by Lola Rock
Mine.
My alphas.
But underneath, a fifth scent clings to them.
A sexy, cinnamony, crisp apple, frolicking-through-orchards-on-your-honeymoon kind of scent.
Too sweet to be alpha.
“You already have an omega?” I think I yelp, maybe shriek, but I’m not tracking anymore.
I’m lost.
Lost between need and despair.
Lost between instinct and the harsh reality that I can call them mine in my head all day, but they will never want me.
They already have their pack.
Their omega.
“Orion.” Atlas’s hardass exterior cracks. He can’t even say his mate’s name without slipping a sweet, gruff smile. But it flips back so fast when he remembers who he’s talking to. A warning growl rips up his throat. “You don’t look at him. You don’t speak to him. You don’t even let him see your shadow. Understood?”
“I understand. I’ll go.”
Oh god. Please let me go.
I can’t breathe without breathing them in. Without the desperate, clawing, needy thing inside me rising up, begging me to claim them.
I have to go before my perfume betrays me even more than I just betrayed myself.
When Atlas nods, I fly.
I push past Craig and sprint through the garden.
But you can’t run from your fated mates.
Only I can because mine aren’t mine.
Maybe I waited too long, suppressed myself too long. They found another omega. One who’s not broken. One who’s not a coward like me.
I run into the woods.
I run like my demons are chasing.
I run, and this time, I don’t think I’m ever going to stop.
Ten
JETT
“Follow her,” Atlas barks as the omega dashes off like an Olympic sprinter.
“I’ll send a drone.” I want her gone. Today. Now. I can’t have her here for a week, let alone a month or more.
This is the only place I can relax. My home with my brothers—the only people I trust.
Lilah.
Her name is the purest poison.
It forces me to remember the girl I refuse to recognize. That girl was sweet and smiling, but somehow always bruised and crying alone. I’d find her hiding in dark corners whenever I followed my father to work.
That Lilah had sparkles in her grey eyes.
I must have dreamed that girl.
This omega is sallow skin and jutting bones. Threadbare clothes and a disciplinary file filled with fights and confiscated weapons. Her eyes aren’t soft or sparkling.
They’re defiant. Angry. Terrified.
Just the way I feel.
She’s a relic from before.
Before Renee showed me there’s nothing sweet or pure about omegas.
They’re predators.
And fuck our history because Lilah is the latest in a string of sluts to come sniffing after my pack.
She needs to be destroyed.
I don’t give a shit if we’re off missions. I’d rather be grounded forever and face our issues head-on than try to keep pushing forward, stuck with another invader in our lives.
“She looks rough,” Finn says, still staring at the spot where she disappeared. He’s not wrong, but I can’t let myself catalog her bruises and scrapes or the hint of a scab in her hairline.
“She was spooked about Orion.” Hunter frowns. “Didn’t she know what she was walking into?”
“Craig,” Atlas barks, summoning the waste of a beta I can just barely tolerate since he’s at least a male. My stomach twists at his dog-eyed expression, the way he yearns for Atlas. The same way he looks at me when I’m forced to acknowledge him.
Alpha chaser.
“You spoke to her yesterday. What did she say?” Atlas asks.
“She disrespected me, Alpha.” The whine in Craig’s voice is the height of cringe. “And then she ran off before I could explain. But there’s no way she doesn’t know everything about you. It’s all online. You have fan sites,” he says in awe.
No doubt, Craig is a founding member.
I pull out my phone and scramble the drones, setting them to search the property, but they come up empty.
She can’t have gone that far.
“I’ll report when I find her.” I leave my brothers and Craig in the gazebo, desperate to escape the air the omega stained.
Thank the gods she doesn’t give off pheromones, but I can still scent the chlorine embedded in her skin.
I retreat to my second-floor office. It’s always been crowded with files and gear, but since I took over our team’s tech from Orion, the monitors have tripled. I’m glad to sink into my leather chair, surrounded by the faded scents of my packmates and the calming whir of electrical fans.
I check the house cams first.
Odds are, she’s already climbing into one of our beds.
But the rooms are empty of anyone except Orion, who’s busy pacing a landing strip in his bedroom carpet.
Orion’s fraying. I’d comfort him, only then he’d know that I am too.
She’s not in the kitchen or anywhere upstairs.
The basement’s just as empty.
A ragged duffel sitting in the grass is the only sign that Lilah was ever here.
I pull the drone feeds up on the big screen.
I have them zig-zagging our acreage when one of the perimeter alarms starts to sing.
“There you are.” I flick to the cam view and catch a glimpse of a girl sprinting like she’s being chased by monsters. Every few steps, she glances back, then speeds up, cutting a wild trail through the forest.
She’s as eerie as her speed.
The girl looks like a warmed-up skeleton. She shouldn’t be able to cover so much ground so fast. Maybe she’s trying to look pitiful. Trying to earn sympathy.
She won’t get any from me.
I pin a drone to her, silently following her desperate run. She’s well off our property by the time she hits the lakeshore.
Lilah barely stops.
