Delilah

I keep a smile plastered on my face as my life from the past two years crumbles under me. It might not seem that long, but at twenty, it feels like a lifetime.

“You understand, right, baby? It’s time for us to part ways and adventure on without each other.”

I can feel the edges of my lips wavering and fight to keep my smile in place. This is just like those yoga poses I force myself to wobble through, or the dance classes my mother used to make me attend even though I have the hand-eye coordination of a milk-drunk toddler. But Bam is almost done with me, I can tell by the way he’s edging closer to the door and fiddling with the piercing in his ear.

Twenty more seconds and I can relax. Five more minutes and I’ll be outside and I can give in to the internal screaming.

He slides something across the table toward me and I stare blindly at the words.

A migraine looms, my left temple throbbing dully. The words in front of me are all laid out on crisp, white paper that still smells fresh out of the photocopier. But none of them quite make sense.

It’s a contract bringing all activities from our previous agreement to a close. An agreement that I apparently signed at the start of our relationship.

“Wh-wh—” I croak, then want to punch myself repeatedly in the face. Especially when Bam’s expression softens into one dangerously close to pity.

“It’s what we agree, Delly Belly.”

I sift through the pile of papers.There are at least fifty pages of them, the old agreement appended to the back just in case I forgot the details. There’s an NDA telling me to keep my mouth shut about anything and everything to do with Bam’s work or private life.

How can this be happening?

I shift my attention to Bam’s gorgeous face. He’s standing right beneath one of the lights and it makes my eyes sting to look at him. Shuffling through the pile of papers, I clear my throat.

“Where do I sign?”

At the very back, there’s my looping signature from last time, complete with a tiny little heart over the ‘i’ in Delilah. My stomach churns and I can taste the scrambled eggs I had for breakfast lingering on my tongue.

I’m never going to admit it, but I didn’t read any of this when they were slid under my nose by my mother and Bam’s manager two years ago. The two of them must have worked it out together, probably over coffee since my mum works in the finance office of the same company Brenda works for.

I was too starstruck to ask questions, my brain addled by the thought that Bam Fortune, soap star with big dreams, wanted to date little old me. My mum insisted that both she and Brenda had my best interests at heart, that neither of them would ever encourage me to do anything that would damage me.

What a fucking lark.

I feel pretty well damaged right now. Like someone’s scooped out my insides and left them raw and bleeding.

I love him. Have done for years. And up until half an hour ago, I was planning our lives together. Intertwined.

The harsh lights are making my head swim, the migraine coming on faster than I’d like. I had wondered why we were meeting here in his management company’s office building. I haven’t seen much of him recently and not at all over the past few weeks, which isn’t all that unusual. He’s a star on the rise, out of the country filming more than he’s home. But when he does come home, he always lavishes me with attention. We’re always going out to dinners at the hottest restaurants in town, or to music awards and film premieres, and sometimes to the afterparties. Everyone always seems to know and love him and everyone always knows of me. I’m used to the slightly odd looks I can never quite interpret and the conversations that go slightly over my head.

Right now, it feels like my entire life has gone over my head.

Often, I felt like I was only attending the parties as either Bam’s arm candy or as a buffer for conversations he didn’t really want to have. And it turns out that’s exactly what my role was. The peaceable omega, there to placate and to flatter, and always to sing Bam’s countless virtues. His omega girlfriend who was just enough of a freak that I wouldn’t lose my mind over heats or make things messy.

All because I thought this was real.

And clearly my mother and his manager both thought I was too stupid to keep the fake part of our relationship convincing.

Bam falters partway to the door, his dark eyes with their enviable lashes searching my face. “Baby, I didn’t expect you to be so upset. We did really well to last this long, don’t you think?”

“Not upset,” I reply. “Just a headache.”

I’d sound more convincing if it didn’t sound like I had a massive lump in my throat.

“Sure.” He runs his hand through his long, dark hair. “Well, maybe head to the bathroom before you leave? It wouldn’t be a good look for you to head out looking like you’ve been crying. Not when Miri and I have a pap walk in an hour.”

“Miri?”

“My, er, new omega,” he replies.

Ah, of course. Because my nightmarish humiliation won’t be complete until I have to meet my replacement. Bam taps the door and disappears out of the conference room, leaving me alone with my head fit to split open.

