Chapter 13

Angelique‘s Seduction

Heathridge brought Jane’s dinner up to her room on a tray.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, flustered by the kindness.

“My pleasure, madam,” he smiled warmly as he closed the door behind him.

She sat on the couch in her satin pyjamas and watched a foolish television romantic comedy whilst she
ate and wondered what Baron did for his meal. She doubted that he ate in the dining room with the
drunk women.

When she tiptoed out onto the landing in curiosity, she could hear their drunken laughter spilling out in
raucous tones, but no male voices.

It was late when they left, and Jane watched the last tail-lights recede down the driveway with relief.
She took the tray down to the kitchen so that Heathridge did not have to collect it in the morning, and
did the dishes, before creeping back through the house.

Baron’s voice from his office drew her attention. His door was open, and through it she could see him in
his wing back chair, his hair dishevelled now and trying to reform its curls, and a glass of whiskey in his
hand.

“Oh, poor baby.” Angelique purred, and

Jane saw her cross the open door, wearing only her underwear, red and lacey. “Stuck in his office all
afternoon and night.” She placed her foot on the chair between Baron’s thighs, her toes teasing his c-
ck. “I have come to make it up to you.”



She did what Jane had fantasized about doing, setting a knee to either side of Baron’s hips, and lifting
whilst she released his c-ck from his trousers. Baron’s eyes changed focus, over Angelique’s shoulder,
meeting Jane’s and she saw the shift of his expression, but then Angelique took him into her with a
groan, and his gaze turned inward, distracted.

Jane ran, her bare feet silent over the marble tile, up the stairs and into the room that wasn’t hers but to
sleep in, closing the door behind her and slid down the wood to press her face into her knees sobbing.

She cried herself to sleep against the door and only stirred slightly as it was pushed open. Half in
dream, she felt Baron pick her up off the floor and .carry her into the bedroom, sliding her under the
sheets, before undressing. He slid in and curled around her.

In the grey light of dawn, the warm comfort of his body leaving her woke her. She watched him through
slitted eyes as he dressed and left, wondering at why the alpha wolf, master of his home and the
women he kept in it, would feel the need to sneak in and out of his wife’s bed, and not to f-k, but just to
hold her through the night.

In his absence she struggled to fall back asleep, and threw back the covers in surrender, dressing in
running gear. As she made her way down the stairs, Heathridge returning for the day was letting
himself in through the front door. “Good morning, madam,” he held it open for her.

“Thank you,” she was bewildered by the courtesy as always. Heathridge was a beta, and technically
outranked her in the pack hierarchy, but socially her family and marriage to Baron, his employer, placed
her above him. It created a confusing situation, she thought, for them both.

“Sir has asked for your room to be changed.” Heathridge informed her.

“Changed?” She paused, confused.



“To the better bedroom, madam. He had not realised that you had chosen the blue room. It is in need of
refurbishment. The gold room is much more appropriate.”

She stared at him. His face gave nothing away. They both knew that she had not chosen the blue
room.

“I will arrange for your possessions to be transferred,” he told her.

“Alright,” she agreed. What did it matter which room she slept in, none of them would ever be hers.

She ran down the driveway to the gates, and the security opened them for her. On the main road, she
moved from a jog into a sprint, running until her legs wanted to collapse, trying to outrun her life, her
marriage, herself.

As she sobbed in breath, doubled over, her hands braced against her knees, she realised that she
could never run fast enough to escape from what she was, and what that made her to the pack. She
either surrendered to it, found a way around it, or, as her mother had done, ended it.

There were other omegas, she knew, though she had not encountered any. A rarer rank, the title often
wrongly used to designate those who fell out of favour or were junior, a true omega was a
submissive werewolf, the opposite to an alpha who existed to lead, dominate, and conquer, an omega
served and submitted.

With the right alpha or beta mate, her mother had told her, an omega’s existence had the potential to
be a happy one. The right alpha or beta would value what omega gave, they would find satisfaction in
an omega’s submission, and it would trigger in them a fierce and devoted need to protect.

Find your One and Only, your true mate, her mother had told her, and it would lead to happiness and
not misery.



But the wrong alpha or beta… Her mother’s marriage had been an example of an alpha frustrated by a
mating to an omega when what he sought was a strong alpha Luna or a beta to lead the pack with him.
An alpha who wanted a co-ruler needed an alpha or beta mate. One who wanted a partner devoted to
serving and supporting his or her role as alpha, needed an omega.

To the right mate, an omega was a diamond, to the wrong one, quartz.

Bound to the wrong mate, when her

beta and alpha children had begun subjecting her to ridicule and disrespect, Rose Corbyn had taken
her own life, unable to see a path beyond misery and humiliation.

Look harder, Jane, she told herself as she would have told her mother. Sometimes a she-wolf needed
to look harder and longer at a problem to see her way to a solution.

She caught her breath and began to run again, her feet taking her towards the town before her lungs
called for surrender. As she leaned against a wall to recover a HELP NEEDED sign in a window caught
her eye, for was that not exactly the call that echoed through her own heart, she thought.

Help. Needed.

‘It was a little café.

Jane began to think as she ran back towards Baron’s estate about what qualifications a person would
need in order to get a job.


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