked to outsiders, there was nothing wrong with my hunting down the kitchen. Cook was watching one of their assistants knead dough.
“Ah! At last you visit me.”
“My apologises. Your food is excellent. I was hoping to find some breakfast?”
“Of course. But, of course. Now, off to the dining room. I do not host parties in my kitchen.”
“I shall trouble you no further then.” I laughed to hide my disappointment. Omega House was far more informal. Yes, I was mistress, but I was as like to make tea or some simple fare as anyone else. Here I was more mistress than ever I had been.
“Pleasure and pleasure. At least there is another who wakes at a reasonable hour. No more of laze-a-beds.” They shooed me off.
The dining roomhad one occupant when I entered at dawn. Jude lay slumped on the rug, body curled in on himself.
“Jude. What in all the world?”
He groaned and rolled onto his back. “Dammit, Pol. Let me sleep. And why’d you make me sleep on the floor, woman? I don’t kick in my sleep. It’s you.”
“Ha!” I barked out a laugh. He jerked awake and when he saw me standing over him without a pistol pointed at his head, his shoulders dropped. I didn’t want to stop hating him. I’d frankly resolved to see him strung up for the rest of his life, but Jude made it hard to hate him. And damn but Oberon’s words—that the man before had poisoned himself because he loved me—intruded whenever he was near. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.” He rolled on to knees, running a hand over his face which was covered in a beard that I knew would have a red patch on the left side.
The demand to know the why’s and wherefores of this so called thinking was thankfully interrupted when the door opened and a maid came in with a tray. The smell of coffee, bacon, eggs, filled the room and provided the distraction I needed to recentre myself and push Jude’s odd behaviour out of my head.
Better though, the five days at omega house had done me a great boon. It had become apparent that my flash had been just that. A flash and not the build up to a full blown heat. All confirmed by being near an alpha I had been intimate with, shared past heats with, and one who smelled of his and Puck’s cum. Yes, I’d noticed it yesterday. Their shared looks. The way Oberon’s scent had bloomed. We four had engaged in some forbidden acts then sat around the table as if we were a normal pack, with a chatty child to act as a distraction from the uncomfortable truth: sex complicated everything.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly jumped out of my skin when the door banged open.
Tod entered like a tornado, with his shirt untucked and shoes in one hand. He skidded to a stop at the sight of Jude who was now kneeling by Oberon’s chair. “Whatcha doin’, Jude?”
“He’s doing penance,” I told him. “Alphas who lie have to do penance. Come sit down and eat your breakfast.”
“Aunt Pol, why don’t you like alphas?” Tod asked around a mouth of bacon.
“Swallow your food before you speak. You aren’t a mother bird regurgitating its dinner for the fledglings.”
He rolled his eyes and made a big deal of chewing his food and washing it down with a large glass of milk. “Well!”
I ran a hand through my hair, teasing out the knots that had formed in the night.
“I’m thinking,” I told him when he opened his mouth to hurry me along. There were any number of answers to give him but he was a child and a smart one to boot. I’d have to be careful. “Perhaps I didn’t know many growing up. And the ones I met were not always kind to omegas.”
“Like me and omegas.”
“Oh? Do you hate omegas?”
“Omegas make alphas act stupid. And stupid alphas are dangerous. That is what uncle Puck said. He also said that it was why it was never going to work with the Steamsin.”
“Stimpson,” I corrected automatically.
“Does it matter? Uncle Puck said all the alphas were stoooooopid over your sister because she was an omega.”
“So omegas caused all the problems?”
“Everyone.” He threw out both hands, heedless that a dollop of egg was flung to land on the painting of some aristocratic alpha. “I just want to be a beta. Then everyone will ignore me and I can get away with things.”
“You get away with things, as you so vaguely call it, already.”
“Can we go to the zoo?”
