CHAPTER TWENTY

Two hours before

Walking away from Mir felt all kinds of wrong, but Lang kept chatting. The prospective omega guardian was clearly trying to distract himself from the most crucial event in his life, apart from manifesting.

Apart from getting proved.

Apart from being named heir to the Grabar empire.

All were things Lang had worked and prayed for. All Tavish had wanted was to be a doctor and save omega lives.

Standing up on the hill—and having trouble discerning which of the lumps under the grass was his Ma—brought back all the anger, grief, and determination. But rather than concentrating on the abstract concept of saving omega-kind, one patient at a time, now everything was Mir. And he was damn well walking away from them when they’d specifically asked him not to leave them alone.

“You really hate all this, don’t you?”

Tavish stopped in his tracks. “I need to—” He turned back toward the stables, shocked at how far he’d come in such a short time.

Lang slung a heavy arm over his shoulder and started him walking again. “No, you don’t. Mir is fine and will continue to be fine. Ramen won’t let any harm come to her, and they’ll have—”

“Them, not her—” he gritted out. “It’s not tricky.”

“It’s about as tricky as accepting you’re an alpha now, right?”

He stopped again. But the house he’d grown up in loomed ahead. His gaze immediately went to the window where he’d spent years looking down on this yard, watching the family and the betas going about their daily lives. Several shadowy figures stepped back from the window.

They’re my siblings and I don’t even know their names.

“Come on, I think chatting away from all that posturing would be a great idea.” He began guiding him toward the junior beta house while he kept talking. “Dayelle’s father and brother are already over there trying to outboast father. It’s kinda embarrassing and rather awkward as both father and my nearly father-in-law keep staring at me as if I’m going to choose.”

Langish didn’t bother knocking before he entered the home of around a dozen betas. Tavish stepped in after him and paused. It seemed so much smaller, although the colors were brighter than he remembered. The main house had been the same, but he’d put it down to viewing it through the eyes of a child compared to an adult. But the only change here was between Taven and Tavish.

His brother headed over to the kitchen area and put the kettle on while reaching into the cupboard for a pair of mugs.

The smell had changed too. He detected cleaning fluids, and… Before he knew it, he was drawing air over his Jacobson organ, identifying the various scents of the betas who called this place home. Sex underlay everything. A quick glance at the wall beside the door revealed the sex chart was still there. So many marks. Half the names had changed, but damn, these betas were at it like rabbits. Memories of slapping flesh, moans, and husky, encouraging voices trying to keep quiet blasted into his mind. Desire pooled in his groin, something that had never happened while he lived here.

Shutting his mouth, he tried to keep his breathing shallow. “This isn’t such a good idea. I might as well get it over with and get back to Mir.” As his mate’s name left his mouth, Tavish could literally feel Mir’s ass pressed against his cock, and the semi under his kilt expanded into a full-on throbbing erection. Leaning over with one hand on the back of one of the many scattered sofas, he could do nothing but breathe through his body’s idiotic reaction.

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea in the circumstances, do you?” Lang stood beside him, Two mugs of chamomile tea in his hands. But Tavish didn’t see a caring sibling; he saw someone repeatedly trying to keep him from his mate.

“I’m leaving.”

“Sit down and drink your tea, Tav. Or at least wait until that goes down.” Lang looked pointedly at the front of Tav’s kilt. He didn’t need to look to know it was tented with a significant erection. “There are already guests in the main house, and more will arrive every few minutes. Perhaps revealing that there is another Grabar alpha should be verbal rather than by waving your cock about in public?”

Tav stared at his brother’s raised eyebrows and let out a snort of amusement as he reached for one of the mugs of tea. “Mir would laugh so hard at all the shocked faces they’d probably go into labor.”

Lang indicated the couch. “Take a seat, brother.”

Tav did as ordered. Being back here, following his alpha sibling’s instructions, felt familiar, but so much had changed.

“Brother. Not sibling.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Lang replied.

“Yep. It was quite a surprise for us, but it must have been pretty devastating for you. How long has it been?”

Tav took a sip of his tea before answering. “Didn’t father tell you? Nineteen months ago.”

“And you haven’t been getting it on with Mir for quite a while, right?”

Damn, Linelle was right. Other gendered people can smell that me and Mir aren’t intimate. We should have done something last night.

He made a resolution to take some time out this afternoon to… His cock lurched so hard he had to grit his teeth to prevent a groan from escaping.

“That, and anything else to do with Mir, is none of your or anyone else’s business.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, brother of mine. Your consideration of Mir’s state and your isolation in the back of beyond has you on the brink of musth, and I’d rather not have to deal with that at the ceremony.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The growl in his voice had Tav trying to lighten his tone, and he wondered when putting the heating on during the summer in the junior dorm had been a thing. Drawing on his sensible beta knowledge, he continued. “Musth is a mental and legal construct to give an excuse to alpha with poor self-control, and—”

Langish sat back on the sofa that seemed too small to contain his frame and spread both arms across the back. “And where did you learn that? In one of your textbooks? Textbooks that were written by?”

His brother’s raised eyebrows told Tav everything Langish thought about things written by betas about alphas.

Having displayed his size, consciously or unconsciously, Lang leaned forward again. “Remember when Zepish went for Natelle?”

Tavish frowned. Being compared to Zepish in any way was repugnant. “Yes, but that was just Zep acting out to get father to send him to a proving—”

Lang slowly shook his head. “No, no, it wasn’t, although we did both end up somewhere similar. But something happened to him there. I knew him, understood him, probably more than anyone else ever has, and that wasn’t him.”

