Page 42 of Omega's Virtue: Part Two (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 3)

PAX

We’d arrangedourselves in the dining room, but I’d yet to arrange my feelings which boiled under the surface. Trust them? I did. But understand how to permit them lives outside of my careful plans? I’d planned on tying Beatrice to her nest when we’d arrived London, yet here was Jack returned from an agreed on conference with Puck and I’d lost my temper. Before, I’d not care if he smelled like others. He’d been his own man. Now that he was mine, the need to mark him up to that all others knew was undeniable and urgent. I looked at Beatrice, who sat forward on her sofa, eyes on my face as if she could read my every thought. The thought alarmed me because I could not understand her. She’d called me Benedict for the first time. Surely that meant something… I met her eyes. Was she ready? Had she come to the conclusion that she really belonged to me? To us?

“Are you going to let us share your nest tonight?” I asked abruptly.

“What?” Clearly confused by my change in topic, she glanced at Jack, who shrugged. “I… I thought you understood. It isn’t that… I’m not used to sleeping with other people. I get too hot. Then I can’t fall asleep and I lie there looking at the ceiling,” she sucked in her lip and refused to meet my eyes.

“It stops now… Please?” I asked her gently. Feelings weren’t so gentle, therefore my words would have to… persuade. “I want us to be together in every way a pack is meant to be.”

“But…”

“No. You’ve not given it much of a chance and if you don’t share the nest, then how can you learn to sleep with us?”

“Pax!” Jack barked. I flinched, knowing I’d gone too far, unable to take my words back.

“How… How dare you? It is my nest. I choose who is permitted in it. And while you are welcome there, if I so choose as to sleep there on my own for the rest of my life, then that is my right.”

“Trix. Enough. It was a reasonable request.”

“Reasonable? To order me about as if I was a servant instead of your omega and mate? I am your wife. You did not mate me because of my sweet and docile temper. Or did you think my disposition would change simply because I’d been knotted and mate marked…” She took a deep breath. My cock twitched because her cheeks were pink and her breasts heaved. Heaving breasts during an argument were the downfall of many a man or woman. “Look in my eyes and not at my tits. If you thought that, you could change my mind. Think again. If my breasts are more important to you than what I have to say, then I might revoke my invitation to fuck me in my nest. Fuck me in public, yes. But from now on you will not fuck me in my nest until I grant you leave to enter there once again.”

There was nothing to be said, for the omega was right. It was her nest. We could not escape that fact and as alphas, even more so as her mates, we must needs respect that most sacred space.

“I—”

“Good day, alphas.”

Jack growled, and Beatrice bared her teeth at him. Then she closed the door on us. I waited with bated breath in case she locked us out, but there was no sharp snick.

“Fuck you, Pax.” Jack snapped.

“I—”

“I know you must have lots to say but not now.”

He rose, ready to leave the dining room rather than hear me out. I followed, grabbing him by the back of his coat and pulling him back against my chest. Was he going to find some tavern and fight? After I had forbade it? “Do not…”

“I’m going for a walk. You might have warned me against fighting at times like this, but I don’t give a fig for your rules. That little omega, though? She’d happily rip my balls from my body and cut my cock off if I came home with a single mark on me. I like my balls and my cock.”

“I—This is my house. My rules,” I ground out. Everywhere people defied me.

In a flash, our positions were reversed, and he had my back against the door and his arm against my throat. “You are a posh twat. A lord so high and mighty, the world must bend to your will. But with us? Between the three of us? There can be no hierarchy. There can be none above the other. Even when we play our depraved games. When we tie her up. When you fuck me like I’m your bitch.” I was frozen at the ferocity of his words. “No matter all that, there is none above. None to dictate to the rest. That is why she is so furious. Not because you want to be in her nest. I want to be in her nest. But you must have it your way. Force her, and she won’t stand for that. Do you want to crush her spirit? Have her so beaten down by your commands that the fire leaves her eyes? She’ll not be the woman who makes your knot ache, your balls hang heavy and full even though you’ve emptied your seed in her more times than you can count. Back at Ayleigh, I was wrong, and you were right. Her bravery was everything we should praise, not put down. Shoe’s on the other foot now.”

His words cut through me. Flayed me. Left me bleeding.

“Tell her you are sorry, beg her forgiveness if you must. Make it right.” He released me and headed out of the house.

“Where are you going?” My question sounded weak. He’d dealt me a blow, seemed not to care the damage he’d done.

“Pax, I am no more yours to order around than Beatrice. I go for my walk. Stay put, go out, sleep as you will. I’ll be in our…” He flushed hot at the way he said that word. “I’ll be back in our bed before the one o’clock bell.”

Our bed. The words soothed the alpha side of me that hated the fact both my mates had rejected me—that my own stupidity had made me trip up in a desire to be with them in every way possible.

I walked back into the bedroom. Standing in the centre of the room, I wondered how it had come to this. There had been any number of miscommunications, but her heat, our mating surely that had solved the larger hurdles. Instead, my mates rejected my efforts to bring us closer, to be the triad we were meant to be.

A glance at the clock showed the hour was not so late. I’d not wait at home like some pathetic lovesick pup. I was a man of action and purpose, which forced me to leave my mate on her own sketching, silently, in the drawing room. She’d not want to hear my words, and I respected her too much to force her to listen. For if there was one place I never expected to go begging for… No. I did not beg. I merely sought information about my mate, which only someone who’d known her since her girlhood could provide. And the sooner I spoke to Mrs Markham, the sooner I could understand how to regain control.

I called for Meeker and, as calmly as possible, told him how it was to be.

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