Pack Darling, Part One by Lola Rock

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 cryingtears 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.