Page 11 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

Puck would have none of it. There was no love lost between us. “She’s played Lady bountiful long enough. She knows what she is doing.”

“My Lord, I shall take care of myself.” I assured Paxton because what else could I do? “Take care of my sister. She is brave and headstrong and loves you. Very well, Robin Puck take me and do your worst.”

“I go with them. To help your sister. Go on, return to your new lord and master.” Though I hardly knew him, I trusted my instincts and his bearing told me he was impatient to be gone. There was a time constraint I did not know.

I caught a sharp breath and a scent tickled my senses. A faint, familiar smell. Sarah. Of course, they were lovers as well. I knew then that he went for her. What was my sister to him? Nothing but some omega mated to a pair of alphas. Sarah, though, was as dear to him as she was to me.

“Puck, bring Sarah back?” My voice went up in a question, but I could not meet his eye.

“Of course.” Puck sounded so sure that I knew I could believe him. “She’ll be fine.”

Caught up in my own concerns I did not notice Moth until he’d grabbed my arm and began pulling me back towards the Hell. My will to fight melted away as the realisation I had no control over the events about to unfold took hold.

“Inside with you,” Moth muttered. “Drexler has people preventing people from leaving the room but a brawl will bring the talk and attention won’t be wanting.”

5

Polly

Belatedly I realised I must on some token struggle to protect the fact I knew Moth.

“Let me go!” I snarled as Moth, dragged me up the stairs. Appeared to drag me for he would sooner dance a jig at court with nothing but his dignity than cause me any harm.

“Now, now, none of your tantrums,” he groused. “Gonna have enough of a headache with Mr Drexler. If I must deal with your temper, majesty, then I might take up the Fancy again and let Puck or the colonel do it for me.”

Normally I would laugh at his grumbling nagging but the stakes were too high, the price too steep.

“Unhand me!” I pulled viciously against his grip and let me go in surprise causing me to stumble on the top step. Crashing into the bannister, I hit my face into the delicately wrought iron balusters. I cried out in pain but did not dare touch my cheek. It already hurt too much.

A pair of beta’s stepped into the hall but at a shout from Moth disappeared back into the room they’d come out of. “Watch that door and make sure none come out,” he snapped at one of the footman who, eyes wide as he watched me, moved in front of the door.

“Dammit.” I righted myself. The night had so thoroughly gone against my plans. Anyone’s plans, for I must concede that Oberon and Puck looked almost half as put out as I knew myself to be. “You’ll want to get information to the others. I’ll be staying here. I’m—”

“Enough of that.” Moth stooped to inspect my injury. “Thank goddess you missed your eye and no blood.” He scooped me up in his arms and turned to walk down the stairs. “Need to show this to a doctor. I’m worried you’ve hit your head and gone loopy. You’re no good to yourself if you meet him with a throbbing noggin. Speaking from experience, majesty.”

“Put me down and take me to him.” I elbowed him in the chest but it was like hitting brick. Prevented from helping my sister, I must exorcise the demon inside me. “Oberon and I have a score to settle.”

Moth set me on the landing with a thud. “You take yourself to him then. Drexler’ll will have my balls for dice if he thinks I marked your face.”

I watched the man who worked for me and Oberon. His loyalties were, I thought, still with me but I knew he enjoyed his work here. That he took pride in being recognised as one of the best bare knuckle boxers in living memory. Such was the game we played. Each trying to draw the intimates of the other in to a web of intrigue.

“I promise that while I’m an intimate of this Hell, any injury to my person will be my own fault,” I assured him. Thus committed, I dusted my hands on my skirts and patted down my hair, regretting there was no mirror to see how badly bruised my face was. Beatrice’s fortune was in her hands and those of her mates and Puck. I must put them all out of my mind. My own future and what I made of my bargain with Oberon was the only thing I had any control over.

My hand on the doorknob, I heard a gasp to my left and looked to see a servant carrying a large platter with a cut crystal glasses and a matching decanter full of a deep red wine.

“Are you taking that to Drexler?” I asked her.

“Yes, ma’am… I mean, Miss Hartwell.”

“Polly will do. Here, there.” I indicated the stairs and from the street the city of London, this country we lived in, and from there the world. “You and I were born breathing the same air.”

“But…”

“May I take that?” I relieved her of the tray before her protest could find voice. “And if you open the door for me that should do very nicely.”

I disconcerted her. And no surprise there. She wondered, no doubt, what may-madness had taken me. An omega behaving so forceful and in a den of gamblers, all of them alphas and betas. The residents of the Hell must get used to seeing me about for I doubted Oberon would let me go so easily.

“Thank you…?”

---