Pack Darling, Part One by Lola Rock

Nine

LILAH

I can’t appreciatethe scenery as Craig drives us out of the city. It’s all a blur of trees and big sky until at least an hour later when he turns down a country road and stops to punch in a code. The iron gates swing open.

We must almost be there, but we stop again. Another gate, another code for me to memorize.

Then the house appears.

Turns out, the road is a long-ass driveway.

We’re here.

Herebeing a freaking three-story mansion complete with whimsical ivy-choked pillars that make me feel a million miles away from my dream cottage in the woods.

Rich packs all have country manors.

The other omegas were always lusting over real estate. Underground nests, swimming pools, and gourmet kitchens. I like nice things as much as the next girl, but I don’t for a second think of any of this as mine.

“Get out,” Craig barks, beta-style with zero power but plenty of catty attitude. “The alphas are waiting for you.” He licks his lips, almost bouncing as he glances toward the house.

I’d rather disappear into the tree line and live in a cozy cave somewhere than step a single toe onto this pack’s territory. I’d rather run for days and keep running until my feet bleed.

But I climb out of the car.

I have no other choice.

An ominous vibe hangs in the air.

I don’t know if it’s a scent or an instinct, or maybe the mansion’s just haunted, but as soon as my toes touch the ground, my muscles lock like I’m dangling at the edge of a hell portal.

“You’re not allowed to use the front door. Your room’s in back.” Craig stomps toward a huge garage filled with candy-colored cars but doesn’t go inside. He walks around on the grass, pausing when I don’t follow. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

I’m just trying to breathe, trying to understand what has my body shivering, on the verge of a full-on meltdown. Craig can go sit on one of his alphas for all I care. “I’m not trying to fool anyone.”

Craig snorts. “Like you won’t be climbing into Atlas’s lap in thirty seconds? This scared act isn’t going to work. Nobody’s going to chase you. The guys don’t even want you here. They’re only putting up with you because of their dads. I give it a week before you’re slinking back to the hole you came from.”

What is it with low-tier betas feeling the need to put me in my place? I know my place. Better than they do.

I would LOVE to slink back to my hole. It’s comfy there, with books and snacks instead of beta bastards and asshole alphas.

I’m pissed enough to shake off whatever aura makes the mansion feel so foreboding. I sling my duffel across my shoulder and follow Craig onto the grass, keeping a few feet of buffer between us. “Just show me where to put my stuff. I don’t need to meet the pack.”

“You’re meeting them,” he huffs. “They need to lay down the law.”

I shiver. I mean, I’m expecting these guys to be assholes, but I have a feeling they’re going to surprise me with new levels of bullshit.

It takes a while to walk around the massive property. Craig points to two metal doors in the ground, like the storm cellars I’ve only seen in movies. “That’s your room.”

Fine. Sure.

Like I said, a hole in the ground sounds fantastic right now.

I drop my duffel and keep following. Craig leads us away from the house, back toward the sprawling gardens. That’s a word I don’t use too often, unless I’m sprawling on my bed in my pajamas reading shifter romances.

This place is insane. It’s so green.

I’m gaping at the flowers when pressure tingles between my shoulder blades. I turn to find the house looming behind me.

A figure stands at the third-floor window.

A shadow that makes my ribs squeeze and my skin burn.

But the curtain flutters and they’re gone.

“Don’t look at the house. Don’t even think about the house.” Craig snatches my arm, dragging me behind him, and this time, I can’t catch my feet, can’t shake free of his angry fingers.

He drags me to a fancy gazebo, dropping me on the steps. I stumble, hands landing on the floor, knees banging the stair.

Four big alphas stare down at me like the cockroach who just skittered in through a crack under the door to ruin their tea party.

I’m upwind, so I’m not choking on them yet, but when the pack leader steps forward, every muscle in my body locks.

He’s built for ripping tires in half, with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen, a thick barreled chest, and rugby thighs that taper down into combat boots. His toes stop a few feet in front of my face.

If he were anyone else, I’d lie here and let him enjoy his dominance play until I could slink away and make sure I never cross his path again.

But this alpha has too much control over my fate, and thanks to Craig, I already look so fucking weak.

I scramble to my feet, climbing the stair.

I can’t meet them at eye level, because holy tall, all four of them, but I can at least look them in the eye. Or I could if I could look away from the pack leader.

It’s a full-body experience when an alpha gives you his attention.

Not just a look, but their full attention.

My trainers said I’d feel the urge to preen. That I’d sink into myself and feel seen. Protected and loved and all those good sappy things.

