They hadn’t spoken for at least three years, but Arden didn’t hesitate. “I—yes. Of course, Jack.”
Jack flashed him a tight smile. He released his grip on Arden’s arm only to take his hand instead and lift it.
To his lips.
Arden gawked at him and sent a wild look around the room. It was, he realised belatedly, absolutely silent. So absolutely everyone heard when Jack said in a loud, carrying voice, “Anyone who wishes to do so may congratulate me and my beautiful omega on our impending marriage.”
The room erupted with noise.
Arden stumbled backwards when a few chairs were knocked over as their occupants leapt to their feet. Aloys stalked over to stand in front of him and Jack, and he started yelling something at Jack about dragging him through the Courts, and ruining him, and seeing him damned for this.
Aloys went to grab Arden.
Arden flinched back against Jack, and Jack caught Aloys’ grasping hand before he’d even made contact with Arden. Aloys gasped and dropped to a knee.
By then, other guests had come to press around them and Arden was the centre of a knot of jostling bodies. No. Not guests? Servants, going on their unfussy clothes, but not servants that Arden recognised. Except Hodge, who was no longer wearing Papa’s—that was, Lassit’s—livery.
He was wearing Jack’s.
Jack wrapped an arm around Arden’s waist. “All right?” he asked.
“No!”
“Will you come with me?”
“Yes!”
“It’s all right, Arden. You’re safe now.”
“Was I not safe before?”
Jack closed his eyes briefly. He raised Arden’s hand to his lips again, kissed it quickly, then gripped it in his and drew Arden along beside him as he strode through the room, flanked by the servants, who pushed their way clear.
Arden did his best to keep up. At the doorway, he cast a glance back at the loud, agitated crowd.
Lassit sat at the head of the table, ignoring the chaos around him as Aloys argued loudly with a heaving mob of angry guests. Lassit rested an elbow on the arm of his chair. His chin rested in his hand.
He was—always—watching Arden.
Lassit’s lips curled in a bitter smile and his eyes burned. He lifted his chin off his hand long enough to give Arden a mocking flick of his fingers in farewell.
CHAPTER 14
BECKETT
Beckett left the duch with Jack and strode off to Marl’s office. It was time for him to get back to work. Even when Jack was home and he and Beckett fucked the night away, he was on duty the next morning without fail. And yes, last night he’d been servicing his omega—Jack’somega, he corrected with a sigh—but he was still furious that he’d rested this late into the day. Or at all.
He shouldn’t have let Jack put him in his bed. If his omega—theduch, godsdammit—if the duch hadn’t woken him up with his peculiar behaviour, first launching himself into Beckett’s arms and clinging to him as if he was clinging to a raft in the wide-open sea, then running off the moment Beckett mentioned shagging, Beckett could well have slept the whole day and into tomorrow.
He rapped lightly on the door of Marl’s office and waited for Marl’s firm, “Enter,” before he went in.
Marl looked up from one of his ledgers, peering over the edge of his half-moon spectacles. His iron-grey brows lifted when he saw Beckett. “Feeling up to work, are you?”
Beckett straightened his shoulders. “Yes.”
“Very well.”
Thankfully, he didn’t try totalkto Beckett about it. Just gave him his orders and sent him off.
