by Lola Rock
Craig pulls in a breath, and his pupils blow.
I am so fucked.
Thirty-One
LILAH
“Nice perfume.” Craig licks his lips, and it’s like fire ants crawling in my panties. I wrench back my arm, clothes falling to the floor.
“What are you doing down here?” I ask shakily.
“That’s not real important anymore.” He takes a threatening step toward me. “How long have you been lying to the pack?”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then you won’t mind if I tell Atlas he’s housing an awakened slut, and I caught her seducing our omega.”
My jaw locks.
I know the truth as well as he does. I haven’t seduced shit. Wasn’t going to.
But the other thing I know?
Atlas won’t believe me.
At the end of the day, I’m just a Darling. An omega nobody wants for anything but sex.
I never named names when Noelle locked me in the closet because I knew I’d hurt worse if I tried to rat. Even after she kicked me until my ribs cracked, then left me alone for days with no food or water, just pain.
I didn’t expect the trainers to start a crusade, to go after blood and justice, but I thought they’d at least care that I couldn’t walk. I didn’t need an assembly about bullying, or even for Noelle to be punished. I just wanted someone, any one person, to give a shit that I’d been hurt.
Trainer Renee said I was stirring trouble.
Are you sure you didn’t lock yourself in?
Did you even try to open the door?
Are you that jealous, Lilah? Do you need to put on such a desperate act to get attention from the alphas?
Motherfucker, I beat my head against that door.
Feels like I’m always beating my head against something, but no matter how I rage, they never believe me.
I told Jett that Craig was a problem.
Does he care? No.
I’m never anything but a troublemaker.
And Craig knows the truth just as well as I do. His thin-lipped smile makes me vibrate, wanting to cut the smug out of him.
If Craig tells the guys I’m perfuming, I won’t be able to hide, and even if they don’t toss me out on my ass, I’ll be back at the OCC so fast. Hikaru will either auction me off to some nightmare pack or put me in permanent rotation.
I refuse.
Then, now, always.
That’s not going to be my future.
“Let’s make a deal.” I kick my dirty clothes into the nest, then shut the door, not wanting Craig panting over my scent.
“You have nothing to negotiate with.”
“We want the same thing. You want me gone. I want to be gone. So help me get out.”
“You want to leave Wyvern Pack?” he asks skeptically.
“I need a way to disappear.”
“I’m not paying you.”
“I have my own money.” I roll my eyes. “Just get me off the property to a hotel the Wyverns can’t trace.”
“Are you deluded? They’re not going to chase you.”
I grit my teeth. Like I don’t know? “I need to get away from Hikaru.”
“Maybe. But what’re you gonna do for me?”
“I’ll be gone.”
“That’s not enough.”
“What do you want?”
He eyes me up and down and I instantly regret the question, my fingers brushing my knife.
If he says sex, I’ll castrate him.
“Put in a good word for me with the pack.”
My nose wrinkles. “They won’t believe me.”
There’s no way I could straight-faced walk up to Orion and be all Craig’s a nice guy. You should give him a chance.
Barf.
Not happening.
“Then pull away. Stop sucking up to the alphas and mooning over Orion.”
“Fine. But I want this plan locked down. You figure out how to get me past the house’s security and to a secure location. Then I’ll disappear.”
“It’ll take me a few days to set up.” Craig scratches his chin. “In the meantime, if I see you hanging all over them—”
“I won’t.” No matter how much my brain tries to convince me it’s okay to press close and give them the teeniest tiniest sniffs. Distance is what I need.
“If I hear you talking shit about me—”
“I won’t,” I insist, even though promising Craig anything makes me hate myself.
“See that you don’t.”
I want to punch him in the face, maybe stab him just a little as he walks away like a conquering hero.
I retreat to my nest, grab every blanket, and wrap myself in a burrito cocoon.
There are a thousand things I need to do to escape, and I’ve already thought through them all. Find a vehicle or buy tickets under my alias. Rent a short-term apartment where I can ride out my now-inevitable heat.
My traitorous inner omega is all toxic whispers.
You can just stay here.
If I tell the pack, if they accept me…
But they won’t.
I know they won’t.
The second Orion smells my perfume, he’ll trade his smiles for snarls, and I’ll lose the sweet, fun guy I’m starting to love spending time with. I’ll lose Atlas’s trust as soon as he realizes I’ve been lying.
Hunter won’t speak up, Finn will forget me like an old stunt, and Jett will say he always knew I was trash.
I have to go.
I have to give them up.
Just the way I have to bury my last dream of ever finding love.
I fall asleep crying tears I’ll never admit to, and wake up crusty-eyed, near-suffocating and weighed down with blankets at the sound of knuckles rapping at my nest.
“Lilah?” Hunter’s muffled voice echoes. “Did you have dinner?”
His concern sneaks under my skin, popping up goose bumps and panic.
“Already ate,” I shout back semi-hysterically. “Going to sleep.”
He says something else that I block with fingers in my ears. Thankfully, he doesn’t knock again.
He’s long gone when my heart finally stops pounding.
