Jack was silent for a second, then he laughed out loud.
Arden scowled at him.
“A footman?” Jack chucked his chin.
Arden swatted his hand away, which only delighted his rude husband more.
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “He was tall? Muscular? Dark hair and eyes?”
“Yes! Do you remember him?”
“No,” Jack said, still brimming with amusement. “It seems, my darling, that you have a preference when it comes to your alphas.”
“No,” Arden protested at once. “He wasn’t…it wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel anything for him, not like the way I do for you and Beckett. It wasn’t the same, Jack. At least…” He wrinkled his nose. “Not for me.”
The amusement drained away. “For him? Clarke?”
“In retrospect, I suppose that…how strange. Yes. He pushed me?—”
Jack growled again. There was nothing teasing about it. “He did what?”
“He pushed me down.” Jack didn’t need to know that he’d chased Arden first. Caught him. “Other servants came when I called out. I didn’t know what set him off. I thought he was drunk.”
“He was probably in rut. It can feel like being drunk.”
“Oh. Was it…? Did I do that to him?”
“No. You didn’t ‘do’ it to him any more than Beckett ‘did’ it to you. He sensed a compatible partner. An omega open to?—”
“I assure you I was not open to anything! I didn’t even know I was an omega. That was the day I presented.”
Jack’s face tightened. He hushed Arden gently. “Another omega on the estate set him off, then.”
“We didn’t have any other omegas. I was the only one.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“Was I open to it?” Arden said after an awkward silence. “I didn’t want him, Jack. I didn’t. I’ve only ever wanted you.”
Arden had blurted it without thinking, but he was glad he did. A fierce expression sharpened all of Jack’s harsh features and his eyes bored into Arden’s.
It was almost too much. “And,” Arden added in a small voice, “and Beckett.”
“Just us.” Jack gripped Arden’s hips, sliding him down Jack’s thighs, closer to his body, until he had Arden sitting right on top of his hardness. He flexed up into Arden. “Just us.”
“Y-yes,” Arden said.
“I’ll make you happy, Arden.Wewill. I swear it.”
“I’m already happy. I’m happier now than I have ever been. I hope the same can be said for Clarke.” He hadn’t thought of Clarke for years.
“I assume your father sent him away from Dalbryn.”
“He went to work at one of my mother’s estates. He wrote to me.”
“Oh?” Jack frowned.
Arden leaned in to peck him playfully on the tip of his lovely big nose. Jack blinked, startled. “It was only once, to apologise. He was a very nice boy.”
