Pack Darling Part One

by Lola Rock

  I grab the paper that says how much I’m worth.

  And fucking choke when I see the number of zeroes the Wyvern pack is willing to shell out for my omega ass. Then I keep reading and can’t even breathe.

  Lilah Darling, “the Omega,” hereby agrees to join the Wyvern pack on a temporary basis, terminating wardship with the Omega Cultivation Center “the OCC.”

  The Wyvern pack assumes responsibility for the Omega’s debts, forgiving them in full, under the following conditions:

  The Wyvern pack and its current members may exile the Omega at any point for any reason prior to the bestowal of a mating bite. Upon receiving the pack leader’s mating bite, the Omega becomes a fully initiated member of the Wyvern Pack, receiving all corresponding status and benefits.

  Upon exile, the Omega returns to the custody of the OCC, retaining all debt and relinquishing all assets obtained from the Wyvern Pack.

  Signed by Scorpio, Hikaru, Kieran, and Max Wyvern on behalf of Atlas, Jett, Finnegan, Hunter, and Orion Wyvern.

  Instead of writing out the gajillions in assets the pack must own, they write one simple line that implodes my brain.

  As a fully initiated member of the Wyvern Pack, the Omega receives access to and equal share in all Wyvern Pack accounts, assets, and properties.

  I expected some clause requiring that I’m always sexually available. That I have to walk around in skimpy lingerie, ready to please the alphas who own me at all times.

  But this.

  This is an actual good offer.

  The kind omegas dream about.

  I read it again and again. I can ignore the bullshit about the assets because those will never be mine, and I never wanted a pack to shower me in empty cash and prizes.

  The more I read, the more I like.

  Mainly, terminating wardship and may exile the omega at any point for any reason.

  No sane pack would throw away their omega, but this one worded the option into their contract.

  Maybe because I’m an unawakened dud, but my instincts say this mess goes deeper. Because signed on behalf of is total bullshit.

  The five of them should be here.

  “As your guardian, I strongly advise you to sign,” Hikaru says.

  “If I sign, you won’t force me to take the shots?” That’s essential to the plan I’m already forming. Because as long as I’m legally off of the OCC’s ass, I have options. “And we don’t have to mate?”

  “You’ll be a temporary pack member until you accept the pack leader’s bite.” A smug little smile sneaks to the corner of Scorpio’s mouth. “And no chemicals. We don’t want to hurt the future mother of our grandchildren.”

  Fuck’s sake.

  That’s what this is about?

  I should’ve known. They need a breeder.

  Because isn’t that the only thing omegas are good for?

  The bullshit makes my decision that much easier.

  I can’t breed if I’m not fertile. But I won’t mature. I won’t ever go into heat.

  That’s for damn sure.

  I can hide with these assholes for years. A temporary member of the pack, all of them waiting for me to awaken, waiting to breed their sow.

  In the meantime, I’ll figure out how to run.

  Steal a few of these assets they keep talking about.

  Maybe make a deal with them. Maybe just disappear.

  If they’re going to treat me like a fucking object, I’ll treat them like my bank account.

  Fuck ‘em.

  “Where’s the pen?”

  Seven

  ORION

  With my heat delayed until who-the-fuck-knows-when, I’m jumpy, cranky, and all I want to do is leap into Atlas’s arms and bury my face in his neck the second he comes home.

  That would stop the itch under my skin, the twitch of these fucking hormones that keep my brain spinning like the Ferris wheel from hell.

  Where are they?

  Who are they with?

  Are they disappointed I can’t help with the mission?

  Are they happy I can’t help?

  Are they sniffing after other omegas, regretting their choice to take me as the pack’s mate?

  Maybe my mates are sitting at Wyvern House HQ, planning how to cut me loose. Because there’s no point having a male omega who can’t give them children, let alone me who’s so fucking useless I almost got Finn killed.

  It’s fine.

