9. Rook
CHAPTER 9
Rook
I sipped my wine and tried to ignore the headache pounding behind my eyes.
What I desperately want is to rip this tie and suit off, but I’ve learned from years as a politician that you just have to suck your nut up and deal with things as they are.
That includes this wedding reception.
I moved through the reception crowd with metronomic regularity, shaking hands and thanking the guests for coming. Piper is supposed to stay beside me, but she isn’t as quick as I am, and I can’t see her behind me. If she doesn’t pick up the pace, she’ll be at this all night.
Her face fell when I told her it was customary for newly-married Omegas to thank each guest personally and give them a little gift we had bought.
“But I don’t know any of these people,” she protested.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It is still a necessary duty for an Omega.”
And if anyone knows about their necessary duty it’s me.
But it’s just further confirmation that she is not going to be any benefit to me at all as a politician’s wife.
As I pass down the line, I walk by Beatrice, looking perfectly put-together and presentable as she always does in an elegant sapphire blue gown.
Oh, why couldn’t she have been an Omega?
My campaign manager and my wife. It would have been perfect.
I’m wracked with regret, wishing things were different. But it doesn’t matter now. Being an elite Alpha is goddamn stifling sometimes. The obligation to go into politics as the eldest son of my revered father, then the need to take an Omega and win this election.
So why, when everything was going so well for us, did we get saddled with this Omega?
I could barely even scent Piper, for God’s sake, with all the heavy competing shit she’d sprayed on herself. It wasn’t that she was totally ugly or anything, in fact I’d barely looked at her, but it was simply that she was totally and in all ways unsuitable for a Pack like ours.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out as guests began to sit down, awaiting the sumptuous five-star dinner prepared by the country’s finest chefs. Piper, of course, would be greeting guests and giving gifts until late into the evening.
It’s Erain.
Meet me in the lower hallway, east wing
Fuck, what now?
I thought Erain had accepted this marriage, but no. Apparently he was going to pull me out of the reception to bitch at me again for daring to do what we’d been putting off for years. What it was our duty as an Alpha pack of 30-year-old men to do.
How was I supposed to know what was going to happen?
We had displayed at her scent, right? I argued to myself, furious to realize my brain was going in the same tired path it had for the last week.
Could there have been some mistake? Could there have been some other reason our temperatures all spiked at the same time? Maybe we all had low-grade fevers or the flu?
The east wing was rarely traveled because palace staff were still working on updating all the guest rooms into a more modern style, so all the halls were deserted.
When I made it down to the lower wing, Erain stepped out to meet me and I knew we were fucked.
“One last night,” he asked, his eyes gleaming.
Cressida was nestled in his arm in the dark hallway, and I saw Beatrice there, too.
“We are married men now,” I said, although even looking at Beatrice makes me crave her calm, elegant presence. Now there was a woman on my arm who looked appropriate to my status. “We swore lifelong loyalty and faithfulness to our Omega.”
My ring feels heavy and wrong on my finger, weighing me down.
It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Isn’t it supposed to be the happiest day in your life when you find your Omega?
But all I feel is disillusionment.
What’s the point of taking an Omega if she’s a liability? I mean, of course she can go to Teddy’s games, but anything official we’ll be doing as Skystone Pack? I can’t picture Piper sitting through long boring banquets or on my arm at formal events. Not like Beatrice would be, with her knack for pleasant smiles that soothe the other Alphas and the way she never rocks the boat, never steps out of line.
“No one has to know,” Erain countered, his eyes gleaming at me. “One last night before we settle down with our Omega.”
Cressida was snuggled in his arms, looking adoringly up at him.
I knew she was going to be goddamn trouble.
She flattered all of Erain’s worst impulses. When I met him in high school, he was the old money trust fund baby trying to break away from the rest of his unbearably shallow aristocratic family, but it seemed like she encouraged all of his worst impulses again.
I realized I was relieved that he was going to be forced to spend less time with her.
Hell, maybe wonders wouldn’t cease and he’d actually like Piper’s perfume. Then he might even drop Cressida permanently.
For a moment, I hesitated.
Then Beatrice put her hand gently on my arm, her voice low and musical.
“I’d love to spend the last night of your bachelor days together, Rook. Give you what comfort I can after this tragedy of your marriage.”
But it wasn’t the last of my bachelor days. . .
I was a married man. . .
Teddy came down the hallway, characteristic grin on his face, his tie already loosened, and his arms around Chloe and Zoey.
“What are we doin’ now?” he asked, and I felt myself thawing under that grin. “I’m game for whatever you boys are.”
We’d been best friends since high school, and Teddy telling me to loosen up and have fun had been the cause of getting into mostly harmless trouble ever since.
But this was different.
“We shouldn’t,” I said. “We’re married men now.”
“No one ever has to know,” Erain objected, bringing out a bottle of expensive champagne from behind his back. “Just for a few hours. While she’s still greeting all the guests. That’s going to take forever. Then we can go back and do our duty.”
“Are you going to give her up after this?” I asked Erain, pointing to Cressida. “Because we made a promise.”
“I swear I will, Rook,” he said, gripping my arm. “I swear after this I’ll be good.”
Beatrice was stroking my arm, her warm breasts resting on the crook. My cock twitched with my excitement to get inside her.
“All right,” I said. “But for an hour, max. Then we will be perfect model husbands.”