Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
D axton
“Owen,” Harper giggles, “you’re meant to be doing up this zipper, not dragging it down.”
“Really?” Owen says, feigning innocence. “I thought my instructions were to remove this ridiculous dress.”
“No, it was to help me get it on! And don’t you like my dress?” Harper says with a pout, peering up over her shoulder at my packmate.
“I love this dress. I especially love how big it makes your belly look. But as much as I love this dress, I’d love it even more if it were on the floor.”
He nibbles at her neck.
Her shoulders relax and her eyes drift shut on a sigh. “We don’t have time for this. We have to be at the gallery in half an hour and I haven’t finished my makeup.”
It’s opening night of Harper’s exhibition. She’s been there all day preparing and now we’re back home dressing for the evening opening. It’s 7:30 and I’ve been dressed since 6, waiting to go.
“There’s always time,” Owen whispers into her ear. “Always time for this, little Omega.”
I can see our omega relenting. I peer at my watch. We’d have to be quick. But there would definitely be time to make her come. Fuck, I love it when she comes. Then she’d smell all peachy and wet all night long.
I’m about to join the two of them and help Owen remove that dress, when the doorbell rings from downstairs.
It seems to shake Harper back into the present. She leaps away from Owen and towards the mirror.
“I really need to get ready! I can’t turn up looking like I was just ravished!” she mutters.
“You can!” Owen insists.
The bell rings again.
“Go see who that is,” she orders.
“Probably just a delivery,” I say.
“It could be important,” she insists. Seeing we’re not going to win this argument, I head into the hallway to go investigate. “It might be that mobile I ordered for the nursery,” Harper calls after me.
She’s been ordering all sorts of crazy stuff for these babies – half of which I don’t think we’ll actually end up using.
I open the door, expecting to find a delivery man.
“What you got for me?” I say, holding my hand out to the man on our doorstep. He’s tall and slender with thick dark hair and a very neatly trimmed goatee.
“Excuse me?” he says in an accent that most definitely isn’t American. “Got?”
“Yeah, got. Where’s the parcel?”
The man gapes at me with a lack of understanding.
“Delivery, right?” I try again.
“I ’ave no delivery.”
“You sure you got the right house, then?”
“I think so.”
“This is number 36.”
“Yes, thirty-six.”
I wait. He doesn’t hand me anything and as far as I can tell he doesn’t have anything in either of his hands.
“Is ’arper ’ere?” he asks.
“Harper?” I say, frowning as I start to identify his accent.
“I was told she lives ’ere.”
“Yes, she does,” I say, blocking the doorway with my body, “with us. We are ’er,” I grimace, “I mean, her alphas.”
“Daxton, who is it?” Harper calls out. “If it’s my mom, tell her she’s meant to be meeting us down at the gallery.”
“It’s no one,” I call back, taking a menacing step forward and glaring at the man on my doorstep – the man I’m pretty sure is–
“’Arper! It’s me, Laurent!” he yells out before I can stop him.
Laurent.
Harper’s bastard of an ex-boyfriend. The man I’ve been hoping to meet just so I can serve him a knuckle sandwich.
“You’re not welcome here, asshole,” I say, pushing him down off the doorstep.
“I need to see ’er.”
“After the way you treated her, I don’t think so,” I say through gritted teeth.
“The way I treated ’er? ’ow did I treat ’er?” he says.
“With no respect. You cheated on her.”
Laurent has the goddamn nerve to roll his eyes. “You are all so American. Our relationship was open. That’s ’ow things are in Paris.”
“Yeah, but did you ever tell Harper that?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. We French men, we like our freedom, we crave choice. It’s in our genes.”
“Then your genes are shitty.”
Laurent mutters something in French I expect is damn rude. It sends my blood boiling. I take another menacing step towards him.
“But you know what, you dickwad? That isn’t even the worst of it. You destroyed her confidence. You made her believe her art was worthless.”
“’er art? ’Arper’s art? Maybe you call that art in America, but not in France,” he says with such a smug little grin, I can’t help but swing my fist back and straight into his goddamn mouth. It sends him flying backwards, and he lands on his ass down in the gravel, hands covering his mouth, blood seeping between his fingers.
I must have caught a tooth, my own knuckles are bleeding too. But, fuck, that was worth it. Pretty damn cathartic.
I’m contemplating hitting him again, just for good measure, when I hear footsteps behind me.
“Laurent?” Harper gasps from behind me. I’m down on the step and she’s up in the doorway able to peer right over my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came to talk.”
She watches him stagger to his feet, his lip split and blood dribbling down his chin.
“Did you hit him?” she asks, peering down at my injured hand.
“I couldn’t help myself,” I tell her. She nods like she understands and looks back at her ex.
“You came to talk?” she says over my shoulder because I’m still refusing to budge. “All the way from Paris? Couldn’t you have called? If you wanted to speak we could have done it on the phone.”
