Four
“ A re you really sure about that omega?” I asked, rolling away from Edison with a gasp and pushing his seeking mouth away. My skin was covered in a thin layer of sweat as I sat up in his massive four poster bed and reached for my shirt.
“Come back here.” Edison’s arm locked around my waist and he dragged me back across the black bedspread and against his naked body again.
His lips were distracting—just like they always were—and I let myself melt into him briefly as his vanilla scent invaded my senses.
Putting a label on whatever we were doing wasn’t easy. It had started a few years ago after one of the women that Edison favored tried to kill him.
Two bullets in his chest later and Edison swore women off completely… but he still needed to let off steam and we’d been best friends since he and his father pulled me out of squalor when I was nine years old.
It made sense at the time and neither of us spoke much about it. I was his second-in-command and would do anything for him, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to enjoy every second.
“Edi, stop trying to change the subject,” I growled, giving his chin a gentle shove and ignoring the plaintive look in his gold eyes.
Most of the time Edison Keane was a stone cold criminal. He rarely smiled and rarely showed his true self to anyone outside of this house. It made me feel damn special when he acted like this, but at the same time I knew it made me one of his weaknesses. With the other families closing increasingly in on us and the older generation pushing Edison’s boundaries daily, I should have put a stop to this whole affair much earlier.
But instead, I just rolled my eyes and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, the stubble of his slow-growing beard scratching my lips as I spoke again. “Those eyes will get you nowhere.”
“These eyes get me everywhere,” Edison huffed as he finally surrendered and sat up to put his clothes on. “I couldn’t do what I do without them.”
Gold eyes were the quintessential trait of the Keane family and marked Edison as the last of his kind and as the leader of our little criminal sect. Even his cousin, the next in line if something happened to Edison, didn’t have them.
When I met him there had been more. A father, two uncles, and a great aunt that all had the trait.
They were all gone now, though, and Edison was alone. The last golden eyed Keane. A fucking unicorn in his own right.
“Focus, Edi, what are you going to do about the omega now living in the east wing.”
I was surprised when he put her there. Hardly anyone ever went into that section of the house because it had belonged to Aine Keane and it had been closed up after her death. Then, six months ago, Edison ordered it cleaned out and all of the furniture replaced.
Edison was the only person who went there now to take care of the plethora of houseplants his mother had been obsessed with when she was alive.
Putting Peregrine Chandler in the east wing held a weight that wasn’t lost on me or any of the other household staff who’d watched us walk her through the house in that damn wedding dress of hers.
Edison scrubbed a tired hand over his face and turned to look over his shoulder at me. “I bought her, didn’t I? Why wouldn’t I be serious? I told you I was going to find an omega for us last year.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were serious.” He’d mentioned it in passing and I just figured he was going through a midlife crisis or something. “Besides, why would she be for us?”
Edison frowned. “Because we’re a pack.”
A snort rippled out of me.
“You’re my boss.” I pointed at him before turning the finger on myself. “And I am your second-in-command. Not a pack.”
The head of the Keane family didn’t do packs. I’d never fully understood why—whenever I used to ask about it the adults would hush me and mutter something about past mistakes never happening again—but it was one of the hard and fast rules all of the older members believed in. An unshakeable tradition.
As if reading my mind, Edison scoffed and stood, straightening his clothing and pulling me up onto my feet as well. “It’s long past time for that traditionalist bullshit to die off.”
“You’re the boss—shouldn’t that ‘traditionalist bullshit’ be what you fight to uphold?” I asked, dodging his mouth while I waited for him to answer.
This game we’d been playing for the last couple of years was dangerous. Edison hadn’t been the head of the family for long, but even now he butted heads with the branch family heads like he didn’t have a care in the world.
His position was his birthright. He was Keane through-and-through and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had led the family long before him. By all rights he should have been able to do whatever the fuck he wanted.
But they’d never even dared to utter the word pack, taking their omega wives and siring the next generation without any fuss.
“And you’re my employee, so shouldn’t you not be letting me fuck you senseless most nights?” Edison countered, a dark brow lifting as his golden eyes danced with laughter.
“All a part of my workplace duties.” I shot him a snappy salute and finally let him kiss me, his lips tasting like the finger of whiskey he’d drunk upon entering his room earlier. “But don’t think I’m going to forget the omega that is about to have the Italians raining hellfire down on us for the foreseeable future. Couldn’t you have picked any other one? Hell, I’m sure you could probably stroll up to the omega center and have them slick for you on sight.”
