Chapter 28 #2
“Yes. You have money. I won’t be a financial burden, and I’ll never be at Dalbryn to annoy you again. It’s all worked out wonderfully.”
Lassit closed his eyes briefly. The emotion that crossed his face was there and gone too quickly for Arden to interpret—not that he was ever any good at interpreting people in general, and Lassit in particular.
“Your Grace?” Stanton appeared in the doorway. “Your carriage is standing ready.”
“Thank you, Stanton.”
Stanton bowed and withdrew.
“Going somewhere?” Lassit asked.
“Yes.” Arden beamed at him. “I’m going home. Oh,” he added when Lassit tensed. “To J-Jack. To Avendene.”
“You’re going back to him? I assumed you were here because Jack had scraped you off.”
Now it was Arden’s turn to tense. “Scraped me off?” he said in affront.
Lassit held out a hand, palm up, gesturing at Arden. “You’re an omega. Jack never had any interest in omegas.”
“That is incorrect,” Arden said primly.
“Do you also know that he’s bonded to one of his servants? Another alpha?”
Arden couldn’t help the rush of heat that set his cheeks throbbing. He couldn’t help dropping his gaze, and he couldn’t help stuttering, “Y-yes. I’ve…we’ve…hmm. Met? We’ve met.”
They had met.
Beckett had claimed him. Beckett had fucked him through his heat. Beckett had locked inside him and filled him.
Beckett had stayed on his knees for him in the garden. Played with him. Kissed him goodbye and told him gruffly to hurry home, and that he would see Arden soon.
“He’s quite shameless about the relationship. Don’t you care?”
Arden shook his head.
“You don’t?” Lassit said, surprised.
“No. Why would I?”
“You don’t care that your husband sleeps in the arms of another man? An alpha you can never, ever measure up to? You don’t care that, no matter what childhood affection Jack retains for you, he will never want you? Never fuck you? That you’ll wither away, untouched?”
Arden could tell that Lassit was baiting him, and Arden was supposed to be upset by this, but…
“No,” he said with a fond smile. “Of course not.” The idea of Jack and Beckett entwined together was something that Arden had pondered at great length.
Many times. It was something he very much wanted to see.
“I love Jack.” I’m falling in love with Beckett.
“I want them both to be happy. I’d wither away untouched at Dalbryn, anyway. ” He shrugged.
Lassit made a sound at the back of his throat. “Come home. You won’t wither. I swear to you. I won’t let that happen. You deserve…” he trailed off and took a deep, slow breath. “You deserve a lot more than you’ll ever get from a man who only fucks alphas.”
“Well. Thank you. That’s very kind. But Jack told me he doesn’t only fuck alphas.” Neither does Beckett.
Lassit went still. “He’ll hurt you, if you let him take you,” he said.
“I know. He’s told me that, too.”
Lassit stood, shocking Arden by striding across the hearth to pull him up and out of his chair. He curled big hands around Arden’s shoulders. “It kills me to think of him on you. In you. You’re so naive. So innocent and foolish. Let me keep you safe. I will keep you safe.”
Arden blinked up at him in astonishment. Lassit seemed genuinely anguished. “But…Lassit, you tried to sell me. Jack would never, ever have married me, if not to keep me safe. From you.”
Lassit’s hands dug into his shoulders.
Arden squirmed in discomfort. “You’d have let someone take me away and do…do whatever they wanted to me. Even though I didn’t want it.” Arden swallowed hard, gazing up at Lassit. “I know you don’t think much of me, and I irritate you—”
Lassit gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “Like a pebble in my shoe, a thorn in my side.” One hand ran along Arden’s shoulder to settle over the very base of his throat. “A stain on my soul.”
“We were happy once. As children. I remember, Lassit, don’t you?”
“Mhm.” Lassit was holding the sides of Arden’s neck now.
“Yes. I remember. I remember you following me around, hanging on my arm, pulling on my sleeve, running to keep up with me, begging for my attention. I remember the day you nearly drowned in the lake and I had to pull you out. I remember you getting lost in the woods in the snow, and I had to find you and keep you warm until daylight. I remember everything.”
“Then…”
Lassit stared down at him. “What?”
“However you feel about me now, you loved me once. You took care of me once. Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Arden wrapped his fingers around Lassit’s wrist. Lassit’s skin shivered under his light touch. Arden held on. “How could you hand me over to someone and let them hurt me?”
“Because I’d have made it better. After.”
“Lassit,” Arden said. That was all.
Lassit’s face tightened. “Do you think I wanted to? I didn’t. It was necessary.”
Arden held his gaze.
“I’d have made it better,” Lassit snapped. “You would have forgotten, Arden. I’d have made sure. You’d have been happy. Tucked away, kept safe. I’d have cherished you.”
“I don’t think I’d have forgotten. I do know that I would have never forgiven you.”
He blinked. “Yes, you would.”
Arden lifted his hands boldly to Lassit’s face, holding him firmly as he looked him dead in the eye. “If I’d been taken by someone I didn’t choose, Lassit, I would have never forgiven you.” Lassit’s eyes slowly widened. “Not ever.”
The library was silent for a long, frozen moment as they stared at each other.
“I do believe you think you mean it,” Lassit said eventually.
Arden’s hands fell away. As soon as they did, Lassit caught Arden’s chin again. Softly. Cradling it from below, his thumb resting just below Arden’s lip. Lassit tilted his head.
“I do mean it,” Arden said. Lassit wasn’t going to believe him, was he?
Lassit’s eyes bored into his. “I’d have made you forgive me,” he said.
“I wouldn’t.”
He talked over Arden. “I’d have taken the pain away.”
“You’re the one who would have caused it.”
Lassit’s mouth curled in a confident smile. He ducked low enough for Arden to feel his breath on his face as he whispered, “I’d have made you forget, Arden.”
“There’s nothing you could do that would make me forget.”
“Oh,” Lassit said, “you have no idea what I’m capable of.” He very gently tapped his thumb to Arden’s bottom lip.
Lassit’s words haunted Arden, even though he knew that any petition to the Council for annulment would be swiftly rejected.
The contract was signed years ago. Their families had been friends for generations. Jack was more powerful than Lassit, and the gods only knew how much richer.
Lassit could hardly argue that he was a fortune hunter who had flattered Arden into an elopement.
Arden wanted to be married to Jack, and he’d shout it from the rooftops let alone in a court room, if that was necessary.
Although he hoped it wasn’t.
He knew that there was no way Lassit could undo their union, but it made him uneasy that his brother even wanted to try.
It was because Lassit and Jack had always been competitive, wasn’t it?
Jack had swooped in, whisked Arden out from under Lassit’s nose, and denied Lassit whatever disgraceful payout he was expecting from whoring Arden out, because that was what he’d intended to do.
But Jack had also taken the burden of Arden from Lassit’s shoulders, and Lassit had got his money anyway, through the marriage contract.
Would he really take being bested by his former friend so poorly that he’d try to claim Arden back?
On the long journey home to Avendene, Arden’s mind returned again and again to those last words, and the look on Lassit’s face as he uttered them.
You have no idea what I’m capable of.
No. Arden didn’t. And he didn’t want to think of it.
Every time his mind wandered there and he started chewing fretfully on his lip where he sometimes still felt the ghost of Lassit’s touch, he turned his thoughts instead to Jack and Beckett.
To his faith in Jack, who loved him.
And in Beckett, who might not love him yet, but would, Arden knew down to his bones, fight for him.