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I sat on the floor and picked up the crinkled paper he’d been lying on.
“Let’s go to Omega House!” Tod whined and climbed into my lap, looping his arms around my neck and nuzzling my throat—scent marking me. “Please?”
“What did you do?” I brushed the black curls off his forehead. Soft as silk and curling in a pretty way.
“I told uncle Jude I didn’t want to learn my numbers. They clump together. I don’t like them.”
“And then what did you do?”
“Nuffing.”
“Liar. I bet you kicked his shins. What did Oberon and Puck say?”
“That I should be respectful.”
“What makes you think I’ll not giving you a spanking and send you back to apologise?”
“Because you aren’t respec’ful of ‘em.”
I pondered and could find no fault in his logic. Besides his plan suited my own thoughts. A trip out of this stuffy house. Just the thing. “Very well. We will go. But you must do everything I or your uncles say while we are there.”
“Deal. Just don’t tell them where we are going. Pinky promise.” I hooked my pinky with his and vowed to keep the information to myself. It was an easy promise to make when I knew they’d guess the moment one of them realised we were both missing.
As they tooka carriage instead of walking—as Tod insisted—, my mate and alphas arrived barely twenty minutes after Tod and I trudged up the garden path.
It had been a gruelling two hour walk, and I had immediately thrown Tod at the gardener, telling him to weed and get muddy if he wanted to have something sweet after his supper. The boy had taken off whooping, arms thrown over his head as he sprinted towards the garden.
“I’ll have ‘im exhausted for you, no worries, majesty,” Henry, the grumbling beta gardener, said. “Now, you go rest yourself. Or you’ll be biting heads off as surely as—”
Throwing him a rude gesture, I gritted me teeth before walking the last hundred yards to the door. Nothing was likely to put me in a nastier temper than walking nearly five miles, much of it at an advanced upward angle, from Picadilly to Hampstead. With the addition of a ten year old eager to gawk and comment on everything he saw it was even worse but picture of my alphas’ faces when they stormed into the garden? I’d walk a thousand miles in shoes three sizes too small. All I had to do was wait.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t even made it to the house and the chance to put my feet up before three ferocious looking beasts shoved open the front gates and barrelled up the cockleshell path. Puck led their charge, his hands fisted at his side and his mouth looking grim. His bite on my neck pulsed and I resisted the urge to touch the proof of our mating. My resistance fractured when I saw him glance at the exposed, still healing wound and my fingers reached up to trace the scarring skin. Flanking him, Oberon and Jude were a step behind. Whether they consciously decided to defer to Puck or not, I could not say but instinct told me they would follow his lead in this. Perhaps, even if there was no mark, or all three had marked me, they would still follow his lead. We had a connection less tangled than my one with Oberon or tinged with distrust as my one with Jude.
And yet…
And yet something warmer seeped through my body.
I bowed my head, hoping to hide my smile but they caught it.
“What are you smiling about?” Puck asked. “Do you realise how dangerous it was for you to walk here so soon after your heat?”
Soon? A week? Well let them think twenty-four hours of sexual bliss was as bad as all that. And suddenly there was nothing to smile about. My feet hurt, my shoulder ached from being pulled hither and thither by Tod, and my mood could generously be described as waspish. “If you must nag, then can we at least do it inside?”
“If you wish.” He grabbed my arm, squeezing just tight enough to let me know he meant business. “I don’t like worrying that my mate is running around London with my nephew and no protection.”
“Later. Nag me later.” I wanted a bath, my bed, to sleep for a year and wake to find this madness nothing more than a mad dream worked up after eating spoiled meat. And I wanted to wake and find these impossible men there as well so that I could just spite them every day for the rest of our lives.
“Now you look a if you’ve been forced to drink sour milk.” Oberon chuckled. Of the three he appeared the least phased by my elopement.
“Or eat spoiled meat.” Frowns all round that that I brushed aside. Heading to the house, I glanced over my shoulder to find all three trailing after me. Perhaps prowling would be a better word. But at the last moment, Jude held out his arm.
“Can we enter?” he asked. “Alphas…”
“I sent them away after I collected Tod.” Licking my lips I considered my next words. How much did I trust? “There is another secure location. I’ll not say more than that for the moment.”
Instead of growls of displeasure, these alphas nodded and waited until I’d stepped inside my house before following. I tried to see it through their eyes. Shabby.
“Not what you expected?” I asked, hoping to forestall Oberon’s commentary on the decor.