I feel seen all right.

This alpha sees every inch of me from my shabby sweats to my bruised forehead and my involuntary cringe, because the closer he comes, the more I need to run.

Run and hide and never come out of my hole again.

When he steps forward, I step back, moving down the stairs.

“Stop,” he barks.

The command locks my joints and stills my lungs. My gaze snaps to his face.

Fuck, he’s beautiful.

Furious and beautiful.

His eyes are brown and maybe gold, and I shouldn’t want to climb him to see, because they’re shooting fire like he wishes he could incinerate me. Burn my corpse to smoking ash.

He’s rugged. Dark hair and skin with thick, sexy eyebrows, thick arms.

Just thick all over.

Makes me wonder what else is thick and—holy hell!

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I take another step back. Only now Craig’s standing behind me. When I bump into his chest, I jump like he just grabbed my ass, springing back into the gazebo with the firing squad of angry alphas.

I would introduce myself, do something to break this icy silence, but I can’t. I literally cannot move a muscle, even to open my mouth, hypnotized by the pack leader and his suffocating, world-erasing dominance.

“I’m Atlas,” he announces. “Hunter, Finn, Jett.” He nods to his boys standing behind him in a half-circle, each more devastatingly handsome than the last. I don’t dare spend more than a nanosecond on Jett because he’d explode my ovaries and I swear his profile looks familiar.

They’re missing their fifth. Orion?

He’s already my favorite because he’s not here glaring like he wants to rip my head off and drink mimosas from my severed skull.

The pressure they’re throwing crushes like the deepest ocean trench. I’m sweating, and I can barely stand up straight.

It isn’t fair how easily they can dominate me.

Just because they’re alphas. Just because I’m an omega.

I grit my teeth and force my head up high, tapping into the willpower that pushes me to run marathons on empty and kick my own ass on the daily. “I’m Lilah.”

“Here’s the deal.” Atlas folds his arms over his broad chest, and it takes everything I have to not to lick my lips. “You will never be a member of this pack. You’re welcome to stay as long as you stay out of our way. We’ll stay out of yours. Don’t go into the house or go looking for Orion. We’ll kick you straight back to the OCC the second you step out of line.” He looms like he’s waiting for me to cry. To fall down in a pathetic, weeping puddle.

The red-headed alpha, Finn, bounces watching me get cut down like he’s a kid on Christmas morning.

But I’m the one unwrapping all the presents. “You won’t bite me?”

“Never,” hisses Jett, the dark-haired, demonic beauty who can’t even look at me without clenching his cut jaw.

“Then I’ll stay out of your way. I didn’t exactly volunteer for this.”

Craig scoffs behind me, but I’d rather forget he’s here.

I have more questions.

So many more questions, like why me, and why can’t Orion speak for himself?

But the wind shifts, blowing their scents straight into my lungs.

My blood turns to liquid fire.

I choke on the scents clawing inside me.

Leather. Smoke. Oranges. Cedar.

The little mouse I’ve spent my life beating down perks up from her long hibernation. Wide awake, she sends my body into a fever, ready to claim what’s ours.

Four alphas.

Mine.

My alphas.

But underneath, a fifth scent clings to them.

A sexy, cinnamony, crisp apple, frolicking-through-orchards-on-your-honeymoon kind of scent.

Too sweet to be alpha.

“You already have an omega?” I think I yelp, maybe shriek, but I’m not tracking anymore.

I’m lost.

Lost between need and despair.

Lost between instinct and the harsh reality that I can call them mine in my head all day, but they will never want me.

They already have their pack.

Their omega.

“Orion.” Atlas’s hardass exterior cracks. He can’t even say his mate’s name without slipping a sweet, gruff smile. But it flips back so fast when he remembers who he’s talking to. A warning growl rips up his throat. “You don’t look at him. You don’t speak to him. You don’t even let him see your shadow. Understood?”

“I understand. I’ll go.”

Oh god. Please let me go.

I can’t breathe without breathing them in. Without the desperate, clawing, needy thing inside me rising up, begging me to claim them.

I have to go before my perfume betrays me even more than I just betrayed myself.

When Atlas nods, I fly.

I push past Craig and sprint through the garden.

But you can’t run from your fated mates.

Only I can because mine aren’t mine.

Maybe I waited too long, suppressed myself too long. They found another omega. One who’s not broken. One who’s not a coward like me.

I run into the woods.

I run like my demons are chasing.

I run, and this time, I don’t think I’m ever going to stop.