by Lola Rock
Suddenly everything stills.
The only sounds are the man gurgling blood and the hummingbird flicker of my heart.
Sweating, I can’t breathe.
My head aches, my body whines, and all I want to do is slither out and make this ditch my brand new home.
I test the door handle, but the child locks are on. With a groan, I realize I have to crawl over the guy who’s finally finished choking himself to death. He’s too heavy to move.
Closing my mouth, I climb over him, rolling into the passenger seat and diving out into the cool grass.
I take a big, shaking breath.
But I can’t rest. Can’t sit still.
I need to be off the roadside before the other goons catch up. Or maybe worse. Some wannabe samaritan pulls over, finds an omega in heat, and decides to take me by force.
I kick the door shut and stumble around to the driver's side. The door swings open easily, but the driver’s too heavy to move, hunched over the steering wheel.
Bile churns up my throat at the hole I made in his face.
I won’t lose any sleep over killing a gangster rapist, but it’s still fucking gross.
I can taste his blood, metallic with a hint of burnt toast.
I spit in the grass, then get to work.
Sweat rolls down my back, half heat and half strain. I’m not usually this weak, but even on my best day, I’m no power lifter. Thanks to the zip ties, every tug of his dead weight wrenches my wrists.
Finally, the body falls out.
I step aside, letting it roll to the bottom of the ditch with the roadside trash where it belongs. Without looking at his face, I pat him down, grabbing his gun, a couple knives, and a wallet fat with hundreds.
It takes a few tries to flick open the switchblade. Holding it tight between my knees, I saw at the zip cord until it finally pops, freeing my stinging wrists.
Catching my breath, I lean against the car. My belly cramps so hard I can barely stand.
There’s no way I’m wedging the other guy out of the car, so I leave him jammed between the seats, cringing when I sit and his body bumps my shoulder.
I buckle and carefully back the car out of the ditch.
When I hit pavement, all I see is night sky.
Minus the dead body, I have everything for the perfect escape. Car, cash, and a huge fucking distraction because the Wyverns won’t spare me a single thought until they have Orion safe in their arms.
All I need to do is drive past the city and find a shitty motel to hole up in while I ride out my heat. Then I’ll be on to my independent life. I’ll even pay back the OCC when I have the bankroll.
I try to picture my old dream—the cottage in the woods where I live alone and age in bliss, forgotten by the world, owned by no one.
Only now, all I see is Orion snarling on the grass, trying to throw the guys pinning him down.
Trying to save me.
Why does he have to be nice to me?
Why does he have to be so goddamned beautiful?
He doesn’t deserve what the Redfangs will do to him. No omega deserves to be treated like a thing. Sold and abused.
I won’t let it happen to me.
I won’t let it happen to him.
Decision made, I hit the gas, heading back to the house. This is the only road to the city, so if I keep driving, I’ll meet up with the Redfangs.
I speed faster than I’ve ever driven, constantly checking my rearview. Any second, the Wyverns will fly up behind me in one of their candy cars, rolling in to save Orion like his knights in camo armor.
Aaaaaaany second.
I never spot headlights.
It’s hard seeing anything driving in the dark. Heat has a permanent haze boiling over my vision, and every few minutes, another death cramp twists everything below my ribs like a soaked towel.
Only the towel’s soaked in gasoline, and I’m on fire.
My slick is so uncomfortably wet, I swear it’s dripping into the seat. And this is just the start.
The longer I go without an alpha, the worse it’ll hurt.
The OCC told us a thousand scare stories about omegas who rode out their heat alone. Like the omega who went into heat at her pack’s mountain home while her mates got cut off by a blizzard. The pain was so unbearable, she tried to sedate herself and OD’ed.
A lot of doctors won’t even offer drugs. It’s too unhealthy. We’re efficient breeding machines, us omegas. Wouldn’t want the chemicals to affect a girl’s fertility.
Who cares if she’s in so much pain she cracks a few bones from thrashing?