“You wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“Because she doesn’t want to talk to you, asshole.”
“We need to talk, ’arper,” he says, stumbling forward once more only to be met by my palm flat against his chest.
“She doesn’t have anything to say to you, you giant asswipe, and if you take one more step towards her, I will hit you again, only this time a hell of a lot harder. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“But she’s carrying my baby,” he says, not backing away. “We must talk.”
“Your baby?” I laugh. That’s why he’s here. He thinks the babies are his.
“I saw a picture of you,” he says towards Harper, ignoring me. “The baby bump.”
“Well, yes,” Harper says, “but–”
“You have to come back to Paris, ’arper. America is no place to raise a child with all the bland bread, bad cheese and ’orrible candy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with our bread or our cheese,” I grunt, bristling at the insult, my hand forming a fist in the front of his jacket.
“It’s revolting. All American food is revolting.”
“Hey, now,” I say, squaring my shoulders.
“Come back to Paris, ’arper, and we can start over. I’ll be a better man, I promise, for you and the baby.”
“You proved to be a pretty shitty man last time,” I growl. “A very shitty man.”
“We all make mistakes,” he shrugs, “you know ’ow it is.”
“No,” I say firmly, “I don’t. I’d never treat a woman the way you treated Harper. Especially one I was meant to love.”
“I ’ave changed. I want to make amends. I still love you, ’arper. I should never ’ave let you go. I want us to be a family.”
“Too late, buster. Harper’s not moving back to Paris.”
He scowls at me, his teeth all bloody. “You alphas can’t help yourself. Controlling, possessive. The woman has a choice.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Harper says.
Laurent stares at her, then his eyes flick back to me and his face turns ugly. “Then I’ll be talking to my lawyer.”
“Why?” I say. I could put the dude out of his misery. Let him know the babies aren’t his, but I’m curious to discover just how much of a dickhead he is.
A mega one I think. One you could probably see from outer space.
“The baby is mine. I want them brought up in my ’ome country.”
“Laurent–” Harper says but I interrupt her.
“So you’d take your kids away from their mother, would you?” I say, deciding, yep, the dude truly deserves another smack around the face.
And so I give him one, smacking my other fist right against his jaw. His legs buckle with the impact but I’m still holding him up by the jacket.
“What the ’ell?” he screams.
“Harper, what’s going on?” Owen says calmly from somewhere behind me.
“Owen,” I say, “meet Laurent, Harper’s shitty ex-boyfriend. Laurent, meet Owen, another of Harper’s alphas. And, oh, look, here is her third, Wyatt.”
Laurent’s eyes spin in and out of focus and then widen with horror.
“There are three of you?!”
“Yes, three,” Harper says proudly. “You see, you cheating on me,” I growl, “probably turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, because it led me back to these three. The loves of my life. My soulmates.”
“Alphas won’t bring up some other man’s child, ’arper.”
“Oh, Laurent,” Owen chuckles. “You really are ill-informed.”
“And dumb,” I point out.
“Obviously dumb to let a girl like Harper slip through his fingers,” Wyatt observes.
“But also the dude thinks the babies are his.”
“It ’as to be,” Laurent says, shaking off my hold. “Look at ’er – what are you ’arper? Nine, eight and a ’alf months? She was still in Paris back then.” He pauses. “Unless you’re telling me–”
“I never cheated on you, asshole. Not once.”
“Then the baby is mine.”
“No,” I say, “the babies are ours .”
“Maybe the educational system in America is ’orrible too, because you obviously can’t do your math.”
“I can do my math just fine.”
Sensing I’m close to hitting the dude a third time, Harper steps in.
“I’m only eight months, Laurent. I’m having twins. And these babies aren’t yours. They’re theirs.” She points to us.
I watch as Laurent’s face transitions through a multiple of expressions, finally landing on one of confusion.
“Theirs?”
“Ours,” I say proudly, puffing out my chest. I turn back to Harper. “Would you like me to hit him again or are we done here?”
“I’d like to hit him,” Owen says eagerly as Laurent backs away.
“Me too,” Wyatt growls.
“And get your tuxedos covered in blood, erm, I don’t think so. He’s really not worth it.”
Harper spins on her toes and wobbles (fuck I can’t get enough of the way she wobbles) back inside the house.
“Don’t ever show your face here again,” I growl at Laurent, fingers itching to take another punch.
“And don’t ever contact her either,” Owen says.
We turn and follow our omega back into the house. I’m half way through the doorway when something occurs to me. I peer over my shoulder. Laurent is walking towards the street.
“Hey Laurent,” I call. He stops and peers back at me. “You’re wrong about her art. It’s fucking amazing and tonight she’s opening her first exhibition. The first of many.”
I give him a little wave and then I slam the door closed.