Pack Darling, Part One by Lola Rock

Eight

LILAH

After I sign awaymy 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.”

Now that he’s not overpowered by alpha, Craig smells like wet cardboard and damp newsprint.

If he were a color, he’d be beige, and being under his critical stare almost makes me wish I was awakened. If I were, I could tell him to do anything and he’d pant all over me, just like he did with Scorpio.

Then again, ew.

No thank you.

I don’t need pheromones.

I might’ve signed on the dotted fucking line, but today is not the day I cave to some rando beta. There’s no need to be here, surrounded by omegas who want to shiv me for breathing the same air as our Wyvern overlords.

The need to curl up in my nest is strong. Sliding off the couch, I head for the exit.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Craig snatches my wrist.

His touch sends cockroaches swimming through my blood, coating me in wet cardboard that’s more rotted close-up. Like climbing inside a hot dumpster.

My instincts kick in.

I break his grip, quickly skipping away, putting the sofa between us. “You don’t get to touch me.”

“Sit down and listen when I talk to you.” Craig gives a little growl that lifts the hairs on my arms.

Beige and skeezy he may be, but Craig is a threat.

I don’t ignore my instincts.

They’ve been honed from years of shady beta trainers.

Trainer Brock and his foot fetish. Trainer Ethan with his not-so-casual touches. Trainer Isaiah, who everyone thought was an angel, but was actually a mole who infiltrated the OCC to groom baby omegas for sex trafficking.

I knew they were crooked.

Not that anyone listens.

Craig gives me the heebiest of jeebies, and I never want to be alone with him. In this room, I may as well be, because there’s not one person who’ll step in to stop him from touching me again.

Like always, I protect myself.

Craig advances, his thin upper lip drawn back in a snarl. “You’d better respect me if you want to come into my pack.”

“I don’t want to.” Were we not just at the same meeting where I was blackmailed? I glance over my shoulder, trying to find a clear path to the doors, but the floor’s choked with big alphas and bitter omegas who want my scalp.

“Wyvern House appointed me the guys’ beta. Orion couldn’t even function without me. So don’t get any fucking ideas about stealing the pack. I’ll be bitten in long before you are and you’d better believe I’m going to warn them what a nasty, disobedient girl you are.”

He creeps closer, and I can’t.

I can’t deal with this level of batshit.

I take off, dashing between alphas and onlookers, sprinting for the main exit.

My instincts urge me to my nest. I want to curl up in my little dorm room, bolt myself in, and hide under every blanket. But that’s the first place the trainers will look for me.

So instead, I head to my real home—the sports complex.

It’s a ghost town with the showcase afterparty still hopping. I slip past the token security guard, and soon I’m diving into the water, down, down, down, until I can hug my knees to my chest, sitting like a statue at the bottom of the pool.

There’s too much to process.

I can’t even think it through until I’m underwater, not sucking in a new flavor of pheromone with every breath.

I have a pack.

A temporary pack, but I haven’t met them and they’re already everything I feared.

Bought me like a heifer? Check.

Belong to a scary underworld organization? Check.

Sleazy, egotistical beta on the pack roster? Fucking check.

I hold my breath until my lungs near collapse. When I finally kick to the surface, gasping a desperate lungful of chlorinated air, my head clears.

I’m not giving up.

My dream’s a little cottage in the woods with no one to bother me, desire me, or hate me just for existing. I want to do bookkeeping online and drink hot cocoa in my herb garden. I want to start taking suppressants as soon as I can get a black market prescription and be done with heats and hormones and men forever.

I just want to be left alone.

I want to feel safe for one fucking day of my life.

So I have to keep fighting.

I already know everything I need to know about this pack. They need heirs. I don’t understand why they can’t offer a reputable omega—a good little girl who’ll beg to be with them—but they’ve kicked a fucking boulder by choosing me.