I clench the wheel.
No matter how bad it gets, I can handle it. I know I can. I’ll hide and bite back the pain, the same way I always have. Like when Noelle locked me in that closet. Or when Juniper stomped my ribs into powder, and I spent two weeks alone in my bedroom, no one bothering to ask why I missed class.
I’m strong.
I’ll handle whatever I have to handle.
I’m halfway to the house when I spot the headlights flying toward me.
A flutter flips in my belly.
Only one way to stop a moving car.
I tense, gripping the wheel to stop my fingers from shaking. I have to time this perfectly.
Just as the black sedan flies past, I wrench the wheel and tag their bumper.
Our cars spin.
Theirs swerves into the ditch, mine doing a 180 on the road. My fingers are still shaking when my car screeches to a stop. I don’t move, don’t get out, just waiting to see what they’ll do.
A gun rests in my lap.
I’ll use it if I have to.
Two guys spill out of the back seat. They close in on me, lifting guns to shoot.
I duck and brace my head between my knees.
Then I hit the gas.
Bullets ping the bulletproof windshield.
Thump, thump. The car shakes as two bodies bounce off the hood. I squeeze my eyes shut and slam the pedal to the floorboards.
Metal screams.
Glass shatters.
The force throws me forward, then back. The seatbelt wrenches my waist, and I gag, cramping in agony.
Gun.
I need the gun.
My fingers quake, scraping the floorboards, but when they bump metal, I can’t close them.
Shock?
Shit.
Everything’s woozy and blurry.
“Bad omega,” a deadly voice hisses through the shattered car window. I catch his coffee scent, bitter with rage.
He grabs me by the back of the neck, wrenching me upright. My vision spins, but it’s hard to miss the blood flowing from the cut on his bald head.
“Dominik will fucking destroy you.” His dark eyes glow with a malice so toxic my blood clots in my veins. “Then I’ll have my turn to make you bleed.”
Braced between my knees, my fingers tighten.
They squeeze around metal.
Gun.
Holy shit, I picked it up!
The man yanks me by the hair, baring my neck, forcing me to submit. He swallows, focused on my pulse, nostrils flaring, hypnotized by my scent.
My lips curl into a snarl.
Not today, motherfucker.
I pull the trigger.
Thirty-Seven
LILAH
It takes a while to get my shit together. Or maybe it’s not long at all. I can’t tell.
When my knees stop shaking enough to hold my weight, I step over the latest man I murdered. The other car’s side is totally smashed.
Bodies on the pavement. Glass and blood everywhere.
Orion. If I hurt him—
Fire in my belly, I stumble to the car.
Orion sits belted in the passenger seat. His chin rests against his chest, his breathing shallow. His long, blond-tipped eyelashes flutter at the pace of my speeding heart.
I duck inside, and it’s like cliff-diving into an ocean of applesauce, his heat turning the car into an orcha
rd.
My belly flutters and cramps. I need an alpha to stop the pain, but my body wants Orion just as badly as a thick knot.
I grind my teeth, biting back the hurt and mind-melting hormones.
“Orion?” I feel his forehead.
His skin is scalding, the same temperature as mine.
He doesn’t make a noise. Doesn’t twitch as he keeps breathing the same shallow breaths.
But subtly, so subtly maybe I’m projecting my fever dreams, I swear he nuzzles my palm.
My organs turn to liquid.
I slash his zip-tied hands free, struggling not to breathe him in because his scent sets me off so hard.
Alone, I’m a hot mess.
With him, I’m spinning into full-on meltdown.
“Nnn—” he murmurs. “Nesss.”
“Nest?” Sliding one hand to cup his cheek, I use the other to check his pulse.
It’s slow. Like coma slow.
He’s sedated, for now.
It won’t keep him down through his heat—that takes an IV and a round-the-clock anesthesiologist. I check over his golden skin. He’s a little dirty, the collar of his T-shirt stretched, and a few tender red spots that are slowly blooming into bruises, but none of his shallow scrapes need a hospital.