My heart too.

I turn the pages of our agreement wildly as my heart pounds in my throat and sweat trickles down my spine. Since our entire relationship—every kiss and touch, every shared confidence—has been a business arrangement, I wonder what exactly I’ve got out of it. For Bam, the entire thing must have been for PR, although I can’t understand why.

I turn another page, my sweaty fingers messing up the paper, but I don’t care. I need to know. I need to find—

A soft exclamation gusts out of me.

Oh.

That’s what I got out of it. A whole lot of zeroes have been deposited into an account that I’ve never even seen.

Another thing my mother probably thinks I’m too stupid to manage.

“Holy hell, girl, I thought you were scentless.” A woman steps into the room, wrinkling her nose as she takes in the sight of me.

She’s gorgeous. Tall and lithe with a shock of bright pink hair that makes her green eyes pop from a perfectly symmetrical face.

“That’s Bam, not me,” I mutter in reply, not thinking as I speak. I continue to leaf through the papers, although I no longer know what I’m searching for.

“He’s scentless, I’m scent-blind,” I continue to mutter, not caring whether I’m giving away his secrets. “And I’ve got a scent-in-hiding. That’s what they call it, most people can’t scent me most of the time.”

“Well, I can certainly smell you right now,” she says. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” She grabs my arm and tugs me up onto my shaky legs.

“Have we met before?” I ask as she manhandles me out the door and into a toilet just along the corridor. I try peering at her face again, but she clicks the lock shut and immediately starts spraying descenter all over me.

Along with being scent-blind, I’m also mostly face-blind. Typically, I’m less direct about asking and I just act like I know everyone, which gets me out of any awkwardness of not being able to recognise them.

“I guess it must come in handy,” she says. “Being scent-blind and not having a scent to give you away most of the time.”

I just grunt at her.

“You’re upset,” she continues. “Did they shaft you with the contract, or something? I know some people have a ton of clauses but it didn’t seem like that’d be your thing.”

I eye her again, getting a faceful of descenter spray as she blasts herself for good measure. Most of the time, I struggle with seeing people out of context. I have to rely on my memory of their voice or their mannerisms to get me through most interactions with people I don’t know well.

“I’m sorry. Are you with Brenda?” I ask. Brenda’s my manager and it’d make sense that she sent a representative through to make sure I signed the damn contract.

I’m frankly surprised my mother didn’t come along too to peer over my shoulder and make sure I was signing the correct part.

She knows. Of course, she knows that I thought it was real. I must have wanged on at her countless times about how wonderful Bam is, and she’d just pat me on the hand and nod along before sending me on my way.

She could at least have warned me that this was coming.

The woman chuckles under her breath, plucking something from her tiny bag and proceeding to dab at my face. “It’s the wrong colour make-up, but it’s better than nothing. Did no one warn you I was going to be here? I’m a little bit early, but—”

When I continue to stare at her blankly, she gives an awkward chuckle. “I’m Miri, Bam’s new omega. I’m the one before he packs up. The last defiant act before settling down with someone suitable, you know?” She peers at my face as she smears something cool beneath my eyes. “You do know about the roadmap, right?”

“Roadmap?”

“Yeah.” She gives me a doubtful look before continuing, “You know, the roadmap? How he starts with you as his sweet first love, then you grow apart and he has a defiant period with me, the ex-child star, where he’ll pick up a bunch of my younger-leaning fanbase before he matures, finding a pack that appeals to his audience as they age. That roadmap.”

I continue to gape at her, feeling another trickle of sweat drip down my spine. “All that’s… planned out for him?”

“The roadmap.” She nods. “It’s a story, you know? One that people can follow along with. They watch him fall in and out of love, watch him grow as they do.” She licks her lips nervously. “They did fill you in, right? I feel like I’m telling you all of this for the first time, but I can’t be.”

“No one filled me in on anything,” I reply quietly, feeling utterly pathetic.

Miri freezes before plucking out a lipstick which she dabs on my lips before doing the same to herself. “You mean…”

“I was seventeen when we met,” I tell her wretchedly. “Utterly starry-eyed. Bam was so handsome, you know? He was a few years older and he’d just finished that soap and was branching out into new things.” My eyes feel hot and itchy, the words catching in my throat.