  They’ll just kick me out of the pack, maybe welcome in perfect NATHAN instead. My brother’s the tech genius I’m not. An alpha who’s the perfect fit for their missions.

  Oh, and he also loves pussy.

  They can pick a perfect new omega together. Have a perfect pack and a perfect family.

  Without me.

  The endless thoughts wind me up so tight I’m shaking.

  I curl into the pack bed, breathing in the balled-up shirts I stole from my mates. As pack leader, Atlas has the muskiest, most dominant scent. It’s familiar and sexy, like broken-in leather and tonka bean, instantly calming my racing heart.

  I groan.

  Being an omega is bullshit.

  All these thoughts and instincts. I feel like a needy gremlin half the time. There’s no way I’m ever showing my pack how deep the madness goes.

  If I can’t give them kids, I have to at least pretend to have my shit together and not drag them down with me.

  The sound of a car engine jerks me out of my downward spiral.

  They’re back!

  Finally. I’ve been losing my ever-loving shit.

  I jump up, instincts screaming to sprint and throw myself at all of them at once.

  No fucking way.

  I straighten the sheets, brush crumbs off the bed, and toss their stolen shirts into the hamper. The scent of my desperation soaks the room, but at least now it won’t be so obvious I spent the entire weekend without them wallowing in their scents, housing chocolate, and holding back hormonal tears.

  They should’ve been home yesterday. All I got was a we’re fine, we’re in trouble again text, then nothing.

  Nothing!

  Calmly, so fake fucking calmly, I walk downstairs to the foyer.

  I can hear them talking on the way inside.

  I let out a breath. Thank god no one’s hurt this time.

  Atlas enters first.

  He’s power in motion, huger and hotter than ever with a collared shirt stretched over shoulders so broad he makes my greedy asshole twitch. He dominates the room, and all I want to do is wrap my legs around his waist, grinding and whining until he drags me to the pack bed and fucks me brainless on his knot.

  “Orion.” He stalks to me, checking me up and down. Just feeling his eyes on my skin, knowing I have my alpha’s attention is enough to settle my crazed nerves. Sexy stubble covers his defined jaw, and his broad nostrils flare when he spots me.

  When his broad palm settles over my shoulder, I feel like myself for the first time in days. Atlas kisses my forehead, wrapping me in his musky leather scent.

  More.

  I need more.

  “Do you have a minute?” he asks like I’m his business partner instead of his blood-bound mate. “We have something to talk to you about.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say, thin and panicky.

  Does he notice the hysteria?

  “Good.” Atlas pats my head and walks away.

  The comfort of his touch evaporates, leaving me alone in the whirlwind of doubt.

  I feel fifteen again.

  The drunken sleepover where Finn dared us to make out. I knew I liked Atlas, but I didn’t realize I was fucking gone for him until I felt his lips on mine. The way he gripped the back of my head with firm fingers, hauling me against his body in a claiming so feral and possessive that he owned me from then on. Even though my blood tests said I’d be an alpha, I knew we’d be together.

  Except, the next day?

  Atlas said it was a mistake.

  We couldn�
�t screw around if we wanted to form a pack with the guys and mate an omega.

  It’s been years since my surprise awakening, and I still feel like the second choice. The omega the guys accepted because we grew up together.

  Not because they want me.

  “Hey,” Hunter says in a half-bark that dredges my attention out of the darkness. He smells like liquor and smoke, a heady shot of mezcal. I let myself breathe him in for a few seconds, trying to calm down.

  Hunter’s nearly as massive as Atlas, all toned muscle and bronzed skin with a teddy bear’s soul. With dark hair long on the top and shaved clean on the sides, he’s half fitness model, half tatted-up gangster, and deeply intense whether he’s your enemy or your best friend.

  He hits me with one of his soul-deep, I can-see-through-your-bullshit gazes. “You good?”

  I don’t bother answering. Hunter always sees too much. “How was the mission?”

