The Duty of a Beta (14 page)

Talbot’s hand came to rest in the centre of Gunnar’s chest. His fist tightened in his shirt, as if he thought there really was some way they would be able to hold on to each other.

“No,”
Marsdon
said, after a second’s consideration. “There’s been more than enough
sneaking
around behind people’s backs already. I think it’ll do you both the world of good for each of you to say whatever it is you need to say in front of the other.”

He was an alpha. It was his right to make that decision. But Gunnar couldn’t help but wish he’d chosen to make a different one. “This isn’t his fault,” Gunnar forced himself to say, without once looking towards Talbot. “It isn’t fair on him for you to make him think you’ll give us your permission to be mated when—”

“Not even if we mean every word we say?” Bennett cut in. He smiled slightly when Gunnar looked up and met his gaze. “We’re not so cruel that we’d dangle the prospect in front of you only to snatch it away at the last moment. If it’s what you both want, then you’ll need to be honest with us and tell us what the hell’s been going on.”

Gunnar turned back to Talbot. The omega nodded to him, but he didn’t speak for himself. He just looked up at him as if he honestly believed that Gunnar had some magical power to make everything right for them both.

Stroking his fingers through Talbot’s hair, Gunnar stared down at him in wonder. It was stupid to love another man having that kind of belief in him when it was so blatantly unfounded, but still…

Marsdon
cleared his throat. There was a touch of humour in his expression when Gunnar and Talbot both turned their attention to him. “We’re still here, and there will be conditions if we do give you our blessing,” the alpha informed them.

“May I know what they are?” Gunnar asked
,
amazed at how calm his voice sounded.

“No more sneaking around. No more secrets from your pack,” Bennett said, firmly.
“And no more secrets from each other.”

Gunnar nodded his understanding, although he felt as if he didn’t understand a damn thing. He knew full well why he’d been brought to the pack, and…

“Alfred…” he began, only to find he didn’t have anything to add to the word.

“Doesn’t seem to have suited you as well as we first hoped,” Bennett finished for him. He shrugged slightly. “We’ll work something else out for him.”

They were serious. As Gunnar looked from one alpha to the other and back again, that was suddenly obvious. They were seriously considering abandoning all their carefully laid out plans and allowing him to be mated to Talbot.

“You’re in love with each other, aren’t you?”
Marsdon
asked.

Gunnar’s throat went dry. It closed up in a way it hadn’t since he was a little kid. For once he knew without any doubt that if he tried to speak, all that would emerge was a pup-like little whimper. He nodded.

It was worth the struggle he’d gone through to find a way to reply when Talbot smiled up at him, almost as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

“See how well things work when you’re honest with each other about how you feel,”
Marsdon
said.

Gunnar kept staring down at Talbot, wondering if it was really possible that it hadn’t been obvious to the omega from the start. Had he really thought he’d neglect his duty, if there was anything he could have done to prevent himself from straying off the path higher ranking wolves had chosen for him?

“He’s the reason why you’ve been so happy the last few days, isn’t he?”
Marsdon
asked Talbot.

The omega turned to his alpha. He nodded. “Yes.” The word was little more than a whisper.

Marsdon
nodded his understanding. “Wait there, both of you.”

Marsdon
and Bennett strode across to the other side of the room. Gunnar watched them bow their heads together. It was impossible to hear what was being said between them from where he sat with Talbot.

Gunnar looked down at the younger wolf. The omega’s fear that their leaders would refuse them permission to be together was clear in his eyes. Gunnar hesitated. He studied his lover more closely. No, he realised, it wasn’t the alphas’ decision he was so worried about. His attention was all on the wolf he wanted to be his mate. Talbot was worried about
his
reaction, not anyone else’s.

“If you don’t want—” Talbot began, but a shake of Gunnar’s head silenced him.

“I’ve never doubted what I want,” he informed the omega.
“Or doubted
who
I want, either.”

Talbot lowered his gaze for a second. The blush that crept to his cheeks really did suit him so well.

“We’ve made our decision,” Bennett suddenly announced.

Gunnar slowly lifted his eyes away from Talbot and looked across the room at them. A fist seemed to clench around his heart, holding it still in his chest as he waited.

“If either of you had just stood back and let the other take the blame when you were obviously in this together from the start, you’d have deserved whatever punishment we saw fit. And, believe me, if we’d found out that anyone had been taken advantage of, all hell would have broken loose,”
Marsdon
said.

Gunnar nodded his understanding.

“And you’re wrong if you think you’ll both get away scot free just because you’re blatantly in love with each other and ready to jump into limbo to save each other’s skins,” Bennett added. “There will still be repercussions.”

“Yes,” Gunnar agreed.

“That said…”
Marsdon
looked from one of them to the other, then to where Bennett was leaning against the back of the other sofa.

Bennett smiled. “That said
,
we’d be hypocrites if we refused a love match just because you were both too bloody dense to ask for permission for one from the start.”

“Come outside,”
Marsdon
said, his face splitting into a grin. “There’s a ceremony to be performed. Best do it now, before you two get yourself into even more trouble.”

It took Gunnar several seconds to pull himself together as the announcement sank in. By that time, Talbot had already risen and was tugging very gently at his wrist, encouraging him to his feet.

Long before Gunnar pulled himself off the sofa, the alphas were shouting up the stairs and out through the back door into the courtyard, calling all the other wolves to follow them out to the spot on the edge of the forest where the mating ceremonies had been conducted since before Gunnar had joined the pack.

