Page 74 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

“Do you know Colbert?” I asked.

“No. But.” She sucked in a breath. “I do know his eldest. A beta. Solid man and should have the right to take the title but it passes to a cousin. The fortune will pass to the omega. He’s a rich prize.”

“We’ll catch ‘em,” I promised.

Oberon and Puck weren’t around when we descended but she did not remark on it, until we made the stable and they, along with Mustardseed and Peaseblossom, were already atop a pair of mounts. Pol nodded in their direction and vaulted into the saddle. “Let’s be gone.”

And we were off.

Unlike Polly, we alphas rode heavier than her slight omega perched atop her startling large bay stallion. Added to this, Puck and Oberon were unused to the bruising pace Polly set. Her mount ate up the road and we were left in her dust but still we pressed on, urging our horses to keep up.

She reined in, causing the hired four to plunge in their traces. Polly kept her seat when her bay beast reared and Oberon’s warning growl revealed his ignorance of what a superior horsewoman our omega was.

“Try, and you’ll find yourself in trouble,” she called out to the man sitting next to the driver whose sole focus was on the horses and postillions. A man behind him raised a pistol. “Hand that child’s toy over.”

I drew near and reached for the blunderbuss which was handed over. “Not loaded,” I told her.

She grunted and leapt to the ground with a careless pat on the stallion’s neck; she moved with her unnatural swiftness to the carriage’s door.

I jumped down to take her back, my own loaded pistol raised and ready.

The omega was young. Too young to be mated to any alpha, let alone the one next to him. I didn’t recognise the alpha but Polly did, freezing and her hand tightening around the door of the carriage. The far door was flung open and Puck grabbed the omega and pulled him free.

“You!” The alpha’s strangled cry was equally indignant and fearful, which made little sense until I saw the ugly scar that ran the length of his jaw. The alpha who had scared Polly her first heat was seeing his life flash before his eyes.

“At last,” she hissed. Without warning, she ripped the pistol from my hand and pulled the trigger blowing the alpha’s brains out.

“What a mess,” Oberon purred, satisfied by the gruesome sight. “I suppose you want us to, uh, tidy this up.”

“Leave him,” she snarled. “If you touch me without my permission, you meet an ugly end.”

“You swore you hadn’t been hurt,” Puck growled. “You swore it.”

“I never lied. He scared me. I defended myself. And gave him that scar. He got ten years hard labour in the Americas. I never thought to see him again. I should have taken care of him the moment I had the resources.”

“Do not be a pedant.” Oberon crowded on her other side forcing her back against the tree. “You lied.”

“And what if I had told you otherwise?”

“We’d have killed him,” Puck said without hesitation.

“And not let me confront him on my own terms?” she dared ask.

“We. You, me, Jude, and Oberon. We would have killed him and not let that burden be yours alone.”

“I’ve killed before.” That familiar, mulish lift of her chin warned she’d not be gainsaid, but these alphas were less familiar with her moods.

“In the past you were alone, but there is a we now,” I told her. Was rash enough to speak more, to tell her what burned in my heart every day. “You might never love us the way we do you. However you cannot close us off. You have one mate and will gain another two in your next heat. And not because we have knots and fuck you like no one else can.”

“Jude.” Her tone was full of warning.

“We exist, Pol.” I’d brook no argument but she was high on the triumph of this excursion.

“In my world, alpha.” Her purr made my cock ache. To rut on the side of the road while the other’s watched and then took their turn.

“Oh, little bird. You are a fool to think we don’t know who leads this quartet.”

She opened her mouth to argue but either thought better of goading him or what had happened had taken more from her than she was willing to admit. Regardless, she got back onto her horse and turned in the direction of London.

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