She whips off her sweats and sneakers, and already wearing a one-piece bathing suit for some inconceivable reason, dives straight into the water.
She doesn’t come up.
I grip my chair arms, scanning the screen.
Still, she doesn’t come up.
Thirty seconds later and fifty feet farther than I was expecting, her tangled brown hair finally surfaces. She freestyles toward the island at the center of the lake.
I’ve made a point of avoiding omegas, but after a lifetime of their simpering, their fake smiles, lies, and manipulations, I know exactly how they are. Omegas want attention and love. They want whatever they want, whatever calms their hormones and satisfies their insane instincts.
Lilah is no different. So I don’t understand why she’s running away.
The only possible answer is, she already has a pack. Maybe she’s meeting them on the island with plans to flee.
I can’t think of a better ending to this bullshit.
“Atlas.” I ring him on the com. “You’ll want to see this.”
I’m expecting his dominance to roll through the room. Instead, I’m wrapped in cider sweetness as Orion slips inside, moving to my shoulder. “What’s happening?”
“She’s running.”
“Away?” He sounds so hopeful.
“Not sure.” I move the drone feed over to the big-screen TV, zooming in, but making the image bigger doesn’t make it any more logical.
Orion leans in close, his shoulder bumping mine. His apple scent has a sharp, needy undertone that would signal a better alpha to pull him in for a hug. It’s all I can do to stay still, allowing the contact to continue.
I can feel how it relaxes him, easing his nerves and tension.
But the touch does the opposite to me. I fight the urge to cringe and tear away.
Orion is my omega. My friend and pack brother since he stumbled into our li
ves at seven.
He’s safe.
He would never use me like the others. I can let him touch me. I can give him this little piece of comfort.
I can.
I focus on the screen until Atlas arrives in a cloud of leather and agitation. Even then, his presence settles me, the hit of the pack leader’s dominance a reassurance so deep it soothes my nervous system, slowing my breathing. Orion melts, drifting toward him and breaking contact, finally allowing me to fully calm.
“What’s she doing?” Atlas asks, setting a hand on Orion’s shoulder.
“She was running away. Now she’s swimming away.” I wave to the screen, helpless to explain the girl’s behavior.
“Isn’t that water glacial?” Orion asks.
It’s fed by mountain streams and it’s probably frigid.
But it’s not my concern. “Let her escape if she wants to escape. It’ll be the dads’ problem.”
“Agreed.” Atlas nods. “But keep a drone on her. We don’t need her killing herself on our watch.”
“Is she pretty?” Orion squints at the screen.
Pretty. I scoff. “She’s a mess.”
Bruised and too thin. Ragged with dark circles. The glossy brown hair I remember tangles around her face, hiding the stars in her eyes.
“Ignore her.” Atlas grunts. “I need to check in with HQ on the Redfangs. Keep me posted on the situation.” He squeezes Orion’s shoulder, then disappears.
Huffing out a sigh, Orion drops into the second office chair.
“Can I stay?” he asks with a frailty that shreds my resistance to having another body in my space.
An omega body, no less.
“You can stay. It’s your gear.” I reach over to squeeze his knee, feeling instantly guilty over the way he arches into my hand, craving his alpha’s touch.
I quickly pull back.
He might wear my bite, but outside his heat and its blissfully numbing insanity, I can’t be the one to give Orion the love he needs.
We stare at the screen, warily watching the girl who can fuck us over like no other.
She hits the island and crawls out of the water only to sprint across the narrow strip of land, then dive back into the lake, disappearing for another heart-stopping length of time.
What the hell is the OCC training their omegas?
Pearl diving?
When she finally bobs to the surface, she cuts through the water without a rest.
She doesn’t stop until she hits the opposite shore.
Lilah wobbles, taking a few rubber-legged steps before she catches her balance and starts running again. Only now she’s barefoot in a swimsuit.
The drone keeps following, and with every step, as she penetrates deeper into the endless woods, it becomes clearer and clearer that the girl has no plot. There’s no rendezvous with her lovers. No clandestine meetup or dark web information trade.
She’s just running.
Maybe running for her life.
I keep staring at the screen, needing to see where this ends, if it does.
Or does she run forever?
Before I have an answer, the drone flashes a low-battery alert and sets an automatic course for home.
She outran the drone.
“What the hell is she doing?” Orion scowls, looking as torn as I feel, stretched between soul-deep hatred and the helpless worry of watching my first doomed love destroy herself.
“I don’t know.” I keep staring, mesmerized by the image of her slight figure sprinting as the drone retreats, her body growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
Eleven
LILAH
I run and run and run.
I run until I literally can’t anymore, and my body finally gives out. I land in soft grass.
Better that than a pricker bush, because I have no control over where I fall. I manage to throw my hands out, stopping myself from face planting, but that’s it.
I lie like a stepped-on slug, panting and gasping.
After a while, I realize it’s not my vision that’s dark.
It’s twilight.
And I’m wearing nothing but a bathing suit, surrounded by trees in a strange wilderness with no idea how to get back to the house where the demons live.
Stupid.
