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“Fine.” He is back to scowling at me. “I’m fucking claiming her now.”
“I saw the letter first,” I say, half-meaning it as a joke, for his sudden swing from vague interest to full savage bastard about to claim a mate is a little disconcerting.
“You can’t call fucking dibs,” he scoffs, clearly taking me seriously. “We are not eying some lass in the local tavern.” He screws the letter up and tosses it into the fire, collects the envelope from the table, and does the same with that.
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
They hiss and crackle on the fire.
“Do you want anyone to see that?”
I shake my head slowly.
“Good. Then we are in agreement.”
“Agreement for what?”
“Are you simple? Claiming her,” he says.
“You mean us both to claim her?” I ask, because this needs some fucking clarification.
He shrugs. “Why not?”
Okay, so we are both claiming her. “I do not know the fucking lass,” I say, backpedaling as I break out in a cold sweat. I have met her exactly once and, as memorable as that meeting was, I do not know her. Yet I have suffered through the many stories of her beauty, of her charm, of her smile, of her mischief, and they make me feel like I know her too. I can admit I have conjured fantasies from the picture he painted from his last visit home, when he found her fully matured, telling me in detail about her ample tits and ass, her face, her shy smile. “It is not common in Hydornia for an omega to take more than one mate, and she is Hydornian. If I’d had a chance to read the letter properly, I might have had more information on how certain her mother is that Freya is an omega. From what I read, it sounded like unconfirmed speculation.”
His brows pinch together. “I didn’t read that far.”
“No.” I stab a finger in the direction of the fire, which is still hissing as the paper disappears. “We shall never know now that you’ve tossed the letter on the fire like an idiot.”
“Idiot? Do not call me a fucking idiot. Or I will claim the lass myself.”
“I have already called dibs,” I point out, which is a juvenile claim to make, and for the second time in as many minutes. But the knowledge of an omega, the elusive prize every alpha dreams of, has regressed my mental capacity to that of Arnold on scenting a fertile female cat.
Aston gives me an up-down look. “You’re a penniless bastard with no standing in any clan. How are you going to claim an omega?”
I hadn’t thought that part through—hadn’t thought any of this through. “Why would you share her with me?” Our relationship places power and dominance more readily with me, yet I sense my disadvantage in this matter. I don’t fucking like it.
He shrugs and grins, stalking closer. “Why not? You know I planned to mate the lass on my return, thinking it the right time to broach the matter with her mother, and that I would do it whether she was an omega or not. It was always at the back of my mind, though. A hope for Freya with both of us.”
He did not fucking mention the both of us part before. It is true we have often shared lasses during our deployments. Still, this is something different. “Sharing a mate is a little different from sharing a lass for a quick rut.”
“We will work it out,” he says. “Do you want to give her up? Let some other bastards take her? In Imperium lands, where we have fought on occasion, omegas take on three or four mates, sometimes as many as five or six. And clansmen often share a mate, even a beta, if she is congenial.”
I hold up a hand to cut him off. “Fuck.” I still cannot get my head around the Imperium ways. “How would that even work with six mates? It would be like a fucking queue.” I am a lusty male who often takes two or more lasses to my bed. I can’t reconcile the idea of sharing a lass with six similarly lusty males.
He smirks suddenly. “I like watching you rut a lass. You like watching me rut a lass. Freya is the prettiest lass you have ever seen. I always knew she was going to become an omega. Whatever it says in the rest of the letter, I’m convinced of it. It is better if she does not know yet and has not revealed. That gives us time to plan.”
I swallow thickly. He is moving ahead with this very boldly, and very rapidly. But I’d be lying to myself if I wasn’t all in. “Her king won’t let us claim her. Omegas are rare, and they have strange rules in her kingdom.”
“Well, if she’s already mated, there’s not much anyone can do, now, is there?”
I am conflicted. Part of me is in denial that we can claim the lass, yet also enticed. Common practice dictates there should be wooing. Only, wooing can take time… I rub the back of my neck, where pressure begins to pulse. Her king will allocate her to some alpha bastard at a whim, especially with her father gone, who might have been able to apply some sway regarding choices.
Her father might have approved of Aston, given their families are acquainted, even before they built a deeper relationship through their service in the war.Might.He is still a barbarian, subject to prejudices of every kind. I’m not convinced her father’s congeniality would have stretched to both of us—two barbarian alphas, one with shifter blood, claiming his daughter.
“Two is better for her safety. I’ve heard of them being snatched by the Blighten on occasion or humans who sell them on to the orc bastards. Which is why it is better to share. Also, they are very fucking lusty, from all I have heard.”
“Fuck,” I mutter gruffly. “We should not be fucking discussing this. The lass has not yet been wooed.”