Letting out a breath, I carefully shut his door, then waddle around to the driver’s side, bracing myself against the hood.
When I test the gas, the car still runs.
I buckle up and do a three-point turn that’s more like fifteen points, but there’s no one to witness my heat-drunk driving.
Half praying for, half dreading when the Wyverns catching up to us, I speed back to the pack house and gun down the driveway.
Everything past the first gate is carnage.
Bodies scatter the lawn—some Redfangs in their Ken doll mafia suits and tattoos, some in black Wyvern House camo. I want to throw up.
So much death.
And for what?
This is so far beyond a jealous beta. Maybe Craig was the Trojan donkey, tricked into opening the gates, but this is war.
I ease down the driveway, swallowing the urge to hit the gas, but I don’t want to bounce Orion, so all I can do is look ahead, trying to ignore the twisted shapes and blood.
I park at the front door, skirting Craig’s body where it lies soaking up moonlight.
With the house looming over me, the sense of doom reminds me of the moment I arrived. Only now, instead of a vague idea that something’s wrong, I can smell the blood on the air.
When I unbuckle Orion, he moans.
The low sound strokes my insides like rich velvet.
I consider leaving him in the driveway, maybe running to hide in the lake, but pretty sure I could sink to the bottom of a trench with concrete sneakers and Orion’s siren scent would lure me straight back to the surface.
“Lilll—” he slurs.
“I’m here. You’re okay.” I rub his shoulder, trying to be comforting, but his skin is sexual napalm, and the innocent rubbing motion makes my belly cramp. I settle for a hand on his shoulder, holding it rigid as a lobster claw.
Comfort him, don’t lick his throat.
“Lile. Luh. Lilaa—” he’s not saying my name, but calling it like he needs me. His garbled words ache with the same plea he’d use on his alphas.
My insides shimmer like cellophane.
Don’t read into it.
It’s my name. Not a love spell.
“Can you stand?” I tilt his chin, looking him in the eye.
His pupils yawn like caverns, his blue eyes as glassy as frozen lakes. He blinks, fluttering angel lashes.
“Orion?”
A soft purr rumbles in his chest, and it’s better than a vibrator, shooting straight to my clit. My knees wobble. I grab the roof for support.
“Lilah,” he says low and slow, like a lick of chocolate mousse.
Is he trying to kill me?
“I need you to walk.” He’s literally going to cause my death by combustion.
And I won’t even be mad.
I tug his arm, and thank the gods he responds, letting me pull him out of the car. He stumbles, almost falling, nearly taking us both down, but I catch him, winding both arms around his waist.
His arms slink around my shoulders, and he buries his face in my hair.
I shiver as he drags his nose and chin along my throat, his hands slipping to grip my hips.
“Orion?” My voice is a raspy thing I don’t recognize, like I have a side hustle narrating audiobooks so smutty I can’t even sell my shit on Amazon.
“Drugs.” Orion keeps nosing my hair, but this time my shiver’s one of despair.
Drugs. Right.
That’s why he’s all over me.
Because I’m here, I’m a warm body, and whatever they gave him upped his heat from a cozy bonfire to nuclear fusion. He’ll forget me the second his alphas show.
Or worse. He’ll remember me.
He’ll remember I’m his competition, and his omega instincts will finally kick in the way they should’ve when I walked into his home.
He’ll murder me before he lets his alphas taste my fully awakened scent.
I have to be gone before then.
“Let’s get you inside.” I haul him against me, pretending I can’t feel his warmth, pretending he’s not clinging to me because all of this means nothing.
We stumble up the stairs like drunks. Only, if I were drunk, I would feel more numb. I’ve never felt more alive. Nerve endings I never learned about in class are lighting up, screaming, and begging for cock.
It gets worse with every heavy step to the second floor. My senses are waking up too, and I can scent all four alphas like they’re close enough to lick.
