Текст книги "The Alpha of Bleake Isle"

Автор книги: Kathryn Moon

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Chapter TwoRONSON

“What do you think of her?" I asked my half-brother, Niall, not bothering to lower my voice as we paced the edge of Hugh Gamesby's broad and meticulously manicured gardens. No one would mistake to whom I referred, and I didn't care. The rumors would've started the moment I walked into the room two weeks ago, and the rumors were right.

Niall frowned, eyes searching the party at the heart of the maze. Bringing Niall, my father's bastard, had stirred up talk, and our walk out of earshot would give the crowd time to release their flurry of shock. It wasn't as though any of the betas and omegas in attendance were unaware of Niall's existence. Perhaps some of the well-sheltered young women. No, Niall was a subject much discussed on Bleake Isle, most especially our friendship. He was half-human, his mother a maid my father had availed himself of so frequently, he'd managed to get the woman with child, when only an omega ought to have served for that particular purpose for an alpha. Niall was an aberration, and also the only man on the island I trusted completely.

"She's a little small." Niall squinted at Adelaide Brys's bright hair shimmering over the tops of the shrubs. "And I'm not sure riling Hugh Gamesby is your smartest move. But otherwise, she's perfect," he said, very blandly.

I grunted in agreement. "My mother was small. And I've hardly ridden her skirts. Hugh hasn't marked her yet."

Niall's frown only deepened. "Then he's up to something."

"Maybe he's more interested in plotting against me than he is in securing her. Maybe he already has someone else picked out," I said, but I agreed with Niall's suspicion.

"Do you like her?" Niall asked.

"She's…perfect." I repeated his own summation with a shrug. "To say she's the best of the lot would be doing her a disservice."

Adelaide was beautiful, charming, intelligent, and talented, and her mother had taken great care at our recent dinner together to inform me that Adelaide had been given control over every detail of the evening. She knew how to run a house and plan a menu. Her father said she'd been practicing her nests since she was a girl. The rut with her would be not just a relief, but a pleasure—a pleasure I could imagine vividly when I was near her, her floral perfume heady and dizzying. Spending a rut in an omega's nest was a tantalizing prospect. Even with the frenzy safely weeks away from starting, I was eager.

Adelaide was the obvious choice. The best choice. A choice that would suit me perfectly.

And if Hugh Gamesby did manage to talk the girl into a quick fuck—he would have prettier words for it, I was sure—to secure his claim, I wouldn't feel a real loss. I frowned and turned my stare forward as the knowledge resurfaced again, in spite of my best efforts at stamping it down.

I'd been careful in my pursuit of pleasure thus far, hiring willing humans for company, rarely and carefully. I didn't repeat my father's rare siring of a halfling like Niall, much as I was glad to have him in my life. It was hard enough for omegas to birth dragons; humans were even more ill-suited to the task.

I wanted to leave this year's selection with an omega. I was determined to. And for all Adelaide's extreme charms, I couldn't shake the understanding that if she weren't so obviously perfect for an alpha, I would easily choose someone else. She would be wasted on a beta, but I wouldn't miss her.

"I'm not eager to put a woman to death in childbirth," I said suddenly.

Niall's pale eyebrows rose. He had my father's coloring, shimmering copper through wheat gold, pale skin freckled from the sun. His wings were strong enough for flight, but he had no true dragon's form. Still, he looked more like the heir than I did. I had my mother's dark hair and easily suntanned skin.

"I know," Niall said. "You're worried she's too small?"

No. I worried the opposite. I worried she'd survive for many decades to come, which was every bit the cruel and brutish thought most of the isle gentry expected from me, modeled by my father. But I worried that Adelaide, for all she was the obvious right choice, might actually be the wrong choice and I would end up stuck with her.

"Who is that?" Niall asked.

Even when he nodded in the direction of his query, it took me a moment to spot the woman under the trees, well out of the shelter of Hugh's garden and tucked in the wilds of his estate proper. I frowned, staring at her, her head bent down toward a book, body stuffed in a dress just too small for her sturdy frame and one shoe kicked off, stockinged foot wiggling against the grass.

It occurred to me after a long study that I'd seen her before.

"No idea. One of the omegas' maids, perhaps," I said.

