“Is that what it will take?” I reached forward to snag an ankle and pull her towards me. “I was civilised and did not mate you during your heat. But I do not need to be civilised now that you have agreed to marry me. It might not take, but if you want me to bite into your mating gland… Trust me, Hartwell, I will gladly put more of my marks on you.”
“I have not! You do not make sense,Your Grace.” Goddess, I loved the way she sneered my title, it made me hard for some inexplicable reason. Everything about her made me hard, had from almost the moment we met. I loved how her eyes flashed. So similar to countless times before when things had been simpler. “I have not agreed to marry you. How can we be happy when you have not forgiven me?Your Grace, I will not be subjected—”
“Syon,” I bit out. Once was cute, the second was just obnoxious. “You will call me Syon.”
“Syon, then,” she snapped. “We just spoke about this. I must go home. They will be mad with worry.”
“They know where you are. Your uncle just sent a note. I am to send a notice to the Times. And in three weeks, when the banns have been read, we will be married. ”
“But it is not where I am meant to be,” she began rummaging once again for more clothes.
“Your Graces?” Horne said through the door.
“What!” I shouted, still glaring at my little omega.
“A Miss Iris Hartwell is here.”
“See!” Viola cried out and jumped up from the nest, heedless of her near-nudity. “Iris will help me!”
“Put some damn clothes on!”
“Fine,” she spat and grabbed a too large dressing gown from the edge of the nest that had miraculously managed to escape her heat clean. She ran fingers through her tangled hair. She looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I grinned.
* * *
“My Goddess, Viola!” Iris stumbled backwards. Viola didn’t just look fright but she probably smelled of heat sex, and the collar of bruises around her neck was enough to demonstrate exactly what I’d been doing.
“YOU!” Iris glared. “You ruined my sister! Did you mate her? I… Name your seconds.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t beat him in a duel. And there will be no repercussions. His Grace saw me through my heat but didn’t mate me. I’ll bathe and return home. An omega can be helped through her heat without the need to then be tied to the alpha even if mated,” she glared at me. “This…”
“That is Scottish law! The Act of Union makes those laws… We are in England!” Iris looked at her as if she was mad. “A mating bite means you belong to that alpha…”
“Oh,” Viola looked at me a little lost. “Are we in England?”
“Heat head?” Iris asked. She heaved a sigh. “Omegas. Go through a heat, then all they want to do is not eat the food they’ve asked for and talk nonsense.”
I blinked at the siblings. Iris, I was not warming to. She’d come to challenge me but was distracted from her purpose at the smallest diversion. Viola meanwhile had discovered her reflection in the mirror and was throwing surreptitious glances at the rat’s nest on her head.
“Shall we agree that Viola Hartwell will be my wife and in her next heat I shall mate her? Next, we can agree that you, Iris Hartwell, can leave?”
“No.” Came from two voices. Now that I looked at them they were not so like at all. I should have felt like a fool, but instead I was impressed that Hartwell had pulled it off.
“Very well. Iris Hartwell, I accept your challenge. But informally, I’m not inclined to hurt my future sister in law.”
“Ridiculous. It’s not a fair fight!” Viola complained. “Iris, I’ll fight in your name.”
Iris threw her hands in the air. A picture of resignation. “Vi, I’ve said it since the beginning, you will go your own way to the devil.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll go home and get some proper—“
“You have clothes here,” I told her.
“I want pistols,” she snapped.
“You are not the one challenged. I pick swords.”
She moved so fast I almost missed the moment her little hand slapped my face.