Chapter 4
Theo
What had gotten into me?
I was known for never being flustered. Never letting my temper get the better of me.
Never letting my desires distract me. Shoving them down so deep I could pretend I’d forgotten about them.
It was something coming deep from my gut and burning through my blood that meant I was standing toe to toe with an older Alpha like this, growls erupting deep in my throat.
I felt Alexei’s hand on my shoulder, and how was it him trying to calm me down?
Testosterone and Alpha scents were thick in the air as I glared into Edgar’s eyes.
“You’re weak,” I spat out. “To abandon your Omega is the sign of a limp-dick weak ass.”
Jessabella’s eyes looked huge with surprise, her scent burning through me, and I desperately wanted to beg my Packmate to let me protect her.
“Calm down, bro,” Alexei said, dragging me away as the other Alphas stared.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Brand asked. “What do you care?”
Fury blazed through me.
“You’re some fucking dickless Alphas if you don’t have an instinct to protect a fertile Omega!”
Oops, hell, I hadn’t meant to say that, not to admit that I could scent Jessabella’s fragrant ovulation blossoming around me.
“She’s not fertile!” Penn said shrilly, going red in the face. “We’ve tried.”
“Tried with what, old-ass cock and balls?” I snapped, all my protective instincts coming out as I stepped around the Duke and shoved Penn as hard as I could into the side of a washer. “Stop running your mouth about her.”
“The fuck—” they began to protest, and I held up my fists.
“Same thing for the next person who talks shit about her.”
“SILENCE!” Alexei suddenly ordered. “You three go back upstairs. Now. I’ll handle this here. The laundry is closed for the day.”
“But–”
“I said it’s closed for the day.”
Revulsion coated my throat at the look on Edgar’s face, and it was obvious he, Penn, and Brand didn’t give a shit about the servants at Koval Manor or how hard they had to work.
That would have to change.
When they left, we turned to Jessabella. I just hoped she wasn’t too frightened by how I’d acted.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I said, breathing heavily. “Usually, I–I’m not like that.”
“It’s all right,” she said, but her face was hidden in shadow and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Can we escort you upstairs?” Alexei asked gently. “I’d love to get you into more comfortable quarters.”
“No, no thank you,” Jessabella replied quickly. “I’d rather just go back to my room. Please.”
She was twisting her hands together, and I saw her thighs were pressed together too, her whole body stiff and tight. But every time she moved a further delectable wave of her arousal washed over me.
My mouth watered with the scent of her fertility. She was ripe and so ready for me. I craved more than just casual touches. I wanted to knot her tight.
My ancestral Alpha instincts struggled between wanting to put her over my shoulder and haul her upstairs, forcing her to accept the luxury and comfort I wanted to bestow, and taking it slow, but I said nothing.
“All right,” Alexei said. “But I hope you are all right with us coming to visit you?”
“Y-yes.”
I was so damn glad he was here, because I felt like a tongue-tied Neanderthal around Jessabella.
We walked her back to her room, and my heart broke to see her boxes stacked up in the corners, the tiny uncomfortable bed, and closed-in, claustrophobic space.
It looked like she had been working on painting something, a small canvas propped up against the bare walls.
“That’s beautiful,” Alexei said. “Is it Koval Manor?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she insisted. “Just something I was messing with.”
After promising to be back, Alexei pulled me down the hallway.
“You looked like you were going to punch Edgar in the fucking face.”
I practiced breathing in and out through my nose, squeezing my eyes shut so the scarlet fury wouldn’t dominate my vision.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It just made me so angry what they’ve done to her. Can you imagine having an Omega like that and then giving her up, rejecting her, shoving her in the basement and forcing her to work in the ridiculously understaffed laundry?”
There was something jagged in my throat as I glanced back down the hall.
I didn’t want to leave her. Each step further away was causing me physical pain.
“I can’t bear this.”
I looked over at Alexei.
“I’ve never asked for anything from you before. But could I have some time just to protect Jessabella and make sure she’s okay? She doesn’t need to be down here. She needs a bigger place to live, so she has room for all her art.”
I looked down at my hands.
“I know her art is important to her. . . . I just didn’t like that defeated look in her eyes. Usually she’s so happy, so magical. . .I can’t stand this.”
My skin felt raw, swollen with anxiety.
I didn’t usually talk about my feelings like this.
Had I just exposed more of myself than I wanted to? After all, you weren’t supposed to want someone else’s Omega. Not this badly. Not this much. Not so much that you couldn’t even look at another woman.
Jessabella should have been off-limits to me.
What was Alexei going to say? Was he going to judge me for wanting her so badly that it must be written all over my face?
I tightened my mouth and straightened my shoulders.
Well, I wasn’t ashamed of it. How could you look at Jessabella and not love her?
Alexei’s eyes narrowed at me.
“Why do you think you get to be the only one to protect her?”
I stared at him.
Because you weren’t supposed to want a mated Omega.
But ever since I’d come of age, she had always been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, with her soft voice and those little laugh lines around her eyes that said she was always looking out for something funny.
One Spring Festival I’d been maybe 21, and everyone had been hunting eggs, my boots rustling through the slushy show. Jessabella reached for one hidden in the crook of a tree, and it slipped from her fingers.
I had been watching her, watching as a little strip of skin appeared when she stretched high, watching how the move exposed more of her slightly rounded belly, and it made my mouth fill with drool. Without thinking, I darted forward, grabbing the egg before it fell.
“Oh thank you!” she had cried delightedly, our fingers brushing as I held out the egg to her.
It was such a tiny, little moment, and she probably didn’t even remember it or the gangly young man from five years ago who was so awestruck that he couldn’t even speak.
But it had made a lasting impression on me.
“You have a thing for Jessabella,” Alexei said teasingly. “The big monk here is practically blushing.”
I flushed. But I wasn’t embarrassed by my hopeless feelings for her. I could never be. “Yes. I do.”
“Is that why you’ve never messed around on any of our trips?”
There was no point in denying it now.
“Yes. I can’t bring myself to get close to any other woman. Knowing how I feel about her.”
“But–what if she could be our Omega?” Alexei asked.
The idea hit me with dizzying speed, because it was my wildest dream.
“She’s unmated now.”
My tongue felt thick in my mouth. It felt like Jessabella’s scent filled me up, my mouth overflowing with drool because I could swear I tasted her egg hanging, ready to drop. And I wanted to be there, wanted it to be my seed meeting that egg, covering it and soaking her with my potency.
“And I don’t care if she’s been rejected,” the King said fiercely. “I want her.”
I’d never seen him like this.
“I don’t care if she can get pregnant or not,” I agreed cautiously. “But I can smell her. And she smells. . fertile. That’s the only word I can think of for it. But she’d never go for it–for us.”
“Maybe,” Alexei agreed. “Maybe not. But I want to try.”
The idea was so bewildering I felt my head spin.
Would she go for it? Could she ever go for it? It seemed impossible to be true.
Had she possibly been immune to the tight pull I felt, the electricity between us?
“Fuck, yes, I want to try.”
“We can show her,” Alexei said confidently. “We can show her we’re not like her old Pack. We don’t want her because of what she can give us. We want her because she’s amazing and beautiful and talented and gentle and perfect.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “That’s exactly what I think.”
The pull I felt toward her was so strong I almost couldn’t breathe with the craving.
I couldn’t process the idea that Jessabella, someone I was desperate for, would ever want me back, but there was a gleam in Alexei’s eyes.
“We agree then. We’ll take it slow. Don’t push her. Court her. Then see if we can get her to trust us.”