Chapter 32 #2
“Which is why your father begged me to take Arden. He knew that sooner or later, you’d see him as an asset, you’d use him as an asset, and he wouldn’t be able to stand against you.”
“We’re going in circles,” Lassit said with another of those dismissive waves. “It is done. You married him, and the exorbitant price you paid for him has restored the estate and left plenty over. Give him back to me. There will never be any need for Arden to leave his home again.”
“I’d have paid ten times as much. I’d have emptied my vaults for him.”
Lassit blinked.
“I do want him, Lassit,” Jack said. “I love him. Whatever you think compelled me to this, it was one thing and one thing only. I love Arden. I always have. I want him happy, and there is nothing I will not do to make that happen. I will give him whatever he needs. Whatever he wants.”
“He’ll want to come home to me. Eventually. When he does?”
“If he asked me to let him return to Dalbryn,” Jack said, his gaze flicking briefly to Beckett, “I’d let him.”
“Then why waste time? You’ll hurt him and disappoint him soon enough. Spare him the unnecessary pain and give him—”
“He might let Arden go,” Beckett said, nice and loud so there was no more ignoring him. He walked over to stand beside Jack and really bang it home. “I won’t.”
Finally, Lassit acknowledged him. “What?” he said flatly.
Beckett grinned his very best, most insolent grin, letting all his ego out to play. “Yeah, Jack might let his husband go, if he asked it. Me, though? Whyn’t you go ahead and ask me if I’d let my omega go without a fight?”
Lassit went rigid. “Jack,” he said. “No.”
“Yes,” Beckett spoke over anything Jack might have had to say.
“Your little brother is my omega, too. I know you’ve been worried about Jack not satisfying him right, what with liking alphas—” here he hitched a thumb at himself, “—though he’s up for trying it, don’t you worry.
As for me, I know my way around an omega just fine. Arden’s got no complaints there.”
And Beckett couldn’t feel sorry for the man, but at the shattered breath he took in at that, Beckett felt something. He shoved it ruthlessly down.
“Jack. Give him back to me,” Lassit said. Actually sounded like he was asking now, not telling. When Jack didn’t respond, Lassit turned and locked eyes with Beckett, taking his measure.
Didn’t like what he saw, not one bit.
Beckett stared back at him.
Same.
This alpha was nothing like Jack. He was exactly what Jack should have been, what Beckett once thought he was.
A filthy rich bastard who used everything at his disposal to get his way as if it was his gods-given right, who trampled over everyone between him and what he wanted without even noticing them.
He had a big, well-muscled body, a beautiful face, thick hair, and fancy clothes.
That probably made it worse. Made it easier for him to get his way all the time.
Beckett would even have given him a toss, back before he met Jack, although this was the kind of alpha Beckett would have mastered, held down and made take it, not one he’d meet equally.
Jack was the only one he’d met on a level footing.
Lassit turned to Jack. “You’re handing him over to your fucking servants? How could you?”
“How could you?” Jack said, calmly. “You’d have handed him over to a stranger.”
“It’s different. I had no choice. You do.”
“You’re right, I do. Beckett is my—”
“His lover,” Beckett interjected.
Jack sent him a fondly exasperated look. “Beckett is my lover and my love. I’m not handing Arden over to anyone, even him. Arden decides. That’s what you wouldn’t let him have, and I would. I will. Beckett will. Arden chooses. You’d do nothing but take his choices from him.”
Beckett saw that one hit, clear as day.
Lassit’s mouth opened, then he snapped it shut, biting off whatever he had been going to say.
“Arden is mine,” Jack said.
Beckett cleared his throat loudly.
“Arden is ours,” Jack amended, ignoring the filthy scowl Lassit aimed at Beckett.
“It is done, Lassit. It’s all done. You can’t petition the Courts for an annulment, which I am sure you’ve been planning.
Arden didn’t go with you when you asked him, and while I have no intention of banning him from seeing you or writing to you, or doing anything he likes—”
“Visiting me at Dalbryn?” Lassit said. He was working hard to pack all that seething fury away, opening his clenched fists, adjusting his bristling, fighting stance into a casual pose. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Trying, though.
Jack shrugged. “I can’t see him wanting to, and if he asked I’d advise against it. But I won’t stop him, Lassit.”
Lassit’s eyes gleamed.
“Of course, he won’t go anywhere without either Beckett or me at his side.”
That gleam faded. “Well, then,” Lassit said.
“Well, then,” Jack echoed.
They regarded each other across the barrier of Jack’s desk.
Jack hadn’t stood up the whole time. Despite Lassit’s posturing and, Beckett had to concede, his own, Jack was the only one who’d projected nothing but relaxed calm throughout the whole conversation.
“I won’t forgive you for this, you know,” Lassit said in a conversational tone. “You have ruined everything.”
“I won’t forgive you for trying to ruin what I hold dear.”
“I wouldn’t have ruined him!” Lassit’s sudden shout made Beckett jump. Not Jack, though. “I wouldn’t have ruined him,” Lassit said again. Quietly. “I’d have made him happy.”
“Las,” Jack said, managing to be kind about it when Beckett wanted to stand there and scoff rudely. “Sooner or later, you’d have done something that you would regret until your death.”
A grimace flashed over Lassit’s face. It wasn’t shame. It was a grim acknowledgement.
“You gave him Greylag,” Lassit said abruptly.
“I did.”
Lassit lifted a brow. “I trust that is not all you have settled on him? He is a son of Dalbryn, and worth far more than one paltry little manor house on the coast.”
“I know. But since I received a thorough scolding for giving him even Greylag, I’ve decided not to tell him just yet quite how rich he is.” He gestured at Beckett beside him. “That’s for his man of business to handle.”
Beckett blinked down at Jack in surprise.
Oh.
He’d thought he was to manage one of Jack’s estates and then, eventually, Avendene.
Jack meant for him to manage Arden’s affairs?
Beckett was already standing straight, but the thought of handling everything for Arden, of standing between Arden and the world, made his spine straighten further.
Lassit shot Beckett a venomous glare before he wiped his face clean and nodded at Jack. He hesitated a second longer before saying, “Take care of him.”
“I will.”
“I’ll be in contact with him.”
“If I can’t stop you.”
“You can’t.”
Their eyes held, then Lassit turned on his heel and strode out of the room.
Beckett was the one to break the silence he left behind. “We ain’t trusting him not to try and grab Arden again, are we?”
Jack sounded a little sad when he said, “No, Beckett.”
“Right. You want me to head off today, or wait until morning?”
“You don’t need to go to him at all. He is safe at Avendene.”
Beckett waited.
Jack tugged him closer and leaned his head against Beckett’s side. He turned and pressed a kiss there, ridiculous man. “Stay with me tonight. Go tomorrow.”