  “Fucking sick!” Finn pushes past him and scoops me up in greeting. “Shit went off at the drop site. Total bedlam. Ten out of ten would fuck with the cartel again.” Finn keeps describing the guns he used and the guys he killed like an excited puppy instead of a special forces sniper. Seeing him happy, feeling his bright, electric energy, settles me down.

  I can’t let it bother me that his touch is only friendly.

  We were bros for years before I turned omega with no warning, so other than Atlas, the guys only fuck me during my heat. Which is good—so fucking good—but always leaves me wanting more.

  At least Finn and Hunter ask my permission to bang strange chicks.

  They deserve to be satisfied.

  As long as I don’t have to see the guys screwing outside the pack, smell betas all over their skin, then I can keep my psycho shit mummy-wrapped and buried.

  “Put him down.” Jett steals me from Finn’s arms. The lithe, long-haired alpha eases me to the ground, but quickly releases his touch.

  Jett’s eyes are dark, sparkling galaxies. Sometimes, I feel a spark between us, but his smile only goes so far.

  I’m never sure. Does Jett genuinely like me?

  Or does he just hate females so hard that I’m his only option?

  When we’re drunk on my heat pheromones, the five of us would fuck anything from a key lime pie to a tree bole, but when the madness dies, I’m always left wondering if our pack has chemistry or just convenience.

  I don’t even know if I want them all to want me, but my hormones are so fucked up that my switch is forever flipped to possessive bitch.

  Either way, I melt under my alphas’ attention. Having them here—all four of them back in the house, back in my territory—releases the tension that’s been weighing me down for days.

  They’re assholes, but they’re my assholes. My mates. My pack. “It was too quiet without you guys.”

  “There’s been a development.” Jett adds another hit to Atlas’s we have to talk bomb.

  “What’s going on?” I feel dizzy. Like I’m untethered, all these hormones tearing me in five different directions. With things so unsettled vague between us all, there’s no gravity. Nothing tying me down to the earth. For the first time, I realize the guys are out of their regular camo and combat boot uniforms. “Why are you wearing suits?”

  Jett’s the only one with his jacket neatly buttoned. Finn and Hunter are as rumpled as you’d expect, their hair fucked up and their sleeves rolled down.

  I lean into Jett, nostrils flaring. He’s cedar and cherry blossom, a warm, sophisticated scent that’s a total mismatch to his icy outside. It’s usually a nice contrast to the other guys’ heavier scents.

  Now there’s an undertone of something else. A whiff of something sweet, sugary, and so out of place that it makes my gut clench.

  I want to say it’s not the scent of another omega—or a lot of other omegas—but a fancy dress party where I wasn’t invited?

  Fuck.

  Have they already picked my replacement?

  “The dads are scheming again.” Jett’s gaze loses focus. “Just know that we’re on your side. Always.”

  My heart swirls in my chest. I’m torn between devastation and I fucking knew it.

  Their dads hate our pack.

  My dad’s pretty fucking ecstatic about it because I’m bound to the Wyvern heirs for good, but he’s just Wyvern House’s tech guy, not one of the four founders.

  My mates’ fathers grew up together, bled together, and left the military together to create Wyvern House. They even hired surrogates at the same time so their sons could grow up together.

  The guys were raised like brothers, and it was the luckiest day of my life when they accepted me into their inner circle. Back then, the dads were on board with our plan. The five of us would form a pack and mate the perfect omega.

  But then I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty-four, and unawakened with four hulking alpha best friends waiting on me to mature to finally lock down their pack.

  And then the audacity.

  I awakened as an omega.

  Atlas bonded us before the dads knew what was happening. They were feral when they found out.

  I remember the morning the five of us stumbled out of the nest, high on sex and the pheromones of my first heat. I was glowing, giddy after the rush of bonding, of finally feeling Atlas move inside me and earning his bite. Not just smug, but omega-smug, well-knotted and wearing the still-raw bites of my favorite people in the world.

  All four dads were waiting.

  They ripped their sons away like a stripper tearing off his G-string, leaving me alone to listen to the four lectures that echoed through the house, each one cutting out a different piece of my heart.