She looked up as we neared her, gaze distant and lost for a moment, as if she hadn't resurfaced from the pages she'd been studying, before latching onto us, eyes widening first in terror and then a flat kind of shock, like she was surprised to see us anywhere near her.

"Catch your eye?" I teased Niall in a hiss.

He didn't flinch or scoff. He wouldn't, because only an ass would've found me funny. "She's the most interesting person here," he said.

The woman seemed to have realized we were passing her, not approaching, and was now only giving us the occasional furtive glance, attention returning eagerly to her book.

"I think she's an omega," Niall said.

Was he attracted to the woman? Niall wasn't a prolific seducer, but I'd seen him interested in women, and they hadn't been awkward, studious, plain girls with limp brown hair.

"Why?" I asked, taking a surreptitious taste of the air. There might've been a fragrance, but it could just as easily have been the gardens.

"She arrived with the Posys; they're dragonkin. And she's not dressed like a maid."

"I defer to your knowledge of women's dress," I said, lips twitching, wanting to laugh but not quite meeting the urge.

Niall didn't rise to the bait. He never did, insufferably cool as he was. And strangely, I wanted to know what made her interesting to him but refused to ask. He would turn my teasing back on me quick as a whip. Better to be left out of the joke than let Niall make one at my expense.

We turned eventually, back into the twist of the maze. Hugh Gamesby's gardens were predictably ordered and obnoxiously forced, only one path laid out, unless we wanted to turn back and disappear into the woods like the strange young woman. Which was probably a better idea.

Adelaide beamed at me as I arrived back within the fold of the party, but there was a strain in those brilliant blue eyes, Hugh Gamesby remaining steadfastly at her side. She was a bone for the pair of us to fight over, no doubt exhausting for any young woman. But what could she or Hugh do? The moment I was within reach, her body bowed naturally in my direction. For that matter, so did the charmingly plump little brunette sitting on a blanket near my legs. My effect on omegas was biological, flattering, and somewhat irksome—part of the reason I'd avoided any courting in the past. The rut selection was in place for the alpha to choose the omega who suited him best, without the time-consuming effort of dinners and dancing and terribly polite conversation with them all beforehand. The ceremony was also a promise from the alpha to the betas to not drag all the eligible omegas into breeding nests and leave nothing for them.

Just ignore the scent marks, Niall had suggested. The beta scents will fade by the time the rut is over. It had never stopped my father. Nothing had ever stopped my father, and I took pride in our differences.

"You solved the maze!" Adelaide greeted.

I nodded, offered an automatic half-smile out of respect for her cheer, and glanced over her shoulder at Gamesby. "In truth, it posed very little challenge."

The omegas, even their mothers, tittered with humor. Niall twisted away from the crowd, hiding his rolling eyes.

These parties were tedious. These people weren't much better. But I was determined this year. Adelaide was perfect, my best choice in all my years of the selection, and still unmarked. Perhaps I would even conquer my aversion and take her with one, if Gamesby managed to seduce her. It would be worth it to foil him, if nothing else.

Almost two weeks later, the day before the selection ceremony, my decision was fixed.

I would bring Adelaide back to the castle at the edge of the cliffs, give her a courteous day to collect herself and build the nest, and then I would bed her. If I was left in a lackluster pairing for the rest of my life, it would be worth it for the heir she would offer. I would do everything in my power to keep her alive, which was more than she could hope for with most betas, or with an alpha like my father. Dragon births were difficult, and many betas didn't care about the loss of an omega in the process. The child's survival was always first priority. And perhaps some dragons were a little too eager to move on to a fresh choice of omega.

"You're still here."

I'd been musing, staring out the window at the sea, when Niall caught me in my office.

"Still? Did you expect me to drop dead?" I asked.

"I expected you to go claim the omega," Niall answered, helping himself to the seat across from mine at my desk.

"That's tomorrow."

"Are you hoping Gamesby will have her first? If you really want an omega this time, why not do what they do and place your mark the night before?"

"I'll take her with or without one," I said.

Niall tipped his head. "Will you?"

"She'll just have to bathe when she gets here," I muttered. In truth, the scent marks had never bothered me as much as the betas liked to think. I just hadn't wanted any of the omegas. But too much time had passed and I could no longer afford to be picky. To wait for claiming to be an intense urge, rather than a political necessity.