“Oh shit.” Her eyes go wide as they bore into mine. “I did always wonder what you got out of it. I’ve seen you at parties before and… you’re not in the industry, are you?”

“Brenda and my mother are friends,” I say.

My beta mother, who has never known what to do with me, ever since I presented as an omega when I was eleven years old with all the joys that the mess of hormonal changes brought with it.

“Oh shit,” Miri repeats. “Well, if it’s any consolation, Delilah, you were good at it. I bet there’s a list of people a mile long who’d want to be the next person on your books. And think about it this way, you don’t have to find someone whose scent you don’t react to, as you don’t react to anyone’s. Trust me, that’s a big boon.”

“And people pay big money for it?” I ask. “Like, enough to pay off my degree and buy a car?”

It feels weird to be this vulnerable with my replacement, with the omega who’s going to step out of this room and be hanging off Bam’s arm. The person who’ll be sharing dinners and kisses and his bed.

… unless that last part was unusual for people in this particular situation. My stomach gives an unhappy gurgle and I eye the toilet behind Miri.

I really don’t want to ruin her hard work by throwing up. I want to walk out of here looking utterly unaffected.

She snorts. “Girl, I bet you could buy multiple houses if you play your cards right. You’re in demand.”

Who knew that a defective omega like me could be so sought after? Or that celebrities’ lives are all one big con, fed to the public to make them more money? Not me, that’s for sure.

I know now. And I’m going to leave these offices heartsick and broken, with a little of my naïvity worn away. But maybe I’m also going to be wiser, safe in the knowledge that I’m never, ever going to make the same mistakes again.

Charon

Pure electricity. 

Sweat pools in my mask and runs in rivulets down my naked back. The stage lights are the cheap kind and they’re blinding when I shift my head, so I keep my focus down on my sticks while my right foot goes wild on the double kick pedal. It’s easy to lose myself like this, to forget that there’s a stage or a shitty dive bar around me. 

Some people think that we drummers are just keeping time, but they’re talking out of their arse. We’re the heartbeat, keeping everything going and giving our absolute all. 

Tonight’s just a small gig, a favour to one of the bars in our hometown where we got our start, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going all out. It’s intimate. Intense. Hotter than Hades and I can smell far too much. If I tilt my head just right, the spotlight’s not so blinding and I’m able to look out to the crowd. 

There certainly are a lot of them. They’re singing along, screaming at the top of their lungs and staring up at us like we hold all the secrets they’re missing. My eyes are one of the few things visible through this fucking sweatbox of a mask, so I’m able to give a quick wink to the ones right at the front, pushing up against the security barrier. 

It earns me a chorus of screams and I grin as I draw my focus back. That’s all they get from me, my eyes and nothing else. It’s the exact opposite of Skoll, whose mask is just a silver skull that’s all mouth and no eyes. He says it’s so he can focus on the music and not the crowd, but all I know is without Titan and Oberon’s interference, he’d constantly be skirting with the danger of walking clean off the stage. 

We move seamlessly through another handful of songs, with Oberon shifting seamlessly between singing and screaming, and then passing over to Titan to release his roar that never fails to leave my skin tingling. The sound quality might not be the best, but the feeling in here tonight is alive. 

There’s another chorus of screams, punctuated by some gasps, and I glance up to see both Titan and Oberon are glaring our wayward bassist. It takes a second to see why. He’s stepped right to the centre of the stage and has one foot hovering. 

That’s his usual position for the song that leads us into the final section of the gig. The part that’s just me and him, so that the other two can grab a drink and prep themselves for our last song and the encore. Usually, it involves a whole lot of pyrotechnics, including me being flipped upside down with my rig entirely on fire. 

But we don’t do that for smaller gigs. No chance we’re risking this place with open flames when there’s this level of booze on the floor. Titan glances at me, his half-mask and heavy crown in place. I give a one-shouldered shrug, not pausing the beat as I transition into the usual mix of improv and rehearsed beats that the crowd goes wild for. Skoll is a master of his bass, leading into a rhythm that hits me deep between my ribs like he’s tugging at my soul. 

