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“That they might see she is no trifling omega. That they could see her majesty. We hear people call her “queen of the high toby”. They call her “your majesty” but what of her innate majesty? No. They must witness what our omega is that they can know when we take her, that when she bares our bites on her neck that we were the ones to conquer her.”
“Conquering? Is that still your plan?” Puck flexed his hands as if he wanted to take his fists to my face.After I’d shot the ass who’d dared touch her, he’d prowled amongst the tables, latent aggression ensuring that while he was near none so much as breathed a word about our omega or what had transpired. Tonight’s doing were no doubt filtering into the rest of society but his presence ensured tongues would wag only after they had left the Hell.
“No, schatz. But the world does not need to know that. They will have their gossip and their thoughts. The truth between us matters, but the way the masses perceive us is of equal importance. Or must I remind you that our veneer of respectability is a myth allowed us by alphas whose money and power is greater than ours ever will be.”
“You do not value—”
“You value too greatly—”
The two of them spoke over each other, and surely their words proved my point. There could be one and two and more ideas at once competing for the same space and all equally valid. There were very few things in this world that were as cut and dry as Puck and Jude believed.
“She will not understand such subtleties,” Jude argued.
“Wrong.” I’d not let him speak on matters he did not understand.
“Fucking fool!” he snapped. “She sees the world in stark contrasts. You see it as shadows and must project your view on hers.”
“I have seen how she has sex,” I reminded him. “And sex is the only place I’ve seen her walls come down for long enough—”
“By the goddess! You are blind. Yes, when she makes love, there are a million iterations of her desires and truths. She weaves the world into a place far richer than reality. But when the heat in her blood has cooled, those things so glitteringly bright harden and solidify until she can only see herself and those around her. She does not, cannot find a commonality between who she is and the rest of the world. And Goddess forbid she be told her value is beyond her dynamic and abilities.”
I looked at Puck who in turn seemed unable to see anything but the passion with which Jude spoke.
“You suddenly have a lot to say.”
“On her I am as eloquent as any poet. It is only in front of her that I am struck dumb.”
“This is a mad world.” Puck ran a hand over his face, scrubbing at the stubble growing there. He released a breathy sigh and pressed a hand to Jude’s chest backing him out of the room. And all the while our gazes twisted and intertwined until I understood his meaning and had to force myself to keep looking or else relent and admit he was right.
As the door closed on them, I knew I had the time it took for Puck to lock Jude up before I must face my Robin Puck, who would have words for me, and ones no doubt I would not like to hear.
But, pup, you are wrong, my mind insisted. She saw far too much complexity in the world. Her clarity happened in gasps and breaths. And it was not her clarity I required but rather the infinite possibilities her brain could conjure, which I could then use to reinforce my own place in the world.
Plans changed, there was never a plan that was executed that did not undergo revision. What mattered was the ending. The moment when those dreams and potentials solidified into a cogent whole.
I’d happily bide my time as long as I needed. One day, of a certainty. One week, possible. But could I accommodate her longer? Perhaps I did not have the patience I so valued in myself.
However,my patience would be sorely tested by Hippolyta’s omega firmly refused to go into heat after last night’s events. A solid week since that flash heat for which we’d borrowed Conny. It seemed a distant memory.
Then this morning she’d spent time in the drawing room with Tod, who had thrown a right royal tantrum when he learned she was locked in a cage. “She must be bored!” He had shouted. “And she’ll run away and if she runs away, I’ll run away because I know where she’ll go and then you’ll never see me again!”
The threat had Jude, for once clothed and not kneeling beside my chair, howl with laughter. “Scamp, she’ll take you with her if she chooses to leave,” he said, eyes sparkling.
I wanted to wring the omega’s neck when she flounced off to take Tod to the park—on the condition that Moth and Prog, what a name was that!, accompanied them.
“Thank you,” Jude murmured. “She’ll be happy to spend time with him.”
I must have been a saint in a previous life for the goddess to have even the scales to make me such a devil in this incarnation. “Are you much of a reader? Do you know Shakesperia’s works?”
“A little.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” I asked. He nodded. “A pretty comedy on the surface, to be sure. But there is a darker element. The king of the faeries humiliates his queen because he is selfish and wants her pageboy.”
“Am I the pageboy?”
I laughed. “No. That is Tod. You are the ass he uses to humiliate his queen. And know this, my name isn’t Oberon. Nor I was not born with that name. I chose it many moons ago that I might set myself up against Hippolyta Hartwell. Puck, too, was born with a prince’s name. One he gave up to better fit in to this cold and miserable land. Before you ask, I doubt either of us will share those names that hold memories, some of which are best forgotten.”
“And?”