It would be disappointing if Adelaide did succumb to Gamesby the night before the selection. Perhaps he'd been waiting intentionally, wanting the mark fresh to better put me off. But it wouldn't stop me from flying her back here.

"I can't say I know how it feels, but you could wait another decade," Niall suggested. Niall's human genes didn't offer him much of a rut. Certainly not the agony of an alpha's.

"That's just another decade for them to stir up the idea of killing me," I said. "Achieve an heir, and I'm on safer ground." A dragon with young was considered stronger, especially an alpha. I wasn't sure if it was old folklore or a real part of our power as dragonkin, but at the very least it would make the other betas pause before pursuing my defeat.

"Letting Gamesby mark your intended the night before the selection makes you look like a fool. Taking her after the mark makes you look desperate too, now that they know how much you hate it. Go to her, Ronson. Stake your claim. If you really hate the idea, I don't know why you'd bother with her."

Which was right, of course, and Niall lounged in that chair with the superior calm of one who always managed to know better.

"You just want me out so you're king of the castle," I said, offering Niall a half-smile he mirrored. "Fine. I'll play the eager suitor."

"I'd wish you good luck, but I've seen her swoon for you," Niall said with a sneer. Which I wanted to mimic too. I resisted by opening the windows, the sudden strike of sea air shocking and sharp, drawing out an excited snarl from my lips. My wings caught me, spreading as I leapt, my claws freeing from my fingers as I flew out over the edge of the cliffs, over the crash of the sea as it met the rocks. I twisted, let the wind snap against my wings, and circled back to the isle, following the urgent gust back over land.

There were dragonkin gentlemen who elected not to use their wings, their dragon's form, considering it beastly. But flight was the only gift of our bloodline I really enjoyed. I would've gladly kept my place as a beta if I hadn't hated my father so much, seen how desperately the island needed his seat as alpha overthrown. Our omegas had been secretly fleeing on ships one by one, our human population dying under horrible working conditions. And betas took their profit and their heirs and carried on, as if all this were acceptable so long as their pockets were deep and there were young omegas for their beds.

Challenging my father to fight for the role as alpha was not solely my ambition, but my duty to the island. Most days, being alpha was more trouble than it was worth, and even the rut was an uncomfortable chore. Or it had been with only my own hand and human women to help ease the frenzy. It would be better this time, with an omega, a thought which carried me toward the modest Brys estate, set near the human village at the edge of the woods that abutted the Gamesby estate.

The Brys family had been blessed by their daughter, but were otherwise unremarkable and not quite significant. Mr. Brys made good money in trade, enough to keep his family in fashion, but their lineage was the third son of a third son or something of the like, with no titles or inheritance left to them. To have a daughter paired with the alpha would be a social boon at the least, and the expectation of titles and money was sure to sweeten the deal.

I swooped over their home, over their woods, nearly to Gamesby's house before realizing I was actively avoiding the job at hand.

I tucked my wings slightly, and flipped my body down like an arrow to land. Gamesby might try and shoot me if he saw me, pretend he thought I was wild game, but I knew how to slip through the trees and keep my steps quiet. I would use the time walking through the woods to organize my thoughts again.

Adelaide is an ideal omega, I reminded myself for the hundredth time, catching a wing talon on a tree branch and then climbing my way down slowly. Her family has a good track record of births on both sides. An heir will settle some of the beta jostling happening behind closed doors.

My boots touched the ground, and I gentled my steps. The only way they could take my place was by killing me, something I wasn't inclined to allow. I needed an omega, Adelaide, or at least the heir she would offer. I marched in silence toward my destination.

The thoughts were like commands in my own mind, settling a sensation that was less than nerves but more than disinterest. So strong was my determination to follow those commands that I almost missed the presence of voices. Familiar ones.

"Hugh, I'm nervous."

"Addie, pet, you've nothing to be nervous about. The plan hasn't changed in weeks. Your part will be nearly done tomorrow."

"No, it won't!"

I'd already halted my steps, taken shelter behind a vast tree, but the rough hiss of Adelaide Brys's voice left me intrigued and surprised, the sound so harsh and unlike anything I'd heard from her before.