Tav snorted at Lang’s delusions. He wouldn’t reveal Mir’s secrets, but he couldn’t allow Langish to defend his violent, abusive twin. “Seemed like normal behavior to me. Oh, and to most of the betas on the entire estate. Deep down, Zep is a violent, abusive thug and you know it.”

“He was trying to protect people weaker than himself by becoming the most dominant alpha he could be, because that’s what every proto-alpha does.”

Tavish slammed the still-full mug down on the table and stood up, ignoring the tea sloshing over the side onto the polished table.

Looming over his older brother he jabbed a finger at him. “Bollocks. Utter bollocks. Mir was a proto-alpha, and they didn’t go around raping betas like Zep did. I’m an alpha, and I’ve never—” Tavish fused his lips together before he said something that would make a mockery of the forged certificates tucked into their luggage.

“Only because you haven’t been an alpha long enough. Musth is real. Your brain plays tricks on you, convinces you that everyone who doesn’t submit is an enemy. Father thought he could control it, and he killed a beta who refused him. He also thought he had time with me and Zep, but—”

“I’m going to go get Mir, and we’re leaving. Neither of us needs this bullshit.” He strode to the door, every muscle tense. This wasn’t his place, would never be his place again, and the thought of all the other alphas in close proximity to Mir for a second longer made his blood boil.

That must be what Lang had been doing, luring him away so some other big hairy bastard could get their hands on his Mir, his mate. He rounded on Lang, who had already stood up.

Memories of being pinned down, of being hit by his blond older sibling flooded his mind. Back then, he couldn’t do anything about it, but now he damn well could.

“Stay away from my mate,” he growled. “Brother or not, I’ll still rip your fucking head off if you touch Mir.”

Langish held his hands up. “Tav, this isn’t you; the hormones are playing you. It’s my guardian ceremony today, remember? You met my omega, Dayelle, last night. I wouldn’t go anywhere near Mir.”

Hearing his mate’s name on his rival’s lips only confirmed the need to get to Mir before another alpha did. But before he got to the door, it opened, and Daven stepped inside.

His untie had been far more of a parent to him than Telish ever had, and even though Tavish knew his loyalty to his brother was unwavering, Daven held his respect.

“Thanks for sorting this out, Lang,” Daven said.

“This might not be the best time. He’s—”

“This is the only time we have. Sit down, Tavish,” Daven said.

Tav’s eyes flicked to the door. “I really have to get back to Mir.”

“I examined that proving certificate.”

The anger that had calmed re-ignited. “You went through my things?”

“It’s my brother’s house Tavish, and I’m only talking to you as a courtesy before I talk to him. Neither I nor your father, appreciate being lied to. The thing’s a fake, a good fake, but a fake. Whoever did it even got the right paper, but the signature is from a registrar who died two years before this date.

“You clearly are an alpha, just not a proven one, which is why Telish never received a notification. Now, I’m not going to bring it up in front of the guests, but I’m going to assume that Mir isn’t carrying your children either. Correct?”

Daven’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact, but Tavish felt anything but calm. Trust Clayen to do a piss poor job just to get his own ass out of the firing line.

“Look, the only reason I came down here is that Clayen assured me that you, my father, and Natelle would be turning up on my doorstep if I didn’t. Clay managed to track me down, and you’d probably do the same even if he didn’t tell you my address. Mir didn’t need the one place in the world they felt safe invaded by a strange alpha and omega, so we came down. We can go back just as easily.”

“I don’t think so. We have a few matters to clear up first, namely the fact that Telish won’t accept his mature alpha son running around with unproven balls. When I tell him, just like he did for Lang and Zep, he’ll arrange for you to visit an in-heat omega, and you’ll prove her before you go home. It can all be done and finished within a matter of weeks, probably before Mir delivers.”

His belly lurched as he imagined touching anyone apart from Mir intimately. The pain Mir would suffer if they was told he’d been with another omega, a more suitable omega, sent worry charging through his veins. It could do the same thing to Mir that it had to his mother.

“Never in a million years. I only got that certificate to protect Mir until I can prove them myself. I don’t use omegas like the rest of this family. Mir is a person, not a chattel to be replaced when I feel like a better model. Whether they ever have another pregnancy will be their choice. And with or without children of our own, we will be making a life together.” He growled out the promise, fist clenched with the power of his convictions. “I happen to believe in the marriage vows they use on the other side of the veil, for richer, for poorer, in sickness…”

Daven held up their hand to stop Tavish’s recitation. “I am aware of the primitive vows our forebears adhered to, but they don’t apply to homo Malthusiens. We are a far more evolved—”

“Are you seriously trying to lecture a doctor on human genetics?” Tavish asked incredulously. He shook his head. “This was a mistake. Mir and I are going home.” He glanced over at Langish. “Sorry if I spoiled your ceremony, but hopefully, you love Dayelle enough that you’ll think of her as a person rather than a means to an end, like Father thought of Ma.”

“Now hang on a minute,” Daven grabbed for Tavish’s arm as he stormed toward the dorm’s front door. “Your Pa loved Perelle, he—”

The sheer hypocrisy of that statement had Tavish planting his fist in his untie’s face. The older beta fell back, nose blooming with blood, to be caught by Langish.

Knowing he’d burned his bridges, Tavish flung open the door, and his gaze fell on the alpha who had abused his mate standing on the threshold of the home where they’d both been raised. Zepish was speaking to their father, smiling as he introduced the big, dark-haired alpha beside him. Then Telish embraced the stranger.

Tavish’s paper-thin hold on sanity ripped. With a roar, he sprinted across the space between himself and the small group around Zepish. Nothing else mattered but seeing the blood of the fucker who had hurt Mir on his hands.