Chapter 2 #2
Omegas flashed by my vision. Everyone was going to want to be near the Duke, hope their scent caught my nose.
But I couldn’t focus on anything except that tantalizing taste of Jessabella under my tongue.
Where was she?
I was drowning in her scent, dragged under by it, my cock thick and dripping in my pants.
How could her scent have this powerful an effect on me? Mated Omegas weren’t supposed to smell this delicious.
“Duke Alexei, it is wonderful to see you,” Edgar said, bowing his head respectfully, but there was something in his eyes I didn’t like. A sour note I didn’t remember.
He began to talk about Koval Estate, the river boat he was building for the spring thaw, but I couldn't focus on any of it.
“Hey, where’s Jessabella? How’s she doing?” I choked out.
Edgar looked strangely at me.
Was it showing on my face? The naughty lust I’d felt for her, ever since I became a man? The way she’d always been the one I craved, even though it was wrong? The way my eyes had always tracked her across a crowded room, even though she wasn’t mine.
“Oh, we parted ways.”
They parted ways?
The fuck?
“Alexei, it’s so good to see you,” another woman squawked in my ear. “Are you thinking about taking an Omega?”
She smelled like stale perfume and I waved her away.
“Why?” I croaked out to Edgar. “Why would you reject her? Where is she now?”
“No. Not you. Never you.”
My throat felt parched with thirst, my cock twitching in my pants, and I hoped no one could see the evidence of my arousal.
“She never gave us a baby,” Edgar shrugged. “That’s an Omega’s basic job. And she’s way too old. So we had to set her aside and try again with another Omega who is hopefully more fertile.”
The earth spun around me, the lights suddenly bright, way too bright.
Jessabella wanted a baby, and Edgar, Penn, and Brand weren’t the ones trying to get her pregnant anymore.
“You gave your Omega up because she hadn’t gotten pregnant yet?”
“She’s over 40,” Penn put in sharply. “Of course she can’t get pregnant. We are looking for a new match.”
I felt sick to my stomach and suddenly I had to turn and heave, throwing up in a splattering, embarrassing mess all in front of them.
“My lord, are you all right?”
“Alexei, what’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” I said, as they all clustered around me.
My skin was buzzing, anger unfurling under my skin.
How dare they treat her like this!
I struggled to act normally, while desperately wondering where Jessabella was. If she was distressed.
“How are things going on the estate?” I asked, catching the eye of the worker filling our wine glasses. “Are you being treated well? Do you have enough support staff?”
The worker flushed, then looked nervously over at Edgar. “I–fine, my lord.”
Hm, strange. Something there that I needed to investigate later.
Penn smoothly inserted a question asking about one of my great-aunts, and the moment passed, but I hadn’t missed the flash of unease and confusion in Edgar’s eyes when I inquired about the servants.
But no matter how much I tried to distract myself, I could not make it through the rest of the meal without checking on her.
“Where is Jessabella now?”
I had to consult with Theo before doing anything, I knew I had to, but at the same time I could not stand letting Jessabella feel bad for one more moment.
How could they have rejected her? She was a perfect, angelic creature. And I could smell her fertility from miles away, could scent her ripe, luscious pussy, could almost taste her ovulation under my tongue. They were either liars or idiots if they couldn’t get her pregnant.
“I’m not sure where she is?” Brand asked, with a semblance of ease and disinterest.
“Fuck you,” I snarled suddenly, lurching to my feet. “What have you done with her? Where is she?”
“She’s fine!” Edgar bit out. “She’s just in a guest bedroom until she figures out where she’s going to go?
Where she’s going to go?
The dizzy panic filled my brain until the room spun around me, but I gripped the doorframe and then headed down the hallway.
“Jessabella?” I called out. “Jessabella? Where are you?”
She had to be somewhere in the building. I couldn’t smell anything besides her.
I stumbled from one floor to the next, not even recognizing where I was in my own Manor. Sometimes I heard Theo’s voice, but from a long way away.
He would catch up to me, he always did, always the calm to my more volatile artistic temperament.
Finally, I found myself in a cool, stone hallway, some steady, perpetual thrum vibrating through the walls.
What the hell was this?
“Duke Alexei? What’s wrong?”
Everything is wrong.
Through my blurred eyes, I saw a woman in her 70s in front of me, dressed in a plain maid’s uniform and cap.
“I need Jessabella,” I gritted out desperately. “Where is she?”
“In the laundry room, but are you all right? You don’t look very good.”
I strode to the door marked LAUNDRY and shoved it open. And there she was.
My foolish heart gave a painful leap.
She was just as beautiful as I remembered. More beautiful, her hands sunk deep into soapy waters.
Her hair hung in soft ice-blonde waves around her shoulders, that perfect crystal princess color that got more beautiful with each silver strand.
And she looked up at me, her blue eyes wide, that perfect sapphire blue color, exactly what the river looked like under all the ice, the reason I couldn’t go anywhere in Winter Haven without thinking about her.
“Oh, my lord!” she cried, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment, a few drops of soapy water landing on her shirt, soaking through so I could see the outline of her pretty pink nipples.
And I was undone.