"It all begins tomorrow, Hugh. If this works, if he chooses me⁠—"

"He'd be mad not to, Addie," Hugh said, his tone so dulcet in comparison to the omega's.

"Then I have to serve him for a brutish rut. For days! Doesn't the thought of an alpha rutting on top of me for hours and hours bother you?"

"It makes me furious," Hugh said, not sounding especially convincing to my mind.

There were gentle murmurs ahead, Hugh reassuring the omega of his worry and affection, but a crunch from behind sent me whirling around, surprise striking me roughly at what I found.

The strange omega woman, the one Niall and I had seen hiding from Gamesby's party, was wandering blindly through the trees, barely feet away. They called her Mouse, as I'd learned from a chuckling pack of beta dragons over whiskey after a dinner. She had her nose in another book, not even noticing a briar catching on her skirts, and definitely unaware that she was about to walk straight into an argument I was dying to hear the culmination of. If she looked up, saw me, made any noise at all, she might alert them to my presence.

I lurched forward as quietly as I could and grabbed her, clapping my hand over her lips, a suitably mouse-ish but small squeak released against my palm. With another quick, careful motion, I hauled her up off her clumsy feet and into my hiding spot with a tight grip around her arms and waist.

"Silence," I spoke roughly into her ear.

She tensed in my arms, and I noted with surprise that her stodgy-looking frame was, in fact, a very unfortunate disguise. She felt quite promising, now that I had my arms around her. Her stomach was soft, and her ass was incredibly full and plush against my hips. Interesting. Distracting, even.

"You'll enjoy the rut. You can't help it," Hugh said, gentleness disguising the lack of feeling in the words. Adelaide squawked in outrage, another new sound from her, and Hugh continued, "All you have to do is put up with him for a few days, a week or so, and then open a door when I send word."

The little mouse in my arms—Lord Posy's daughter, very unfortunately arranged for Old Gryffyd, from what I'd heard—seemed as keenly aware of the intrigue of the conversation as I was, and she stopped struggling almost as soon as the pair's voices raised. I could've let her go, told her to stay quiet, but it would've been a wasted chance to hold such a comfortably formed body. She did have a scent after all, a tiny one, but it reminded me of a perfume I'd smelled on a human woman once, designed to entice a dragon—amber and gold, warm and syrupy. It was fainter on the Posy girl, but less artificial too.

"I have half a mind to leave the door locked. If I'm so suited to a rut, I'm sure I'm suited to be an alpha's omega too," Adelaide said, sounding more herself, coy and teasing. I bit off my snarl at their casual use of me in the conversation, as if I might be the pawn in their game.

"You'll be his broodmare. Don't mistake his reluctance to choose thus far as him being anything less than his father's son. If you survive birth, he'll find a way to kill you off."

The woman in my arms stiffened, and I resisted the impulse to reassure her. It might've been true of my father, although I hoped not. It wouldn't be of me.

"First I'll be fine, then I'll be killed off⁠—"

"Not in a handful of days, you won't. Don't be difficult, Addie. Worst case, you're burdened with an alpha's son, who will most likely grow up to be alpha. And if not that, then I'll be alpha next, and you'll bear me all the sons and daughters we could wish for."

A hand was clutching my arm, the omega I held shocked by the words I heard. I was a little shocked too. Not by Gamesby's ambition, but that it hadn't occurred to me they might use an omega as a trap. It was clever, and as I'd been telling myself for weeks, Adelaide was perfect. For my use and theirs.

"Admit it. You're just all in a fluff because it's been ages since we've⁠—"

"Oh, Hugh. Why couldn't you have gotten rid of him before this? I don't want in his bed. He terrifies me."

"I know, pet, I know. And how I wish I could soothe your poor little heart with a kiss."

"More than a kiss," Adelaide urged.

The conversation took a turn, one that made the woman in my arms gasp, a surprisingly innocent sound for an omega who was almost over the edge of a desirable age.

For both our sakes, I lifted her off her toes, hiking her up at my side. Her arms wrapped easily around my shoulders, and I turned and walked us carefully away from the lovers' explicit speech.