Edison’s chuckle was low and rumbling as he stepped away and got to work putting his tie back on. It may have been just after ten in the evening, but we both still had a long night of work ahead of us.
“I don’t want another one. As soon as Ethan Chandler gave me her scent card I was hooked—and I know you were too.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I muttered, turning away from him and fiddling with the silky edges of his sheets, my face warming like I was a twelve-year-old schoolboy and not a grown ass man.
There was a beat before Edison cupped the back of my neck and forced me to face him fully. “You aren’t usually so keen to tear my clothes off, Rhodes, and that hard-on of yours started long before we came up here.”
I would never admit it out loud, but as soon as we were enclosed in the car and the omega was glaring at me with those pretty gray eyes of hers that were full of anger, I’d gotten one whiff of her scent and the lust had been instantaneous.
She smelled like fresh strawberries—the kind you can only get at the height of their season—and the scent had filled the back of the car with a cloying intensity.
It made me feel… out of control.
Something that had never happened to me before and made me feel uncomfortable even now as Edison’s vanilla scent filled my nose.
“I’m always ready to tear your clothes off, boss,” I said, putting some space between the two of us with the word ‘boss.’
Calling him boss meant that I was shifting out of our strange lovers situation we’d found ourselves in and into my role as his second-in-command. “Now, I need to go and call some folks and see just how much you’ve exploded the very sensitive ecosystem that the families in the city have been maintaining for forty years.”
“If it was that easy to break, then it had no business existing in the first place.” The corner of Edison’s mouth pulled up and he finally let me go with a shrug.
“And everyone thinks I’m the crazy one,” I threw over my shoulder, rolling my eyes as I left the room and ignoring the other alpha’s laughter as it followed me out.
Despite how late it was, the Keane estate was still alive and bustling with employees moving in and out of the rooms, dusting and cleaning or patrolling the hallways.
“Yo,” Collum, one of the security guards that worked nights, said as he came out of the room where all of the security screens were kept.
I nodded at him, straightening my jacket. “Anything happen while we were in our meeting?”
It was obvious that Edison’s vanilla scent was intermingling with mine, but if Collum thought anything of it, it didn’t show on his face as he shrugged. “The Ricci’s showed up at the gate briefly, but their demands to get their omega back was pretty half-assed if you ask me. Doesn’t even seem as if they really even like her.”
I had to agree with the man’s assessment. The events back at the cathedral were a bit of a blur to me now, but I could still remember the stiffness in the omega’s shoulders as the priest moved through the ceremony.
She’d been like a deflated plastic bag to my eyes, like she was resigned to the fate set before her. Then she’d come to life in the car, those brightly painted lips twisting into a pert frown as she corrected Edison with little fear.
“Just keep an eye on things,” I told the guard with a shake of my head as I glanced down the dark hall that would lead me to the east wing where the omega was staying.
“I will—hey the guys are saying she’s gonna be the new lady of the house—is that true?”
I shrugged, still unsure if Edison was actually serious or not. It could all be one big distraction for something else that he hadn’t deigned to share with me yet. Edison always seemed to be three steps ahead of everyone else and I’d spent the better part of two decades trying to keep up with the man.
“We’ll see,” was all I said, nodding at the man before finally giving into the urge to go to the east wing.
Oona, the head housekeeper of the estate, was waiting for me in the main foyer of the house with the monstrosity of a wedding dress the omega had been wearing tucked under one arm. As ugly as it was, the strawberry scent wafting off of it still made my mouth water as I approached.
“Are you going to bother that poor child?” Oona’s question was immediately accusing as she narrowed her eyes. Oona was the closest thing I had to a mother in this place and usually knew what Edison and I were going to do before we did it. “You had better let her sleep. She’s had such a long day…”
I held my hands up defensively, dodging out of the way of the older woman’s pointing finger and skirting around her. “I wasn’t going to do anything of the kind.”
“Rhodes McCreary, I’ve taken care of you since you were nine years old, don’t think I don’t know you better than I know myself,” she began to scold, her wrinkled features pinching as she frowned at me.
“I will behave myself, I promise.” Ducking down I pressed a kiss to her cheek before hurrying across the expansive foyer to the hallway just behind the grand staircase, ignoring the heavy sigh that came from the woman behind me as I slipped down the long hallway that led to the east wing.
