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“Well, my rude mechanical, we have come to the point where the queen of the faeries must awake from her dream where she is still in love with an ass and submits to her Oberon and Puck.”
“You are too clever for me.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, still damp a bath. “I mean we come to the end of the play. I shall have my queen, my Puck, and my pup, who is a creature of my making. One intended to fool the proud queen but who instead becomes her most ardent lover and keeper of her heart.”
I caught his chin and tipped his face down until I could look into eyes full of sorrow.
“You miss her.” It was not, never would be a question. Running a thumb over his bottom lip, I considered whether to tell him my plan. He might rebel or he might shut down. Easier to keep him in the dark but if he was to fit into my scheme, he needed to be prepared. “I’m taking her to the Hell again. Tomorrow night.”
He growled low in his throat. A perfect guard dog.
“But of course. And if you continue to behave, I’ll put you in clothes and you can stand at her back to protect her. Just like before.”
His eyes flashed, a hint of mirrored gold teasing at the centre. “No. I don’t care the stakes, taking her back, exposing… Fuck. Do you intend to force her heat?”
I had any number of things I wanted to taunt him with but the words that slipped free seemed crueler for their kindness. “Of course. And surely you want that too. That chance to have her in her heat but with an alpha’s knot buried into her cunt.”
He flushed and that scent of his was so rich when he became aroused. Then his nativity thinking our omega, for yes she was ours, had shut him out completely. She stole glances at all of us but when she looked at Jude her eyes screamed for him to meet her eyes. No doubt they could read each other as easily as I read Puck. And Puck! My Puck and she danced around each other in the most satisfying way. Brief touches now lingered. An unconscious deepening of intimacy.
The door bounced on its hinges and Puck barged in, his chest heaving with deep breaths and his hands fisted at his sides.
“She’ll be going into heat soon.” He sounded pained.
“Take the pup and prepare for things to be delivered to her, uh, nest.”
“I’ll be taking Jude, not your pup.”
“Schatz, you are devious,” I crooned. “Take Jude then. I shall arrange for… Mustardseed, I think, to take over for the next five?” Jude nodded. “Five days.”
22
Polly
My first heat had begun violently. No subtle shift in my scent, no slick leaks, no warning.
Instead, on the day I’d been left to my own devices in a lending library, my oldest sister and Jack, our de facto alpha bodyguard, somewhere looking at a book of etchings in the front. A strange alpha had stood near me when the cramps began. I’d crumpled to the floor, tears and slick streaming out of me and my scent filling the space in such a rush that the strange man had growled before he knew what was happening. I reached for him, begging for help, and he’d responded as his dynamic and instincts demanded. Then he’d touched me, rolling me onto my back. Pain in my lower belly—pain unlike anything I had experienced then or since—lanced though me and I’d cried out, not understanding why.
My girl’s body had begun to mature, but I was still a child and when he saw he had fallen away from me. His hands thrown up as if to defend himself against me, a weak omega incapable of thoughts beyond a mindless need for touch that I could not understand. I’d batted at him despite that before another wave of cramps had caused me to faint.
When I came to, Jack stood over the alpha whose face was bleeding and he was cupping his genitals. The other alpha must have been twice his size and yet he could not fight back against Jack’s assault. And sweet Beatrice had bundled me in her cloak, urged me to my feet, and screamed at Jack to help. Like a brother, he’d scooped me into his arms and ran back to my parents’ apartments. They’d put me to bed with some fresh bedding and barred the door. Opening it the next morning to thrust a tray full of bread and meat with a jug of barley water through the door before locking it once again. There were some who allowed a beta to help an omega through their first heat but my parents refused. We were children and had to suffer through without any relief. Five days later, I’d banged on the door, begging to be let out. Beatrice had helped me bathe and then my father sat with us, tears in his eyes, and had spoken about heats and omegas and some mythical creature called an apex omega who resisted alphas and could even have some mastery over them.
Then he told me a story, a fable, or so I believed. About a young omega whose heat had come on suddenly, in a public place. And when an alpha had attempted to take this omega, she’d lashed out and kicked the strange between the legs, in the gut, and face until his nose was broken. And a gash on his face that would never heal properly. “My dearest, dearest, I am so sorry,” he’d whispered while stroking me damp hair. I’d only learnt the truth five years later. Not a fable but a retelling of the damage I had caused the alpha. Despite the fact I had attacked him, he’d been convicted of the attempted assault of an omega and sentenced to ten years hard labour.
But by then I’d already been branded an apex omega, abomination, and shame to my family. Andy hatred of alphas already been cemented. My mother’s dislike of my unshielded anger. My father’s pleas that I restrain myself in front of alphas for I disconcerted them and should learn to please them instead. “No alpha will want an omega who growls or can bark. If only you could quash that impulse when they are about. Use your sister as a pattern card.” I could have hated Beatrice but instead she was my one consolation. Sneaking me dildos and dirty etchings for my heats, encouraging my bark to startle Jack, and whenever I felt it to be too much and hid away, she would sit with me and read stories full of omegas who broke convention. From those I painted a picture of a world where alphas were forced to be on equal footing to omegas. Where I was nothing to be remarked on. Years coloured this with a bitterness that fed my hatred for the dynamic that I associated with violence—physical and emotional—against my own.
Outside of my family. The only one who knew was Jude. Jude who had betrayed me, yet had never made me feel a fraction of fear I had experienced as a girl. He’d been an alpha always, I’d accepted that. The alpha’s bane had suppressed his knot and the other physiological features of an alpha. But it could not have changed him.
And now I was on the brink of a heat where I knew alphas would encroach and demand my attention. And worse still, my resolve to bar them, to beg for a beta instead, had crumbled. Their hold around my conscious tightened by the day and for the first time being bound by an alpha intrigued more than frightened me.
I didn’t dare mention that I worried I’d experience a shock heat for fear they’d turn into mother hens and keep me locked in the house for as long as. But in the aftermath of the disaster in the Hell, I’d woken more aware of my body than ever before. I’d taken Moth into my confidence, asking him to call Peaseblossom, so that they might care for Tod for the next few days.
I shoved open the windows in residency’s drawing room. A faint breeze relieved some of the oppressive stillness of the room but the city’s smells and discordant noises made my skin crawl.
On the landing, just within earshot, I heard Tod. “What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”
And someone’s hushed reply. “Your aunt Polly is going into heat. So we are going to visit Omega House for a couple of days until she feels better.”
“I want to say goodbye!”