I glance up again, sweat pooling at my waistband. My senses are in overdrive. The scents of the room overwhelming me. I can pick out the alphas in the room from twenty paces, from the couple behind the stage, the bartender, the bar owner. Then there are the more muted scents of the betas that make up most of the crowd. They’re mostly intermingling together like a laundry room of scents. 

And then there are the omegas. Ten of them at least, all reaching crisis point at the same time. Their scents are sweet and heady enough to make my head ache. 

My skin tingles as a flash of heat and ice slides up and down my spine.

I open my eyes again, barely aware that I’d closed them. The first two rows of the crowd are now on their knees on the sticky floor. 

No.

That’s not right. It’s never right to see them like this. They first started doing it maybe six months ago, and it never fails to make me feel close to puking. 

Titan spins around and gives me another pointed look as Oberson shakes her head, giving me the signal to cut the song.

“We are Into Nothing. We appreciate you being here with us tonight,” he rasps into the mic. “How about one last song to see us out.”

The crowd screams their heads off. Oberon strides from one side of the stage to the other, the entire room’s attention on him. He handles it with ease, shoulders back and raw energy spilling out of him until they’re all utterly entranced. 

“Now, I want you on your feet,” he continues, holding one finger behind his back to signal that now’s the time for silence that I don’t need to fill. “On your feet for us. That’s it. We appreciate you.”

They’re reluctant at first, worshiping us as gods. But Oberon is intimidating as fuck when he wants to be, especially wearing his gold and black mask that makes it look like he can see everything. He’s in his usual black shirt, black trousers and cape and he just stands there, staring them down until they get to their feet. 

He then lowers his hand, and we kick into our last song, Feed the Flame.

We barely get through it. It’s not the triumphant end we were hoping for, or the thank you to Bryce—the owner of the bar. It fizzles along as the electricity in the air shifts into tension that I can feel right to my bones.

And then it’s over, we’re done. The four of us stagger offstage with the crowd baying for blood, or possibly for an encore. But Raf is there, shepherding us into the shitty greenroom in the back that hasn’t got any nicer over the years. There’s the stale smell of sweat and piss that lays thick in the air. 

Greg, our manager, is already here and is pacing from one end of the tiny room to the other, his nose firmly buried in his phone. He scowls as he looks up, earning himself warning growls from Oberon and Raf. They’re both scary fuckers at the best of times, and Greg pales, looking suitably chastened. 

“What was that?” Oberon rounds on Skoll, hissing under his breath as Raf has some choice words with Greg. 

“You could smell the desperation as soon as we stepped on stage,” Skoll replies with a shrug. “They needed something, or they’d have torn this place apart otherwise.” He’s grabbing fistfuls of something from a bowl and shoving them into his mouth. 

I shoot a glance at Titan, who gives a shrug from his corner. Oberon then gives me a little nod and some of the tension lifts from my shoulders. We all know that whatever was provided would head straight into Skoll’s mouth, whether it was sweets, snacks or drugs.

It’s not the first time he’s talked about the fans as though they’re feral, which… yeah, sometimes they can be . 

“They’re praying for Eris to find you,” Greg says. “Half of them are, anyway.” He glances up from his phone, pushing thick black glasses further onto his nose. “The other half are praying that you’ll recognise that they are your true Eris.”

“Whose fucking stupid idea was it for them to worship you all like gods, anyway,” Raf grumbles, leaning against the door with his arms crossed. 

“You wanted to hide your faces. The hero worship was entirely organic, I assure you.”

Raf snorts. “Like you guys weren’t on the fanfiction boards from day one, stirring the pot and adding to the ridiculous lore.”

“That we’re all descended from the gods themselves, that we come from the stars and we’re searching for our way home,” I mutter.

“And worse of all, that we’re looking for Eris. Our muse etched from the stars,” Titan adds. 

“I think we’ll all agree that the hero worship has gone further than anticipated.”

“They’ve started sending gifts again. The damn decoy hotel is full of them.”

We all know what that means. Mostly, it’ll be flowers and chocolate-covered raisins for Oberon since he happened to mention liking them during an interview about five years ago. 

Then there are the knicker-droppers. Sometimes they throw them at us on stage, but other times it’s like they’re mass shipments. Always worn and dripping with omega slick in a way you just know is intended to send us into rut. I’d bet my cock that most of them are outsourcing, but exactly how much omegas might charge for the pleasure, I have no idea. 

