Page 75 of Omega's Dream (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 4)

I looked at Mustardseed. “You can take care of the omega?”

“Aye, I’ll get him home. Go after her majesty.”

We returnedto Omega House close to dawn. The horses clattered into the small stableyard to the back of the house but it was up to us to unsaddle and rub them down. Polly was all jumpy, like she could run ten miles without getting winded. Worse, she had kept silent.

“We’ll have to fuck her to sleep,” Puck muttered to me. I rewarded him with a tired smile.

“She’ll take you up on that.”

“On what?” Polly came over with a determined look on her face.

“Sex.”

Her shoulders dropped, a heavy sigh leaving her. “Would you believe that I’m actually quite tired?”

“Never.” I grinned, pulling her close and pressing my lips against hers. She tasted sweetly of sweat and close as we were, I could see her brow was damp. “Feverish?” I whispered.

She gave me a quick nod. “Not long.”

Heat. She meant her heat. For it stood to reason she’d have another one so soon since there were two more alphas who had shared their cum with her, their intention to mate and claim her. And her own desires, until recently so buried and confused, demanded their bites to sooth the fire in her blood. “No, not long, Pol.”

Our next kiss couldn’t have been more different. Biting, primal in its hunger. Our journey had been hard for she’d set a blistering pace but with my omega in my arms, I was prepared to ride to the farthest corner of the world.

“Sleep, please,” she whispered. “The bed here won’t fit everyone.”

“Take Puck. I’m sure Jude and I won’t kill each other.”

I bit my lip rather than snap at him. Since her heat, Oberon’s shell had cracked. A brittleness that had not been there before. But tonight I was too tired to care.

By the following morning,one thing was clear. Polly’s heat was near. She was snappish and disagreeable about everything. When it came down to our evening meal, which Tod was set to join, her temper was such that Oberon sent him to bed rather than put the boy through her tantrum. No other word to describe her when she complained the steak was too well cooked when the centre was barely warm.

“Sit,” I barked at her. The growl in the back of her throat sent a familiar shiver down my spine and only years of knowing her prepared me for her attack. But the weight of a fork was different to a knife and her aim was off. The utensil was easily batted side and when she reached for another weapon, I was at her side, her wrist in my hand. “You can’t be fighting everyone the whole time. You’ll run yourself ragged.”

I watched her eyes fluttered closed as she mastered herself. What I hadn’t said, and never would in front of Oberon or Puck, is that she and I knew her temper frayed and her inclination towards violence surfaced before her heat. Goddess, I didn’t want to let me thoughts wander in that direction. Couldn’t or I’d be hard again and needing more than Puck rubbing his hand on my cock under the table like he had been throughout the meal. I’d need the feel of her tight, wet quim.

“Oh for the sake of the goddess, why must you turn alpha at this moment?” she snapped back in the same way she had when I’d come home drunk and knocked over a stack of trunks. My heart kicked inside my chest, kicked again so hard I thought my ribs might break. Her cheeks grew hot and she looked away. “I suppose you always were.”

“Release her, pup.” I shrugged Oberon’s hand off my shoulder. I was no pup.

“I won’t apologise for talking sense to you, Hippolyta.” I let every part of my alpha loose. She needed to see that this was, that she was not some game to me but everything.

“Would you like him punished, little bird?”

“Oh? Punished?” Her eyes snapped open and met the gaze of the alpha behind me. “Yes. Cards. He hates them and has no skill.”

My joints cracked as I fisted my hands, praying for delivery from the pair of them.

“I don’t know which of you is worse, but watching pretty boy lose his temper is delicious.” Puck lounged in his chair, hand conspicuously on his cock. Everyone was hard tonight, the chance to fall into rut on a hair trigger.

I threw my hands in the air and watched as Polly rooted around in a drawer for a battered back of cards.

And so the longest night of my life began.

“You cheated.” Oberon tossed his cards on the table. “Another.”

“It is easy to cheat a cheater,” she said, preening for his benefit, gathering the cards and shuffling them again. And a second time because she enjoyed the way we stared at her hands.

He drummed his fingers on the table, the emerald carved with an unfamiliar coat of arms. Then his eyes met each of ours in turn. “Raise the stakes?”

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