The omega—Mairwen! I recalled at last—remained docile, pressed to my chest, her hands tight and almost possessive on my shoulders as I carried her. I headed roughly toward the village. The Posy estate sat on the other side of the town, in view of my castle.

"They're planning on killing you," Mairwen whispered, apparently satisfied with the distance we'd traveled.

"I gathered," I answered, lips twitching.

She huffed and started to squirm. I understood now why her clothes looked frumpy on her. The silhouettes of current fashion were too slim and straight to suit a form so inclined to volume and shape. She would look better out of her clothes than in, and I glanced down at her unjustly disguised breasts. What fool had thought to flatten them in a trap and then cover her up to her chin in fabric?

"What are you going to do?" she urged.

"Not allow them to succeed," I said easily, setting her down on her feet and offering her a rare smile.

She frowned back at me, lips twisting and pursing. She had a wide mouth, lips ample for kissing. She was still…not pretty, precisely, but I was realizing there was something there that deserved attention.

"I'm sure you can talk Adelaide out of it," she said, tone a little dubious.

She was right, of course. I absolutely could. I could order Adelaide to behave, even—demand pleasure from her too.

"It doesn't solve the issue of her having been talked into it in the first place," I said, checking over my shoulder that we were still alone.

"Katherine might suit you. She seems shy, but really she just isn't that interested in people. But she's very smart, and she thinks Gamesby is a twat." Mairwen blushed, possibly at her own language, but stared eagerly up at me. Her eyes were a comforting, warm shade, almost golden, brighter than the drowsy brown of her hair.

She was recommending me alternatives. This odd omega they called Mouse, who'd never been properly introduced to me and had never spoken a word to anyone when I'd been present, was offering her opinion on whom I might choose instead. And she hadn't started with herself, bold as her words were.

Damnit. Niall was right. She was the most interesting one of the lot. Strange and mostly plain, but also lush and a bit direct, without a proper omega's perfume.

"Where did you come from?" I asked, not entirely sure of the exact meaning I intended.

She blushed and glanced down at the book in her hand. "I was wandering. Reading."

"Not at home."

"Not at home," she agreed with a frank nod.

We stared at one another, and I understood. Tomorrow was the selection ceremony. She was promised to Gryffyd Evans. And for five selections running, the betas of the isle had thwarted my choices by scent marking the omegas shortly before.

I refused the immediate image brought to mind, of Mr. Evans trying to seduce and defile this young woman in pursuit of his own cause. She was still clean—barely even her own perfume hovered, and there was no greasy mark of his on her. But I didn't put it past Gryffyd Evans to take the chance for sex with a young omega before the selection if he thought he could get away with it. He was as notorious with the women he chose as my own father.

"I can't wander all day," she said, a dismal forced smile on her broad lips. I was about to encourage her to do just that when she turned on her heel and took the lead, continuing, "Sophia might suit you too. She's impossible to discourage. The most stubbornly cheerful creature you're ever likely to meet."

Mairwen Posy seemed to be about to wander right off now, without a curtsy or demure "my lord" or even a goodbye. I would see her tomorrow at the selection, an event whose outcome I was suddenly uncertain of. All I knew was that Adelaide wouldn't do. I didn't like her enough to try and persuade her not to kill me.

"I'd better walk you back," I said. "Clearly, I need your insight."

Mairwen hummed in agreement and then stopped, staring at me in horror. "But you can't walk me all the way to the house. If my mother saw you, she'd get all sorts of mad ideas. I know it's less than a day, but even in that amount of time she could—" She stopped herself abruptly, lips pressing flat, and shook her head, marching forward like a soldier. "Absurd," she muttered.

Mairwen's mother might see me at her daughter's side the day before the selection, might even catch a whiff of me on her after I'd manhandled her. Her mother might think I was preparing to choose Mairwen. The alpha choosing the tall, awkward, inappropriate, not clearly pretty, scentless omega.

Unlikely. Absurd, as Mairwen had said.

My lips twitched again.

"Francesca would not suit. She's very weepy and incredibly biddable. Someone like Gamesby would only have to suggest she open a door, and then the pair of you would end up playing a tug of war on her poor mind," Mairwen declared, a defense for Francesca more than a warning for my own sake.

It was a shame she was walking ahead of me. So few people ever saw me smile.

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