Page 22 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

“Dare to speak to me so?” She sounded like an empress. “You dare? Unhand me!” She twisted in Puck’s arms and he released her. Stumbling forward, she righted herself and stepped up to Oberon. They were a picture of contrasts. One cold, tall, and perfectly groomed. The other more fiery than her hair, short, and looking like she’d been dragged backwards through a hedge. “So you have destroyed every connection I have to the world outside your kingdom. What do you want next? My body? Do you want me on my knees? Shall I spread my legs for a copper a go? Are you the kind of alpha who would rape an omega?”

“You know what you are to me.” His eyes met mine. The alpha who rarely showed an emotion watched me with glee. We all knew he could do nothing to her. She was too powerful. I however was weak. And could be tortured. “Strip, for me Hippolyta,” he commanded.

I watched, a horrible twisted feeling building in my gut, as my omega began to pull at the laces of her dress.

“You’re humiliating her,” I said through gritted teeth. Then to her. “You don’t have to do this.”

Oberon didn’t shift his lazy-eyed stare, but a smirk pulled across his face, almost comically cruel. “But she likes it. Can’t you scent her slick? Or has the alpha’s bane destroyed everything that makes you an alpha?”

It had and in a room full of alpha pheromones, an omega’s arousal would be hard to catch to my blunted senses. “Oberon, even you could not scent my slick,” she laughed. “I’ll strip if it pleases you, though.”

“It pleases me.”

“Polly you don’t have to do this,” I pleaded with her. One uncertain step turned into two until I shielded her from their assessing gazes. “Please, pretty Polly.”

Her eyes flashed. “Get away. This does not concern you.”

“Your concerns our mine. I—”

She slapped me. Her palm connected with the scratches on my face enhancing the burn.

“You think this is humiliating?” She asked. “To strip in front of men? In front of these alphas for whom I care not, have never given more than an hour’s thought to.”

“Yes,” I ground out.

“No. Their lewd words and desires are nothing compared to what you did to me. Betrayed my trust beyond repair.” She choked on her next words and with a defiant toss of her head ordered me aside. “These men have bought my body. Let them view the wares.”

“Fine. But remember this, Pol, they had to buy you. You gave me your heart. And until I die, it belongs to me.” I turned to the two waiting alphas. “You might have some claim to her. If you bought all of her, it means you bought her heart and since that is mine, you have me too.”

Then, the demon I refused to acknowledge broke free. Like a man possessed—perhaps I was—I jerked off my coat, discarded my shirt, and pulled my breeches down about my knees. “Do you like why you see?” I sneered. Knowing their eyes were focused on where my knot should be but years of taking alpha’s bane had made it defective. Their eyes were on the metal bar through the tip of my cock. An extravagant show of my devotion to my omega. “Well? Do. You. Like. What. You. See?”

“Spin for me.” Oberon matched the request with a twirl of his finger. I did a slow pivot and under the three pairs of eyes felt my cock get hard. By the time I faced him, I was fully erect. “Very much. I like what I see very, very much.”

The humiliation, I had to accept, aroused me. Damn that it was two alphas when the only person I should want now hated me.

“What do you want me to do with him?” Puck asked and to my surprise, he watched Polly rather than Oberon when he spoke.

“He’s dead to me. His fate is of no consequence.” Polly’s eyes were on my cock. Not clouded by lust or reflecting mirrored-gold. No, she was a snarling fury prepared to cut it off. She spun away, her back stiff. “Take me back to my cage,” she demanded. “You’ve made your point.”

“Pol—” I lurched towards her but because my breeches had stuck around my knees I tumbled to the ground. I looked up, hoping she might glance back. Perhaps there would be some pity or hurt there. No. Her chin raised and eyes straight ahead, she swept out of the room, Puck trailing after her. Even when she was a prisoner, we followed her lead.

9

Oberon

Leaving Puck to deal with Hippolyta, I gave the pitiful Jude a once over. He’d not been chained but after clambering to his feet, stood before me as still as if wrapped in irons.

“Are you even an alpha?” I pondered. He replied with a stony silence but when I caught his chin and tipped it down so that I could look in those furious eyes he closed them, shutting me out. I shook my head, tutting his stubbornness.

His prostrating himself made things… more interesting, complicated as well. He’d been a joke between me and Puck. We’d poisoned and sent the desperate, heartbroken greenhorn into the alpha hater’s path. Against the odds, he’d succeeded in penetrating—I smirked at my choice of words—Polly’s inner circle. After a few months the brat had proven himself a useless spy but it soon became clear why. Polly had stolen his heart as skilfully as she pilfered jewels from her aristocratic peers.

Jude evolved into a different kind of joke for us. They’d become lovers. Nearly five years and he’d been the one to capture her notoriously fickle affections. The departed Sarah had flitted in and out for two years but Jude had made a home with her. And goddess I wanted to know if it resembled a nest. It was almost too good to be true that he’d revealed his deception and placed himself under my foot within a day of caging her. Yet to crush him completely? No. A waste for so many reasons, some of which were hidden from me. For now, though, he must not feel too secure. After all, he seemed to find the precarious and degrading nature of his situation arousing. Thusly, I would treat him with the merciless weapon of humiliation.

“Mr Jude Bottom, nothing but a rude mechanical in love with the queen of London’s underworld. Methinks you sought to protect my queen from me. Thought yourself a knight when you are nought but a pawn.”

“She’s not yours,” he snarled. His eyes tracked me as I circled around him. He wasn’t the fighter Puck was but his muscles were impressive and he carried his weight well. “You don’t deserve her.”

“Do you know how pathetic you sound? Clamouring after a woman who not ten minutes ago said you were dead to her? How very quaint.” I frowned. He wasn’t a stupid man and had shown an instinct for ferreting out information before he’d turned on me, his original master. “You are the same boy who came begging for money so he could buy an omega. Placing omegas up on some pedestal. They are no more or less than any other creature–alpha or beta. Or whatever you are.”

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