When I peek out of the nest, it’s deep darkness—the middle of the night with every light off in the basement.
I change into my swimsuit and hit the lake.
I notice the surveillance drone following me as I grind out laps, and I let myself drop in the water, hugging my knees to my chest so I sink like a boulder.
I don’t like that they’re watching me.
It’ll be too easy for the dads to hunt me down. To demand I pay them what I owe or spread my legs and start popping out their grandbabies.
Either way, I’ll end up miserable and/or hated.
I spend the next few days avoiding the pack.
My scent is more and more erratic, and it’s better not to be around the Wyverns.
Totally the reason. Not at all because I’m pining for the alphas I have to abandon, and the sweet, sunshiny omega who keeps coming to check on me.
I spot Orion sitting by the lakeshore when I clock my millionth lap. My arm bones are gelatin at this point, my stamina wrecked as pre-awakening hits me with the hormone hammer.
In jeans and a sweater, he holds a huge, fluffy towel folded in his lap, waiting for me to swim to shore. It’s the kind of towel you see in magazines, a sunshine-smelling cloud that covers your whole body, not like the ratty hand towels I’ve always used.
And Orion. Mr. perfect mate material.
Ignoring the pull to him, whatever star-crossed hormone thinks we could ever be together, I keep swimming until I’m on the far side of the island lake. I crawl to shore and hug my knees.
I can’t avoid them forever.
Knowing the drones are circling, that I’m always being watched, I casually sniff myself. Thanks to the lake water, there’s no scent.
For now.
Orion could make me perfume so fast, and in nothing
but a bathing suit, there’s nowhere to hide.
I clamber across the island, hopping over pokey branches and rocks that scratch my thin-skinned feet. The bullet hole aches the most, but it’s not itchy anymore.
I’ll live.
The seconds pass in wind, silence, and shivers. When I peek through the trees, Orion is still there, still waiting.
I feel sick to my stomach.
It would be so much easier to walk away if he stopped being nice and went back to the way he snarled when we met. But even then, even that very first day when he had every reason to think I was his enemy, Orion still followed me to the lake, still gave me his scent-drenched hoodie that I haven’t dared let touch my skin a second time.
There’s a soft whir as the drone dips to watch me watching Orion. I’m so done with the surveillance. So done with alphas and packs and the constant need to protect myself, to never relax.
I glance around until I find a nice round rock that’s just the right weight. Cocking back my arm, I aim and throw.
It pings the drone’s silent blades and spins away, but the drone wobbles. I launch another rock.
This time, it hits something glassy with a sharp ching, and the drone spirals down, spinning and spinning until it lands in the lake.
Then glug, and it’s gone.
I’ll leave the pack just like that.
Disappear and be done with them all.
And just like the drone, buried beneath the water, I bet none of them ever comes looking for me.
Thirty-Two
FINN
Babydoll’s avoiding us.
I didn’t notice because we’ve been in the shit. Scorpio has us hunting leads, trying to find that asshole Dominik. Atlas and Jett are in their fucking element, giving orders everywhere.
I haven’t seen her in days.
That shouldn’t bother me.
Lilah’s just a pet. A plaything to take the edge off.
She was never going to be permanent.
I don’t deserve permanent. I don’t want permanent. Some soft, breakable fucking adorable little thing like Lilah?
She deserves love. I don’t do love.
I only have two emotions. One is hog-wild.
The other? Fucking annoyed, and I’m feeling it hard.
My trigger finger twitches.
“You can’t kill our target,” Hunter says from the driver’s seat of the big-ass panel van where we’re pulling surveillance.
We’re following some low-level Redfang, trying to trace him back to Dom, but this guy’s been in a massage parlor for forty-five minutes. “He should thank me for letting him die on a happy ending.”
“Then you explain to Kieran why we can’t neutralize the threat.”
“No thanks.” Dad and I have a church relationship. I think about him on Christmas, then eat a chocolate orange and make myself forget he exists until next season.
Damn. I miss eggnog.
Hunter leans against the steering wheel, unsubtly glancing at the dash clock. He can play cool all he wants. I know this asshole. “You’re thinking about her.”
“Bullshit,” he mutters, but there’s a tic in his jaw that calls out his shit.
Straightening in the passenger seat, I rub my hands together in glee. Undone Hunter is best Hunter. “Clubbing tonight? We need to get laid.”
“Not in the mood.”
Not in the mood to get laid?
Fucking impossible.
“You mean not in the mood to cruise for a rando when we have two sweet omegas waiting at home?”
His elbow slides off the wheel. “It isn’t like that.”
For the guy who sees everything, he’s pretty fucking oblivious.
“It’s like that for me.” We’re working around the clock, so Lilah’s asleep in her nest by the time we get home.
And I haven’t killed anyone this week.
I’m antsy as shit, and I can’t stop thinking about Lilah’s hair. How good it would feel tangled in my fist. I want to press my nose to her scalp, hold her close, and breathe in the scent that I know is gonna rock my world when she finally perfumes. “Whad’you think her scent will be? Maybe rain? Lightning storm?”
“Strawberries,” Hunter mutters.
