Pack Darling, Part One by Lola Rock

Two

LILAH

Since I’m already screwed,I stay and dance until the end of the day when Evgenia kicks me out so she can go home and watch her K-dramas.

The campus is quiet.

Everyone’s at dinner, sharing fake smiles, playing fake friends, and gossiping over the hottest alphas and the dreamiest packs.

If I walk in now, Rachel and her minions will have the perfect chance to lock onto me. Instead of gift-wrapping myself for the bitch squad, I head to the pool building where the bite of chlorine burns my throat like chicken soup for my battered omega soul. I’ve spent enough nights in the water to memorize the schedule, and no one will be here until tomorrow morning’s swim classes.

I change into my suit and plunge into the heated water, setting a grueling freestyle pace. When my heart’s pumping, I dive deep underwater, folding my knees in lotus position at the bottom of the pool.

The water’s heavy, pressure pushing at my eardrums like the threat of my future, but it’s comfortable down here, hidden away with only my beating heart to keep me company. Sometimes, I think I have espresso for blood, the way I’m constantly jittering, always on high alert, ducking threat after threat.

The water is my cocoon. It’s the only place I feel safe.

When the world quiets to nothing, I start counting heartbeats.

I’m past 150 when my vision starts to go spotty. My throat burns and the familiar we-need-oxygen-idiot panic punches me in the lungs.

But I keep holding.

Holding.

Holding.

Everything black.

Now.

Desperate, I kick to the surface just in time to take a gasping, spluttering breath.

I suck in cold air, treading water as my vision slowly comes back. When I can more or less breathe, I start grinding out another round of laps. Then I dip below the surface again.

And again and again.

I repeat the same batshit circuit until I’m barely kicking up in time, my body so used-up, so exhausted, I have to hang against the wall for a few minutes before I can haul myself out of the water.

I lay gasping on the side of the pool like a fresh-gutted fish.

The burn is glorious.

I was thirteen when I figured out this trick.

My pre-awakening came early. Even then, I kicked my own ass to relieve stress. When I caught the first baby whiff of my omega perfume, I panicked, just ran and kept running, knowing that as soon as I started to mature, I’d be on the auction block.

A toy for alphas who’ll never see me as a real girl.

I ran so hard, so long, and so fast that the pheromones went away.

When my perfume came back, a track workout sent that shit packing.

The next day, I danced for eight hours and my hormones heard the message. We’re not doing this awakening thing.

That’s the whole secret, my whole plan.

All I have to do is keep grinding, exhausting my body so hard it can’t be bothered to pump out the sex hormones that’ll force me to awaken. No packs will notice or want me because I’m defective, and at some point, the OCC will have to write me off as a loss.

Management can’t even put me in rotation because it doesn’t matter if I’m twenty-three or sixty-three. If I’m not awakened, I can’t mate or get pregnant.

I have to be so exhausted I can barely function if I’m ever going to have a future.

That leaves me to deal with the present, and the omegas I can feel bitching me out from all the way across campus.

I avoid going back to the dorms for as long as possible, but at some point, I want to sleep on a bed instead of a diving board.

It’s past midnight when I finally cave. Late enough that all the omegas should be tucked in their cozy little beds.

Knowing it won’t go down like that, I detour through the equipment room and pick the lock on the softball club’s cage. Casually armed with an aluminum bat, I sneak through the shadows to my floor.

No one’s around until I hit the common room that’s lit up for a welcoming party. Rachel and five of her minions jump from the couches to surround me.

They’re younger—the oldest maybe nineteen—but they all tower over me.

Height doesn’t scare me.

I have leverage and a killer hitting arm.

What bothers me is the intensity of their scents.

Rachel’s putting off the strongest stench. Her barely there, pre-awakening perfume smells like expired rose water on a good day. Now it hits like thorns and rotted roses. I wrinkle my nose at the bitterness.

“You’re not dancing that solo,” Rachel says through gritted teeth.

“Neither are you.” I point at her air-casted ankle with my bat.

She growls.

It’s a kitten’s growl, high and shrill. I should laugh and blow her off, but no.

Fucking omega instincts.

My spine snaps like she just slapped me and goose bumps wiggle all the way down to my tailbone. I can feel my lip curling, an answering growl rumbling in my chest.

The other omegas rumble, and the sound sets me off again.

I’m surrounded.

Surrounded and exhausted, because as much as I will protect myself, I don’t want to do this.

It’s all so fucking pointless.

Rachel clenches her fists. “You won’t take them from me.”

Huh? “Take who?”

“Cut the bullshit!” one of the mean girls shouts.

“What’s this about?” I shoot her a glare so acid she backs up a step.

“The Wyvern pack. Who do you think the showcase is for?”

Suddenly Rachel’s hysteria makes at least a little bit of sense.