The hallway was long, one side full of doors that led to parlors, offices, and a sitting room. The other side was completely full of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the garden that Edison’s mother had spent most of her days maintaining.
In the center of the garden, the massive stone fountain was lit up, casting a soft glow on everything and giving me just enough light that I could see the glass door that marked the entrance of the east wing.
The east wing looked, in my opinion, like a strange amalgamation of a fairytale story and the Mediterranean architecture that the house was originally built with.
It was also the newest section of the house, built after Aine Keane was kidnapped by the Russians in the early eighties during the last turf war between the crime families that called the city their home.
According to all of the household staff who were around during that time, Edison’s mother had never been the same after her abduction and spent most of her time hiding away in the east wing surrounded by her few creature comforts.
Apparently, before, she’d been soft and sweet, drawing the eyes of many of the younger men in the family before her father decided on Edison’s father to be her husband. But I’d only ever known the woman who would dote on Edison one moment and lash out at him the next.
Declan Keane should have let his wife be after bringing her back from her abduction, but he needed an heir, and despite the fact that her sanity had been tenuous even before Edison was born, Edison’s birth had cracked her like humpty dumpty.
My hand paused on the brass door handle that led into the pseudo-greenhouse that Edison still maintained to this day.
Why had he put her here? No one ever came here anymore and it wasn’t as if it held good memories for the alpha. None of it made sense.
With a sigh I opened the door and stepped inside of the greenhouse portion of the little tower. It was a square space with a stone walkway leading directly back to the staircase that would take me up to the bedroom.
As always, the air inside of the lower portion of the tower was always muggier than that of the rest of the house, the summer temperatures and presence of tropical houseplants making the room feel much more humid than outside.
The place was chock-full of houseplants that I knew Edison knew all of the names for, his obsession with them rivaling even his mother’s as he spent most of his leisure time here.
Shelves of plants filled the space, making me feel as if I was wading through a jungle to get to the stairs, fronds and leaves brushing past my face as I muttered under my breath about making Edison trim some of them back.
He’d let them grow out of control, but now that someone was actually living in the room above the greenhouse, he was going to need to make the path easier to get to.
Putting a foot on the bottom step, I nearly chickened out and turned to go back into the house.
But I needed to see with my own eyes that the omega was still upstairs and hadn’t tried to make a run for it.
Not that the five guards stationed outside would ever let her do that.
The stairs creaked as I climbed them up to the landing that sat in front of the beautiful wood door leading into the bedroom. I could smell the omega here, a potent strawberry so strong that I felt the ridiculous alpha part of my brain perk up like a dog hearing the word ‘treat .’
Shoving it down deep, I opened the door as quietly as possible and peered inside.
The glow from the fountain in the garden barely illuminated the silent room that, if not for the scent of her, I would think was completely empty.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found the bed which looked decidedly different from when we dropped her off here hours ago.
It looked as if she’d gotten right to work making herself at home—even if the makeshift nest she’d put together seemed a bit ramshackle as I approached.
Omega’s nests were supposed to be a thing of beauty, but the one this omega had done looked as if a stray wind would blow it right over.
Squatting down, I peered inside of the small opening and found her fast asleep, her red hair fanning out around her head as she breathed in and out softly.
Now that all of the tacky makeup that had been painted on her face was gone, she looked just as young as I knew she was as she frowned in her sleep.
She was fifteen years younger than Edison and me. I’d met girls in their early twenties and most of them had been flighty and unreliable. The lady of the Keane family needed to have grit, and I wasn’t sure if the fairy curled up in a ball underneath her sheet fort would be able to manage it.
I told you I was going to find an omega for us. Edison’s earlier words echoed in my mind as I watched said omega sleep.
She wasn’t for me. No matter how much Edison bucked against the constraints of the Keane family, there was no way he’d ever convince them that the head could have a pack—even if it was just one other person.
Without thinking, I reached inside of the nest and tugged the duvet more firmly around the omega, tucking it under her chin. I’m not sure why I did it and my breath clogged in my throat when she pressed her nose into the top of my hand, inhaling deeply as she let out a coo in her sleep that nearly brought me to my knees.
Tugging my hand out of the nest as if she’d burned me, I straightened and hurried out of the room.
The omega’s strawberry scent followed me for the rest of the night, haunting me as I realized that, whether I liked it or not, things were about to change around here.