It’s not like I have a phone or anyone to call for help. I doubt Evgenia even packed my cracked tablet—those are OCC-issue. My pack should be in charge of outfitting me now, but we all know they’re not going to give me shit.
They don’t want me.
Which shouldn’t hurt, because I also don’t want them, but no one ever said omega instincts make sense.
I manage the energy to sniff my pits.
Thank all the holies, all I smell is sweat. No pheromones. For now.
But my reaction to the Wyvern pack isn’t normal.
I’ve never sought out alphas, but when I bump into them, my first reaction is repulsion. Second, comes the fear.
Until the Wyvern pack. Their pheromones are catnip and cocaine.
Addictive.
Irresistible.
Terrifying.
I wish the OCC had given me a shittier education, but for all its bullshit, the classes do explain everything about omegadom from top to bottoming.
I know what this means.
A scent match.
Destiny. Fate. My meant-to-be mates.
Omegas have an extra fail-safe when it comes to finding our matches. We don’t need to be awakened to recognize their scents.
To them, my scent is nothing.
To me, theirs is everything I can never have.
I refuse to let them recognize me, to see me any deeper than they already have when it felt like they were staring into my soul.
If they figure out what I am, I’ll be trapped with a pack that would rather see me dead than in their beds.
I refuse to be bound, let alone become a home-wrecker. After years of bullshit omega brawls, the last thing I’ll ever do is steal another omega’s mate. If anyone had bothered to mention—oh, by the way, we’re placing you in a pack that already has a mated omega—I never would’ve signed that offer.
Never ever.
I would’ve gone into rotation or made my escape, but I never would’ve signed.
Orion must be going insane with jealousy.
I know I would be if some bitch strutted into my nest, trying to steal a tasty piece of man steak like Atlas and—
No. Nope. Not going down that insane rabbit hole.
It’s good enough that they’re willing to let me stay in their basement. Honestly, maybe I am perfect for this pack. If they need an omega who’s expert at going unseen, there’s no better ghost.
I just can’t haunt them too long when they smell like a goddamn buffet so tempting I want to load my plate with every flavor and lick them clean.
First, I have to drag my stupid ass out of these woods.
I wasn’t so spaced out on the drive that I didn’t keep an eye on the front console. The dash map showed the lake, which is why I beelined there.
Running makes me feel better.
Swimming makes me feel best.
Since I swam straight across the lake, there should be a road somewhere to my right.
It takes a few more minutes to gather enough energy to stand, but the darkening sky kicks my ass into gear. I wobble upright and wince. My feet are wrecked, full-on bloody and stinging now that I can feel anything but numb.
I shiver like a North Pole elf who forgot her parka.
It’s not that cold, but who’s the genius prancing around in a damp bathing suit?
Fear gives me a second wind. I cannot get stuck out here all night.
Navigating as best I can, I leave the thickest part of the trees, heading toward what I hope is civilization.
The moon is bright enough to light my path.
After hiking long enough to leave my feet screaming, I hear the hum of cars zooming over asphalt. It’s only when I pop out in a dra
inage ditch, climbing up toward the road, that I realize the flaw in my plan.
Hitchhiking is a thing that people do.
But not omegas, even scentless, unawakened ones.
I can’t trust strange alphas.
If the driver’s a beta it’s probably fine, but the problem is, I don’t trust anyone.
I’d rather curl up in this ditch than ask for help from yet another person who wants to use me, hurt me, or straight-up sell me off.
Again.
I promise myself I’ll look up how to set up a lean-to and an organic farm, so the next time I’m lost in the woods, I can just stay fucking lost and solve all my problems.
Tonight, I’m too cold and hungry to sleep in a ditch, no matter the risk.
I climb up and stand on the shoulder, hugging my waist, shivering, and waiting for a car to pass. We must be farther out in the boonies than I realized because it’s a few minutes before headlights appear.
I stick out my thumb like the movies. The car flies by.
I start walking toward Wyvern McManor. If I have to, I can trudge all the way back, but my feet seriously ache. Trail running barefoot wasn’t my brightest idea.
I wasn’t even thinking. I was fleeing.
The second car honks as it zooms past, and I resign myself to a long, woozy walk. I just hope I can find the driveway.
It’s a while before the third set of headlights approaches, and a long line of bloody footprints stamps the ground behind me. I half-heartedly wave, not really expecting them to stop.
The pickup flies by.
As expected.
Until the brakes skrrrrrr.
The truck kicks into reverse and stops beside me. When the driver lowers his window, my heart drops to the pavement with a wet plop.
Hunter.
He smells like smoke and sweet liquor. I brace for my body’s betrayal, expecting my perfume to pop out and say hello, but thank goddess, I’m too exhausted for omega shenanigans.
Hunter’s jacked shoulders block my view of the passenger seat and pretty much everything else in the world because right now there’s only him, with his big brown eyes and sexy scent that has me torn between vaulting through the window and tucking and rolling to the bottom of the ditch.
“What are you doing out here, little omega?” His thick eyebrows lift as he scans me from my bare, bloody feet to the suddenly rock-hard nipples poking through the fabric of my swimsuit.