Even the most hopeful or scheming parent had given up after ten solid years of Jack never interacting with omegas beyond the social niceties, and of having well-publicised and outrageous affairs with alphas.
Only ever alphas.
What had cinched it was when he’d publicly named his cousin’s firstborn as his heir.
Hester had cursed him for pointing the horde in her direction, but she handled it better than he ever could, anyway. And she had thanked him for making her son the next Duke of Avendene, so. She wasn’t too angry.
As for Arden’s memory—Jack knew exactly what he was referring to. Jack really hadn’t had a choice, though.
He’d gone to Dalbryn that day to meet with Arden’s father, at the earl’s request.
Lassit wasn’t supposed to have been there.
It was the very worst of luck that Arden had been rushing headlong down the stairs to say hello when Lassit had made that casual, crass comment about omegas and—well.
Jack couldn’t have let Lassit suspect for even a moment that he was interested in Arden.
He’d laughed scornfully, and swore in a loud, carrying voice that he’d never let a mewling omega crawl into his bed. That if one ever had the nerve to try, he’d have the footman collect them and turn them out.
Lassit had clapped him on the back in laughing agreement, hooked his arm companionably through Jack’s, and led the way to the library. There, Lassit proceeded to get roaring drunk while Jack pretended to, and in Jack’s pocket was a piece of paper bearing Dalbryn’s crest and the earl’s thrice-witnessed signature.
Upon the earl’s death, that piece of paper would give Arden to Jack.
He’d wondered, in the years since then, what it was that made him pause and look back.
It was Arden’s light, fast breathing, he’d eventually concluded, there on the very edge of Jack’s alpha-sharp hearing. Short and desperate, like the frantic beat of a butterfly’s wings as it threw itself against a window.
He’d known even before he turned that the moment would haunt him.
He turned anyway.
Arden was frozen halfway down the stairs, the hand he’d no doubt been skimming along the banister as he ran down the steps to greet Jack now locked around it and holding him in place. Holding him up. His delicate knuckles were as stark and white as his face. His eyes as they met Jack’s were wide and wounded. His chest rose and fell rapidly.
And what had Jack done, when their eyes met?
He’d looked away, followed Lassit, and closed the library door between them.
He’d felt Arden’s gaze on him the whole way.
“You must know by now that I didn’t mean a word of it,” Jack said to Arden as he sat there in his tub, slowly unfurling in the warmth and utterly, delightfully, unaware of it. The slender arms he’d had locked around his knees had loosened, and one of his legs had straightened.
If Jack glanced down, he’d get a look at Arden’s sweet little cock.
He manfully resisted the urge.
“I…no, Jack. I don’t know that at all. What I know is, you bound yourself to me out of some noble, heroic impulse to—why on earth are you laughing?”
Oh, Jack liked him indignant. He loved that little snap and spark that Arden had learned to hide over the years. He pinched Arden’s chin and grinned down at him. “Heroic?” he said. “Me?”
Arden primly lifted his chin from Jack’s fingers and put his nose in the air. “Yes,” he said. “You.”
“I assure you, there is nothing heroic about me. The impulse was entirely self-serving.”
Arden shifted in the water, straightening his other leg out and turning on a hip so he could scoot up to the side and rest his arms on the lip of the tub. He sent a wary glance down at his lap to make sure his groin was concealed, and had no idea that Jack’s greater height meant that he could, in fact, see the pert mound of Arden’s arse over his shoulder.
Jack felt no heroic impulse to inform him of the fact.
“How could it possibly be self-serving?” Arden said.
