“Of course, Dad,” I said, just before I slipped out of the room.
“So, that seemed to go well,” Cress said, pushing herself off the wall she was leaning against as I walked towards my bedroom. “Dad just about came when he got the call from the Chadwicks. Lucky too, I told him you took off with Tris and another alpha to pique his interest, which helped him calm down. He’s recast the whole evening as this elaborate ploy put in place by his brilliant omega daughter.”
“Thanks, Cress. I’m sorry, I should’ve—”
>
“Probably best not to finish that sentence when we both know you’d do it again in a heartbeat.” My sister’s expression softened. “I’ve never begrudged it of you, Kit. The expectations of being escorted, controlled, and surveilled would have me acting much the same, and I’ve got none of your fire.” She shook her head. “So what was so urgent you needed to skip out on your sister and leave me to be interrogated by a flustered alpha?”
I pushed the door of my room open, gesturing for her to follow before closing it behind the both of us.
“The alpha that put in a request to court Tristan? He’s good, really good. Perfect even.” I smiled, but it was just a movement of the muscles of my face, nothing more. “What I saw tonight? I never thought I’d find someone better for Tristan than me, but…”
My eyes roamed the quiet cool of my room, but I wasn’t really seeing it. In my heart, I was back in the club, back where every possibility was a valid one, as long as no one was getting hurt. My eyes closed for a second, able to conjure the beat of the music, the swell of people, the look on Glint’s face as she put everything she had into giving her lover what she needed. It was all too easy to see Tris in the stirrups, Len working him higher, or vice versa, Len submitting, surrendering to Tris and that part of his nature that refused to die. And Jackson, where would he be?
“I think I’ve found him, his alpha.”
“So that’s what this sudden capitulation is about,” Cress said, shaking her head, staring relentlessly at me. “Dad had us pulled into his office for a tactics meeting, about how we were going to explain you and Tris, about how we were going to manage everyone and everything, but you came downstairs the perfect omega.” A few seconds of silence, then she asked, “Can you be happy with him?”
To me, there were so many potential hims, but the answer was still the same to different degrees, so I just said, “Yes.”
“Well, I’ve got that background check for you.” She produced a yellow business envelope she’d held tucked under her arm. “I think you’re right about Lennox. There’s a…flexibility there that Tris is unlikely to ever find amongst our ilk. His gangland past for one, but his relationships? All very sweet, very loving, especially for an alpha of his ilk, though each time, they were broken off by the omega he was seeing. Anyway, all the details are in here.”
She set the envelope on the bed beside me and then turned to go.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. This marriage…it could get us out of the hole Mum put us in. Your daughters and sons, we could fight for them to have a much better deal, especially with the support of the Chadwicks. Probably cold comfort right now, but…” She let out a long sigh. “Belief in a brighter, better future, that’s what carries me through.”
She patted my shoulder and then walked out, closing the door behind her, and for a while, I don’t know how long, I stayed where I was, caught in the spiral of my thoughts. One above all others came rushing to the fore.
Dad’s words, his promise of a future for Tristan. I would never stop loving Tris, would always fight to make things better for him, to protect him from the wolves that seemed to track him, track his beauty, and so I reached for my phone, flicking through the printouts Cress had given me until I found what I needed. I keyed in the number, expecting it to go to message bank.
“Omega,” said the deep rumbly voice, one which made me shiver in the dark. “I wasn’t expecting your call yet.”
“How the hell did you know who this was?” I asked.
“Who else would it be?” He tsked me. “You ran out on us, needed help. I would have given it to you. You’ll find there’s not much I won’t do for a needy omega if they ask nicely.”
Jesus, I was thankful for my prim and proper omega knickers right now, as slick squirted freely. Len’s voice felt like one big strong hand at the back of my neck, another roaming my body.
“Like you will Tris?” I asked.
“He told me to take him home, that he couldn’t play at Abaddon without you, and he looked like his fucking heart was breaking as he barked out what he needed. So yeah, I took the omega experiencing a frenzy, who’d have melted at just one little touch from me or Jackson, back to that shithole of a jail cell of his because he asked me.”
“You’re the one who made the offer for him?” I got no reply to that, just the sound of a long sigh. “Then you need to know what you’re up against. My father has ideas about Tristan’s future, about him and my brother.” A long, slow growl at that. “So here’s what you need to know.”
Len listened to me tell him the story, of me, of Tris, and of my brother. His quiet presence on the end of the line seemed to bring it all out, all of it, until the last halting word was forced out.
“So that’s why you need to mark him or at least protect him from Theo. It would kill him, being trapped into some kind of Greyson straitjacket, tamed and curtailed and hemmed in by turns. Promise me you won’t let that happen, Len. Please.”
“I won’t, Kit,” he replied finally, reassuring me he was still awake, still listening. “But you’re missing something crucial. The beautiful picture you paint? I want that, love, with every fucking breath.”
It was in that moment that I felt a real connection with Len, beyond the heat and the sex and the crazy club. That longing, I knew it well. It had been my constant bedfellow for most of my adult life.
“But that doesn’t happen, not without you. He can’t be that or do that without you. You are his mate, his omega, and no one knows better than me what that means.”
His voice was dark, had a sharp edge to it that gradually became sharper.
“Everyone makes a big deal about how possessive and controlling alphas are, but that shit’s all bullshit. It’s how people choose to express it—through power rather than love. But an alpha, he or she sees that person or those people, the ones that hold a part of his soul, they just didn’t realise it. He sees them and he protects them, because they are an integral part of him, because they’re so fucking vulnerable, because he sees the fuckers clustered around the edges, ready to take what they can.”