Mmm.
I like where he’s going. I imagine licking a long line up Lilah’s neck. You know she’d taste like dessert. “Maple syrup? Fuck, imagine how she and Orion’ll taste together?”
Hunter hunches over the wheel like he can hide his monster bulge.
I lean back, putting my arms behind my head and showing off the package. My knot swells. Our omegas tangled, their scents and bodies and moans all wound up.
Yes, please.
Hunter scowls. “She’s not for us to play with.”
“Why not?” Lilah exists for playing.
All kinds of play.
Teasing. Biting. Stroking.
“Because she’ll hook you.”
Doubtful.
And anyway, why is that a problem?
I see how Orion looks at her. Lilah doesn’t have to be a problem.
She’s a gift. And fuck me, I’m going to unwrap her.
“There he is.” Hunter throws his focus back to the road, where the guy we’ve been following for hours steps onto the sidewalk with a goofy just-got-blown smile pulling his waxy lips.
A Redfang cobra tat peeks from his unbuttoned collar. I zero in on the spot as I reach for my gun. “Ten points if I hit a snake eye.”
“A hundred points if you stop talking.”
I shut up.
Points can be exchanged for nachos.
Hunter follows the dude from the wrong side of town to the condemned side of town, where he strolls up the steps to a boarded-up shack and ducks under a weather-aged strip of crime scene tape like he’s walking onto a yacht.
We may as well paint our van like the Mystery Machine because we couldn’t blend less if Hunter and I rocked out dressed as Daphne and Velma.
“I smell a trap.” I lick my lips, adrenaline pumping.
Fucking finally, this mission’s getting good.
“Atlas?” Hunter says into his com. “We’re compromised.”
“Hold position,” our pack leader commands through my earpiece. “Jett’s pulling your location on satellite.”
My blood pumps. I scan the streets. Plenty of big old trees and deserted rooftops.
Hope they have a sniper.
“Heat signatures show at least five inside,” Jett says in my ear. “Possibly more. We’re sending reinforcements.”
“Let’s do a head count.” I’d check my weapons, only I don’t have to. I have enough knives to take these assholes down three times over, two Glocks, and a partridge in a pear tree. (a.k.a. my back-up grenade).
“Vest?” Hunter asks.
I tap my Kevlar’d chest. “I’ll take the front. I know you love the back door.”
Hunter doesn’t laugh. He unstraps his gun and grabs my shirt, yanking me close. “I will kick your ass so hard if you go dark. Stay above water?”
“Sure, sure.” I brush off his hand but make no promises.
My blood sings.
Death calls.
While Hunter does his ninja shit, I walk straight to the front door. Stepping to the side of the doorframe, I knock with the butt of my Glock. “Who wants Thin Mints?”
A shotgun explodes.
The shot punches the boards, flaying the police tape.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bullets thunder, and the scent of gunpowder in the air sends me slipping down, down, down to my dark core, to the still, silent place inside me. Color fades from my vision.
Everything is shades of grey.
When I hear Hunter kick down the back door, I dive through the window.
Inside are four soon-to-be dead men.
I stab the guy within reach, world in slo-mo. His blood sprays, a brilliant red, streaking across the endless dark.
Three to go.
I don’t ha
ve to aim. Just squeeze the trigger.
Headshot.
Headshot.
Headshot.
Their bodies fall at the same time. My world’s black except for the dazzling red carpet pooling into the rotting floorboards.
Another shot rings in back.
“Backup!” Hunter yells, squeezing off a round of shots.
I bust through the hallway, into a blown-out kitchen where five more guys have Hunter pinned behind the doorframe.
I spot the knife a length before the tip pops my eyeball. Dodging, I duck the blow, feeling a short-lived line of fire on my cheek.
Fucker.
I change his eye color from blue to red with a flick of my balisong.
One by one, I take them out, barely feeling the round that dents in my stomach. Hunter snaps a neck. I shoot one in the mouth. Hunter lands a chest shot.
Then there’s one Redfang left standing.
I hit him in each hand.
Stigmata, motherfucker.
His scream sounds muffled.
He drops his gun, and the blood streaming through his mangled fingers looks like dull grey sludge.
I stand still.
I can feel my chest rising and falling. Rising and falling.
It’s the only sign I’m alive.
Did I take a bullet?
Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe I died a long time ago, and that’s why I can’t feel.
“You with me, buddy?” Hunter covers my shoulders with warm palms, peering into my face.
His eyes should be brown, but they’re a dark, colorless grey.
Lilah.
Lilah has grey eyes.
I think they’d sparkle even in the darkness.
I need to see her.
I need to see if her light can reach this far.
“Got one to bring in,” Hunter says into the com. “Taking Finn home. We can debrief after he levels out.”
When a Wyvern House team shows to clean the scene, Hunter drags me to our van. My heartbeat pounds in my ears. Even when he cranks the radio to death metal, I can’t hear the beat.
I see darkness and blood.
A metal chair, my wrists bound, the blindfold blocking everything but the scent of my own blood and piss. The sound of their laughter.
They never stopped laughing.
Until I slit their throats.