By the time they had walked halfway to the forest edge, it seemed to Gunnar that every other wolf had caught up with them. But if he was too distracted to notice that a few members were conspicuous by their absence, there were others who weren’t.

“Where are Alfred and
Caden
?”
Marsdon
asked, a frown quickly growing between his brows. “Has anyone seen them?”

“We passed them by the wood pile,” Francis said, from the other side of the Gunnar. “They were…busy.”

“Too busy to attend a mating ceremony—?”
Marsdon
demanded. He broke off as Gunnar saw Bennett elbow him in the ribs.

“I think they mean
Caden
and Alfred are
busy
,” Gunnar heard the other alpha say. Bennett’s lips twisted into a small smile as he slipped his arm around
Marsdon’s
waist.

Suddenly, Gunnar found both the alphas looking towards him for an explanation. For a few moments, he forced himself to think of someone besides Talbot.

“It would explain why
Caden
was so pissed off with me for not thinking Alfred was a bloody brilliant match,” he realised. The cheeky little sod hadn’t been worried about him hurting
Talbot
at all!

Marsdon
looked back towards the house, as if he was thinking about rushing back to rescue
Caden
from some terrible fate. Gunnar couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea. The alpha raised an eyebrow at him.

“
Caden’s
wrapped far better wolves than Alfred around his little finger with nothing more than one of his pretty smiles. If he’s set his sights on him, and if you decide you’re in favour of allowing them to continue on that course, it’s not
Caden
who might find himself out of his depth and needing to be rescued,” Gunnar said.

A look passed between the alphas once more. Bennett was smiling at the idea.
Marsdon
seemed less sure of it, but he seemed willing to follow his mate’s lead on that particular matter. He slipped his arm around Bennett in return as they resumed their journey.

Gunnar found his hand automatically going to the small of Talbot’s back to steady the small wolf in much the same way Bennett reached for
Marsdon
, but there was no responding touch from the little omega.

Talbot didn’t even look up from the grass underfoot until they stopped and Gunnar held out his hand, taking care to place it well within the younger man’s line of sight. Talbot slowly reached out to him in return, settling his smaller hand neatly in Gunnar’s palm.

His hand was cold. The beta strengthened his grip on it, holding him tighter, warmer,
safer
.

It seemed to do the trick. Talbot looked up, all big, blue, uncertain eyes, all hope.

Their alphas’ palms covered their joined hands, increasing their grip over Gunnar’s hold on Talbot, as if reassuring him that it was safe to hang on to him as tightly as he could ever want to, because once this was done, no one would ever be able to pull them apart.

“Alpha to both beta and omega, wolf to wolf, we offer you the chance to form a new life, a new bond, a new pairing within our pack.”

Until the words were actually hanging in the air, part of Gunnar really believed that something would happen to stop it all in its tracks. A huge weight rose off his shoulders as he realised that the only people who could stop it now were him and Talbot, and there was no way in hell either of them would do that.

“An unmated wolf takes a mate and forms a bond with another unmated wolf from your pack,” Gunnar said, making sure each word hit the air strong and clear. And maybe just a little bit of him couldn’t help but use the words to remind any wolf within hearing that Talbot was his now, and anyone who messed with the wolf he loved would be messing with him, too.
“A bond that can never be broken.”

Talbot nibbled at his bottom lip as he listened to every syllable very carefully. He cleared his throat before he repeated them back to him. There was no dominance, no hint of ownership in those words. Gunnar was quite sure that he was the only wolf there who would ever guess that he’d been just as thoroughly claimed as Talbot had been, that he was just as owned as the younger man would ever be, and the omega barely had to raise his voice to do it.

As he reluctantly let go of Talbot’s hand and turned to accept the congratulations of the other members of the pack, he immediately met
Marsdon’s
eyes. And suddenly he was very sure that at least one other wolf knew that it was quite easy for a dominant wolf, even an alpha wolf, to be owned right down to the core.

“I think you’re going to prove to be a very good match for each other,”
Marsdon
said as they shook hands.

Gunnar nodded. He seemed to do a lot of nodding after that. By the time he finally closed his bedroom door behind them, sealing himself and Talbot away from the rest of the pack for a little while so they could strengthen their bond, he was damn near sure his head was going to fall off.

Reaching up, he rubbed at the back of his neck as he turned away from the door. Talbot stood in the middle of the room, much as he’d stood in the centre of another room not so long ago. And the omega was once again all nerves, now that they were alone together.

As much as part of Gunnar wanted to smile and make a fuss of him, as much as he longed to tell him everything would be fine, he bit back the inclination. He didn’t need to
say
it was fine. He needed to make it fine. Saying it wouldn’t mean a damn thing.

“Tell me what each of our ranks are in this pack, Talbot,” he ordered, leaving over a yard of carpet between them as he folded his arms across his chest and stared down at the shorter man.

“You’re a beta,” Talbot said, cautiously. “And I’m an omega.”

“That’s right. But I think you forgot that earlier this evening, didn’t you?”

The smaller wolf’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed rapidly. “I…”

Gunnar stepped forwards, closing the gap between them.

When Talbot would have looked down, Gunnar tucked a knuckle under his chin, demanding he keep his gaze up. “What were you thinking, stepping in like that, telling them it was your fault, saying that
you
should go into limbo?” he demanded.

A slight frown grew between Talbot’s pale blond brows. That obviously hadn’t been what the younger wolf had been expecting.

“If this mating is going to be a success—and make no mistake, Talbot, I fully intend it to be incredibly successful—it’ll be because we remember who we are, because we work
with
our natures not against them.”