Pack Darling, Part One by Lola Rock

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.

AndI 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 have 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.

Darkness pulses through my veins as we pull up to the house.

I should want to ride my bike with the lights off, smash a bottle over a bar and start a brawl, or drink to fucking oblivion, but instead I’m craving a hit of starlight.

I can feel where she is.

Something calls me downstairs, heavy as gravity. I follow the call, picking the doors that stand between me and Lilah.

She sits alone at the tiny kitchen table, a blanket over her shoulders, tapping at her tablet. Her chin jerks up. “Finn?”

I drink her in.

It feels like ages since I saw her. Too long.

Has she gotten more beautiful?

There’s a flush in her cheeks. A sparkling, blushing pink like she’s been drinking glitter smoothies.

Her eyes glitter too. A dark, smoky grey that cuts through the nothing.

I love when she levels those eyes at me, when her nose wrinkles and she furrows her brow, cute as shit. “You picked my lock?”

“Needed to see you.” I swallow her in my arms, pulling her from her chair. She’s color and heat and fucking life.

Lilah melts into me, slipping a soft moan as her arms and legs wind around me.

I carry her into the nest like I already own her. Dropping on the edge of the bed, I sit her so she straddles me, her nose buried against my neck.

I want to feel her teeth in me.

I want her mark.

You don’t deserve her, whispers the darkness.

Don’t I fucking know it. That won’t stop me from claiming her. Won’t stop her from leaving me, either.

But I don’t give a shit about forever.

I just want her now.

A rumble kicks up in my chest, because fuck, I’m angry I haven’t already made her mine.

Lilah jolts like I stuck her thumb in a socket. “Finn! I can’t— We can’t—”

I smooth her hair with the flat of my palm, and a soft, soothing purr, a sound I’ve never made in my fucking life, rolls out of me like I’m a natural. “Can’t what?”

“This.” She pulls away from me. “You and me. Me and your pack. You can’t betray Orion.”

Betray?

“Who’s betraying? We’ll invite him.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m leaving soon anyway. I—Finn!”

Lilah yelps as I roll us, pinning her to the bed.

Wide-eyed, she stares up at me, her pulse moving in her neck. I want to show her the darkness, but it bleeds away when I feel her underneath me. The soft puff of her breath, her trembling warmth.

She settles me.

The urges, the pain, the nothingness.

Everything fades until it’s just me, Lilah, and the long line of her neck begging for my bite.

I lean to lick her throat.

There’s no strawberry, maple, or cotton candy. No rain or storm or earthy goodness.

Lilah tastes like lotion.

A harsh chemical lotion.

I pull away, swallowing and working my unhappy tongue like I just licked a box full of envelopes. “What is that?”

“What is what?” She squirms out from under me, and I let her go when I hear the high note of panic in her voice.

“Babydoll. I’m going to buy you some new perfume.” Something fruity and lickable.

“Perfume?” Lilah yelps.

“Just until your real perfume comes in.” Then she won’t need a thing on her delicious skin.

“You have to go.” She says, withdrawing until her back’s against the wall.

She twinkles, but the farther away she moves, the more she looks like a star out of reach, the more the darkness crushes.

I can’t be without her. Not tonight. “I can behave.”

Fuck. I can try to behave.

No. I can. I can if that’s what I have to do to be with her.

Lilah grips her T-shirt so hard the fabric stretches. There’s something desolate about her that shoots pain through the spot in my chest where my heart used to live.

Is that fucker still beating?

“I…” She shivers, but forces herself to meet my gaze. “I like you.”

My heart-space thumps. “Then we—”

“That’s the problem.” She digs her nails into the fabric, stretching the cloth tight across her belly. “I’ll be gone and you’ll forget me.”

“I won’t.” I can’t.

She shakes her head. “Tell that to Atlas. Tell it to Jett. I know when I’m not wanted.”

She cradles herself and there’s an unspoken always that I ache to soothe.

An ache?

Me.

Fucking what?

How?

She’s supposed to be a toy.

A plaything.

My babydoll.

So why are pink and grey the only colors I can see? Why does my chest ache? My canines burn, begging me not to play but to mark her forever.

Mark her as mine so she can never escape.

Mark her as mine so that I can always find my way out of the dark by the light of my north star.

“Baby—” The nickname tastes like tar on my lips. It’s not right. It’s not her. “Star. You can’t leave.”

“I have to.”

“Why?” There’s a tear in my voice, a never-heard-before rip.

“I don’t belong with you.” She holds her head high, daring me to challenge.

I love it when she shows her backbone. I think there’s a shit-ton more attitude she’s been hiding, and I want to tease it out, see how high my girl can fly.

But if she flies with me?

Crash and burn.

I’ll only drag her down.

I have to let her go.

Because if I don’t now, I never will.

“You don’t belong.” Not to me, thank fuck. I’d destroy her, ruin her pretty patch of color in the endless dark. “Why don’t you get the fuck out, and I’ll do the same.”

When I walk upstairs, all I feel is ice.

I keep walking until my feet take me to the garage. I grab a set of keys and jump on my Ducati. I rev the gas, waiting for the engine’s rumble to give me back my spark.

Nothing.

Flying down the driveway doing a buck twenty.

Nothing.

I park outside one of Wyvern House’s clubs, cut the line, and duck into VIP. Vodka shots. Tequila shots. More tequila shots. I find the bottom of every glass.

I feel nothing. I see nothing.

When a beta wraps herself around me, her lips are wax, and her hair the color of ash.

Nothing.

Because that’s exactly what I have to offer Lilah.

Fucking nothing.