Leather and smoke. Citrus and cedar.
A whine slips from my lips.
Orion groans and his scent rises into the tangle, so sweet and sharp with need, I’m choking on cinnamon cider.
At the top of the steps, I pull him toward what has to be Atlas’s room. Even if I couldn’t taste the pack leader’s panty-dropping musk, I heard them in there. It’s the door that couldn’t hide moans so lust-soaked, a pornstar would have to fan herself.
“Nest,” Orion mumbles with a subtle head jerk to the second set of stairs.
The third floor may as well be a mountain, but he’s right. For his heat, he needs his nest.
Only, that’s the beating heart of his territory, a place I should never even see, let alone step inside while I’m dripping with my own pheromones.
“I don’t—”
“Nest,” he says again, in a muzzy, puppy-dog voice that I can’t refuse.
Gasping, we drag each other up the last flight and step through the door to a full-floor suite straight out of an omega’s hormone-drenched dreams.
The main room has an ultralow ceiling, luxe royal blue wall hangings, and a cushion-turned-floor that feels like walking on a cloud.
But, like, a firm cloud—one comfortable enough to support you while you lay back and get fucked brainless by your rutting mates.
The nest is piled with plush blankets and cushions, the fabric fresh and clean. Clearly no one’s been up here in ages, but it’s the only spot in the house the pack has kept spotless, always ready to meet Orion’s need.
It’s so cozy—so perfect—I want to camp here. I want to leap into the pile of blue satin cushions and curl up, feeling perfectly safe in the dim, windowless space until the alphas arrive and order me onto my knees.
My inner omega is drunk-off-her-ass-delusional tonight.
With a moan of relief, Orion stumbles into the pile of pillows I was eyeing.
He sinks in the same way I’m dying to, instinctively making himself comfortable even though he’s flying high.
I need to leave.
Like right now.
But my soft, stupid heart has me kneeling beside Orion because I know this is goodbye.
I push that blond curl away from his forehead t
he way I’ve wanted to since the moment I saw him. Clammy with sweat, my touch doesn’t offer any relief from his heat.
My fingers skate down to his neck, and I let myself linger, sipping on sweet apple juice while I check his pulse.
It’s stronger now, a steady beat that may as well be a ticking timer, because the second it’s back to normal, he’ll go for my throat.
I pull away.
Not expecting him to move, I’m not ready when he latches onto my wrist, gripping hard enough to ache in the best way.
“Need,” he mutters, blinking with a glazed expression that makes me suck a hot breath through my teeth.
“I…” My heart pumps, the heat making me hallucinate, because he couldn’t possibly be saying what I think.
“Need.” He swallows, drawing my eye to the long line of his throat with its silvery, shimmering mate bonds. “Atlas.”
I flinch.
Orion isn’t even seeing me.
He’s so heat drunk, he probably thinks he’s gripping one of his mates.
“Atlas is on the way. They’re all coming for you.” I pull his fingers off one by one, even when he clings like he’s suctioned on with tentacles.
“Need,” he echoes roughly, and my heart tears because I can never be the one for him.
“They’ll be here soon.”
I crawl away, heart beating louder and louder and louder, a rhythmic thumping sound—
Wait. No.
That’s not my heart. It’s a fucking helicopter.
The sound of the blades thumps through the nest.
My time is up.
I can’t let the alphas see me here.
I can’t let them scent me.
Panicking, my whirling gaze lands on the bottles lined prettily on the counter of the attached bathroom. I dash inside, grabbing the bottle of de-scenting cologne that looks exactly like the one Hunter bought Orion the night of the goddamned ball that feels like it happened a thousand years ago.
I spritz myself like a dying bonsai, covering every treacherous inch of my heat-soaked body. The chemicals won’t work for long the way I’m cranking out caramel like a candy shop. I clutch the bottle tight, spraying every footstep I took on my way into the nest.