  Scorpio’s words stabbed the deepest.

  “Do you understand what you’ve done?” he growled. “There’ll be no balance to this pack. It’s not what any of your packmates wanted, but did you stop to ask them, Atlas? Did you once think about your futures before you started rutting into that boy?”

  That’s when I realized I was the pity mate.

  The thing that pisses me off most?

  Scorpio’s right.

  All the dads are right.

  I’m not good enough for the guys. But goddamn it. They’re already mine and I’m not giving them up, even if I’m a shameful fucking disaster.

  They are mine.

  After a mission, we always reconvene in the kitchen to decompress, but when I walk into the room, the tension thickens until it feels like I’m drowning.

  Even Finn is stressed, twisting a fisted hand like he’s hitting the gas on his bike.

  The same Finn who, after barely surviving a spray of gunshots to the chest, asked the doctors to stitch him up so his scars healed like a shark bite.

  That Finn is so serious he’s tweaking.

  “Just tell me.” I lean against the back of a tall barstool, braced for the blow I know is coming.

  I try to meet Atlas’s eye, to pick up a hint, or the tiniest bit of reassurance, but he turns away.

  Rejection washes over me hard. I grip the stool until my knuckles crack.

  How bad is it if he can’t even look at me? “Are the dads making me leave the pack?”

  “What? No!” Atlas’s head snaps up.

  “It’s fucked that you think we’d let that happen, O,” Hunter says.

  I shrug.

  What am I supposed to expect after years of comments from the dads? Years of them throwing other omegas in my mates’ paths? Jamming fucking Craig into our house and our lives.

  I knew something bigger was coming.

  “They’re sending us an omega. A female,” Jett hisses. The hate in his voice is the only thing that keeps me from spinning off into space.

  “You agreed to this?” I see nothing but Atlas, my big strong pack leader who only shuffles his feet.

  I wonder if I should walk away.

  I mean, I can’t, we’re bound and they’re it for me forever. But would they all be happier if me and my hormones just fucked off an
d never came back?

  “Kind of,” Hunter says, breaking the tension. “We screwed up the mission. Scorpio gave us an ultimatum. It’s her or a permanent vacation.”

  “And you chose her.” My voice sounds miles away. That’s probably the only reason they don’t realize I’m panicking, my breathing high and shallow, a soft whine building that I’ll kill myself to suppress.

  They chose her.

  Of course.

  Of course they chose her and not me.

  “She’s not awakened,” Atlas says like that should numb the knife cutting open my spinal column. “We can’t take a break when we’ve pissed off the cartel. I made it clear we won’t bite her and we can kick her out at any time. For any reason. It’s a temporary evil.”

  “I’m just supposed to stand aside?” Watch her pant over Atlas and charm the guys with her magical omega vagina?

  “I say we have fun with her first.” Finn’s sparkle is another brick to my face. “Then cut her loose. She’s gotta be a bitch if she’s signing up to poach mates.”

  “Probably desperate,” Hunter says. “Thinks she can wiggle her ass and land Wyvern Pack.”

  “Desperate’s my favorite flavor.” Finn licks his lips.

  I’m going to be sick.

  I need to be in Atlas’s arms, but he stands so rigid there must be a rod up his ass.

  He won’t look at me.

  He still won’t look at me.

  A whine clogs the back of my throat. I choke it down.

  It’s Jett who touches my shoulder, grounding me.

  “We’ll drive her away,” he assures me. “You don’t even have to meet her.”

  Her.

  Just the thought has me working overtime to bite back a growl of challenge.

  God fucking help me.

  I’m going to tear this bitch’s throat out.

  Eight

  LILAH

  After I sign away my future, Scorpio and Hikaru disappear like smoke and any dream I had of living a life unnoticed. Craig stays, I assume for a specific reason, but all he does is sit on his hands, looking me up and down.

  “Are you sure you’re an omega? You don’t smell like one.”