Wyvern House owns the OCC, among a kajillion other businesses, but their bread-and-butter is black ops merc work. I don’t live so far underneath my self-imposed rock that I don’t know about the Wyvern heirs.

Okay. I don’t know their names, just that they exist. The sons of the four founders of Wyvern House. If a pack of dominant, aggressively hot rich boys is shopping omegas, it’s no wonder Rachel wants to wear me as a skinsuit.

Also, fuck.

This showcase is a total scam.

I consider handing over my bat and letting these girls beat the shit out of me, but they’re going to do that anyway. I might as well get in a few hits.

Stress relief.

And bonus! No solo if they shatter my legs.

“We could just not do this, you know.” I tighten my grip on the bat. “I don’t want your packs.”

“You’re playing the long con. I respect it. But do you think we’re fucking stupid? Every omega wants Wyvern Pack.” Rachel shakes her head, tossing her perfect glossy curls. “Noelle warned me about you.”

To be fair, I try not to look Rachel in the face. That’s why I never noticed the familiar snub nose and the dark brown eyes that match the ones in my nightmares.

I thought it was weird how all mean girls look the same. Apparently it’s not a look they stole from a magazine. It’s genetics.

“You’re sisters.” I swallow hard, lifting my bat. All this time, I thought I was hiding, and Rachel knew I was a threat.

“No shit.” Rachel’s lips curl in a feral grin. “Fuck her up, ladies.”

I swing, pushing back the minions who think I didn’t see them closing in on me.

Amateurs.

It’s five-on-one, but the bat gives me reach. I hit Jovie first, knocking her off her feet so she can’t come at me with her tetanus nails.

I jab one in the stomach, kick another, but they circle closer and closer, and I spent way too many hours dancing and grinding laps. My arms are too weak. I’m too exhausted.

Knowing how this ends, I make one last lunge and slip through their claws just long enough to jab my bat into Rachel’s ribs.

She topples with a sweet oof.

Then Jovie snatches my wrist, Beckah steals my bat, and the girls dart in with sharp nails and sharper snarls. Their touches make my skin crawl like vipers and stinging vines, and their floral, fruity omega scents make me want to choke.

“Hold her,” Rachel says shakily, using her crutch to push back to her feet.

My lizard brain freaks.

I flail as more and more hands pin me down.

Fight. Run. Fight Run.

Rachel steps in front of me with a crutch in one hand and my bat in the other. “Know your place, Darling.”

She swings the bat like a fucking battle axe.

The hit cracks across my face.

Lights.

Out.

I wakeup to the smell of antiseptics and the orange blossom fragrance of the frantic beta nurse hovering over me in the infirmary.

“What year is it?” I croak out, hoping I’ve slipped into a coma and am now sixty-five years old and ready for retirement at sea.

“It’s—”

“Don’t start.” Evgenia clicks her tongue. “You didn’t miss the showcase.”

I tilt my head to find her when a throb hits so hard I gag. Pain that’d have me heaving if I had anything more than bile in my stomach.

“Stay still,” the nurse commands, steadying my shoulders.

When the agony passes, I don’t try turning again. Evgenia can hear me from wherever. “Looks like your understudy needs an understudy.”

“You’ll be fine. Nothing a little stage makeup can’t cover.”

I’d snort if I weren’t positive it would split my head like a rotten pumpkin. “It hurts to blink. There’s no way I’m dancing.”

“Well…” The nurse hesitates, and my stomach drops.

“Traitor,” I mutter.

“I’m so sorry, Lilah. But your scans don’t show any irreparable damage and Mr. Scorpio insisted, so…”

Scorpio?

I try to remember where I’ve heard that name, but my brain’s all pumpkin pulp and mush. “What about Rachel?”

Evgenia sniffs from her corner. “She’s in solitary with the others who attacked you. Evil girls, hitting you in your beautiful face.”

They could scrape off my face with a butter knife if it got me out of this dance. Just the idea of standing makes me groan.

“I’ll grab you some more pain meds.” The nurse scampers off, and Evgenia steps in, staring down at me with a critical eye.

“You cannot expect me to dance tomorrow.”

“You’re bruised, but I’ve seen you dance through worse.”

I think she means that as a compliment.

And yeah, once upon a time, I wouldn’t let anything stop me from dancing. Things change when you realize every second in the spotlight means another trip to the infirmary. “There’s no way.”

“You’ll find a way.”

“But—”

“I won’t let you throw away this opportunity. You have a chance to land a decent pack.”

Evgenia and I have a waaaay different definition of opportunity. She’s imagining a cushy life for me as some pack’s precious omega princess, but all I see is a future filled with bars and bruises. “I’d call this a trap.”

“Then consider yourself trapped.” She pats my arm in consolation. “And dance your omega ass off anyway.”