I’ll play along so they keep me around. Dodge Craig and their advances. Keep busting my ass to stop myself from awakening, and find all the best hiding spots in whatever hideous McMansion these rich boys call home.

I’ll do what I do best.

Be a ghost.

And before anyone notices, I’ll disappear.

In the morning,Trainer Marc finds me sleeping in the locker room, curled up in a nest of towels.

He’s beefy for a beta, with big biceps that try to make up for his lack of neck, and a scent that’s so identical to the plastic mats they use in the weight room that I don’t notice him until he’s nudging my ribs with his sneaker. “Up, Darling. You’re late.”

I’m groggy, disoriented, but up I jump.

Trainer Marc doesn’t screw around and I don’t want my ass caned by a dude who can bench press four times my body weight.

“Late for what?” I shiver, realizing I slept in my damp swimsuit and nothing else. Or maybe not so much slept as passed out in. I haven’t eaten since the infirmary French toast.

“Your ride’s here. Where’s your bag?”

Ride.

Bag.

Pack.

Oh shit. “They’re taking me today?”

“They’re taking you now. Put on some clothes.” Marc doesn’t move, waiting for me to strip down and give him a show.

Whatever I’m walking into today, I’ll be so fucking glad to be out of this hellhole.

I whip my grey sweats on over my suit and jam my bra and undies in the pockets. I’d leave them, but I’m done donating my unmentionables to the trainers’ spank banks.

Marc grunts. “Hurry up. And behave. Military pack’s not going to tolerate your shit.”

“You mean mercenary?” I don’t know exactly what Wyvern House does, but it sure as shit isn’t handshakes and parades.

“They were good enough to feed and clothe you all these years. Don’t be ungrateful.”

I am so grateful, especially when Trainer Marc stares at my ass the whole way outside. What a wholesome childhood I’ve had here. What a wonderful upbringing.

Although, in its defense, the OCC usually throws a big farewell party when an omega graduates to join their pack. The trainers give speeches, there’s cake and a sappy slideshow, and the lucky omega is sent to their happy new life in a flurry of hugs and tears.

Not us Darlings.

We just fade away.

Like Marisol Darling—my best friend until the morning her dorm room was just empty. We used to share food at lunch and fight off the mean girls shoulder-to-shoulder. Then nothing. Gone. I haven’t heard from her since, and no one will tell me where she went.

There’s no party for me, either.

Marc drops me at the edge of the parking lot where Evgenia waits with a ratty duffel bag and a bittersweet smile. Craig leans against the side of a huge black SUV like a wannabe prep-schooler in khakis, tapping his toe like he’s ready to crush me underneath.

He can try.

If he does, I’ll show him my teeth.

“I packed your things.” Evgenia hands me the bag. Holding my accounting books and all three outfits I own, it has plenty of space left inside. She pats my shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

My throat closes down.

I want to throw my arms around her and take what’s probably the best, only hug I’ll ever get, but Evgenia’s not a hugger.

My inner omega might be a clinger, but she’s never driven this bus and she never will. “Thanks.”

“Get in.” Craig jumps into the driver’s seat and starts the car.

I wouldn’t put it past him to make me run for it, so I scramble inside, climbing to the third row of seats.

I want distance between us.

So much distance.

I hope Evgenia didn’t forget to pack the shiv I keep under my pillow.

The interior reeks of cardboard Craig. I can just barely pick up on more scents underneath, but they’re faded, old, and my senses aren’t as sharp as an awakened omega’s.

It’s surreal as we fly down the OCC’s manicured drive, finally passing through the spike-tipped iron gates. I’m an expert at sneaking around campus, but I’ve never snuck off.

I’ve only left a handful of times since my mother sold me.

Maybe being out in the big, wide world will feel freeing someday. For now, I hug my bag and curl up, making myself small in the back seat as I watch the unfamiliar city fly by and plug my nose to keep from inhaling Craig’s scent.

I’m trading one prison for another, but I’m going to survive.

Somehow, I always survive.