Syon
A few moments after leaving Viola at the house on Weymouth Street.
I had nearly committed a rape.Not of her body but her soul. I’d nearly, in my fury, bitten her mating gland. No matter that it would not take since she was not in heat. Thank Goddess, she had broken through the feral anger and pulled me back into myself. I might eventually move past her deception, but I would never have forgiven myself if I’d mated her against her will. And Goddess, but the fact she was an omega made it all the more baffling that I’d been able to hold back at all. She’d felt so good in my arms, smelt so good, and I hated her for it.
Except it was not hate.
She claimed I’d repudiated her, but the knife cut both ways.
* * *
Viola. Not an alpha butViola! A woman, an omega, who I’d spent an afternoon with and… Almost, I realised, almost I had known. The afternoon in her aunt’s drawing room, something about that enchanting omega called to me. I’d known her yet not known her. I had. More fool me for not recognising one I professed to love. I’d spent months with her and never known. What kind of alpha did that make me? A pathetic one. To think I’d have discovered the ruse if I’d given into my instincts after our duel and rutted her in the duchess’s nest.
“Viola…” Her name as sweet as her scent came easily even as the fury at the deception bubbled to the surface. Did I want to rip her head off or rip off her gown? Both. Both were darkly appealing. I could punish her in the most intimate way possible. Bring her to the brink of sexual bliss over and over again and then leave her begging and confused for more.
Could I? Her scent would spike, her slick would gather, and what alpha could refuse that?
Viola of violets and vanilla. The owner of the first scent I’d experienced in nearly a decade.
But why? Why had the foolish, headstrong omega taken such a risk? No matter what I had said to her, I did not hate her. My pride was in tatters. But that was between us. Her twin stripping had been for Lady Clare who, it seemed, had fallen in love with Viola, thinking her to be an alpha. I’d found myself in the centre of a farce, but at least in the eyes of the public, not a subject for ridicule. I’d hazard the guess that only Viola and her sister knew the whole truth—Goddess how similar they looked. As they’d stood next to each other, I recognised Iris from the night she’d been with her friend. Damn. I wanted to drag Viola to the duchess’s nest and punish her. Show exactly how an alpha dealt with recalcitrant omegas.
First, to Ayleigh to cool my temper. Then I’d return, and we would talk.
I jumped from the carriage and barked at Horne to have everything made ready to leave London for a couple of weeks. I’d stay at Ayleigh, shoot, prepare the house for when it was time for Viola’s first heat. My feet were restless and carried me into the library. On the sideboard stood a decanter I kept for guests and for the first time in my life, I poured myself a small glass. Perhaps the alcohol would soothe my raw nerves. My first sip confirmed all my previously held beliefs the stuff was rank and only fools drank it. I spit what I hadn’t swallowed back into the glass and banged the whole onto the table. It shattered and I noticed I’d cut myself.
“Dammit,” I pulled out a handkerchief and bound it around my hand.
A noise in the hall had my head turning towards the door. A scowling Paxton pushed his way into the library with a smiling Fordom trailing behind him.
“What brings you here?” I snapped. “I’m off as soon as my carriage is brought round.”
“We ran into Caroline Wilson. It seems you left Kellingham House with Miss Viola Hartwell,” Fordom smirked. “Congratulations are in order... That was a rather spectacular way to claim your secretary. But why aren’t you with her? Or do you go to Ayleigh first?”
“How long have you known that my secretary was Viola Hartwell?” I interrupted. I was in no mood for his frivolity or the reminder of how I’d abandoned her on her uncle’s doorstep.
Paxton grimaced. “Do not be angry with her until you’ve heard her reasons... I’m sure she has told—”
“Oh, I am angry with her, angry beyond measure. I am more like to kill you, the real Iris, and her uncle too, for letting an omega, one fresh from the country and untouched virgin, undertake so dangerous a prank. Anything could have happened to her!”
“Angry at me!” Paxton recoiled as if slapped. Pure confusion covering his face. “I tried—“
“You knew,” I growled. “You knew, yet you continued to let her spend time with an unmated alpha. Alone. You...”
“I didn’t have much choice,” he snapped. “I am as angry with myself as I could be. But she would not listen, and I supposed you knew your own business.”
“How long?”
“I met the real Iris at a boxing match in February. There is not much difference between them. She is perhaps a bit broader in the shoulder. But one thing they do not share is their eyes. Iris Hartwell’s are brown. And Viola’s are—well, you know better than any, they are as unusual as the lady is herself.”
“I’m going to tie her to that damned nest,” I snarled. “Why? Give me one good reason why you let her put herself in so much danger.”
“I don’t know her motives. I assumed political,” Fordom shrugged. He had a hand on Paxton’s arm, physically restraining the larger alpha, who’d recovered from his shock and was on the verge of making the mistake of challenging me in my own house.
“At your dinner party, I pulled her aside to lecture her. Then you appeared before I could send her home,” Paxton shook his head. “How could you not know?”
“Did you? Until you met the real Iris, did you know?” I threw back.
“No. But I wasn’t spending every day with her.”