“We need to fix this,” Greg mutters into his phone. 

“Go right ahead,” Oberon growls back. 

“We’ll do this elsewhere. On the road or at the hotel. If they find out you’re still back here, I don’t want to see what happens.”

Raf pops his head around the door before swiftly returning, holding his finger to the earpiece that’s always in place. He and Oberon are the two strongest alphas in our pack, no contest there. And of the two of them, it’s a tie for who’s the more dominant alpha. In public, Oberon is our de facto leader as well as being our lead singer. But in private, Raf is the true head of our pack—he’s always watchful, always protective. Whenever Skoll comes up with a new way of pushing himself to the edge, or Oberon’s intrinsic alpha-ness overwhelms him, and when Titan needs to just be left alone, or when I find myself getting lost, Raf’s always there. 

He leads us out into the dingy corridor and out the back of the bar, away from the whooping that echoes behind us from the main room. Shoving open the back door, he holds back as we traipse out into the pouring rain. It’s splattering down from a blocked gutter, the streetlights reflecting off the puddles that are a hazard to avoid. At least with the weather like this, all scents are muffled, which is a small mercy as we sidle past the bar’s rubbish bins.

Instead of leading us to the main street, Raf points us in the other direction, and we traipse through the rain along a narrow snicket until we reach the parallel road. There’s a black eight-seater SUV with tinted windows loitering at the side of the road and Raf gives us the nod, his attention darting all around us until we’re safely inside. It’s a tight squeeze and not all that pleasant with us all still in our stage outfits, still wearing our masks and still slick with sweat. 

Greg’s the unlucky fucker in the middle, sandwiched between Titan and Skoll while Oberon and I take the two backseats. He doesn’t seem to notice, though. His face is still buried in his phone. 

We take a circuitous route back to our hotel for the night, the real one. Our PR and social teams always leak false information so that no one knows where we’re actually staying. 

Judging by the crowd gathered in the rain outside the hotel’s front entrance, that hasn’t worked out so well this time. 

“Shit,” Oberon mutters. 

“Looks like we’re all crashing in your mum’s basement, eh?” I reply with a grin. “It’ll be like old times.” 

“She’ll be ecstatic,” he replies, entirely deadpan. 

Skoll pulls handfuls of sweets from his pockets, shoving them into his mouth before offering them around and spilling them all over the car floor. Titan grunts, barely glancing up from the book he’s pulled from who knows where. 

“Hey, T,” Skoll waves his fist of sweeties in front of Titan’s face, leaning right over Greg and spilling more of them. “Want one?”

“I’m good,” he grunts. 

“How can you even be reading that thing? It’s too dark to see.”

Titan ignores him, plucking a tiny torch from deep within his costume and flashing it quickly at Skoll’s masked face, before returning to his book. 

“Ah, that’s not good,” Greg says, leaning forward and handing his phone over to Raf, whose shoulders stiffen and a low growl to emanate from deep in his chest. 

Oberon shifts until his big body is perched on the edge of his seat. “What’s happening?”

Greg doesn’t answer him directly and instead addresses the entire car, something that’ll piss off Oberon to no end. “Gentlemen, we have a big problem.”

Delilah

I’m overheated and sweaty, pressed down into the mattress and by a mound of blankets when there’s a knock on my bedroom door. I wriggle and roll, having somehow tucked myself into a tight burrito of blankets that I can’t seem to escape from.

But the knocking doesn’t stop. In fact, it becomes an incessant rapping that’s impossible to ignore, which means there’s only one person who could be on the other side.

“Go away, Miri.”

True to form, she ignores me entirely and barges into the room. Throwing open the curtains and the window, she heads straight to my wardrobe and starts rifling through. 

“That spare key is just for emergencies,” I mumble. “What are you doing here so early?”

“This is an emergency,” she tells me, tossing her bright pink hair behind her shoulder. “There’s a gathering at D-Low’s. Wolf Son Unchained is going to be there. And you know I’ve been trying to get back into the music scene. He’s recording in the city for the next week, and then I’ll have missed my chance.”

“So that means you have to steal my clothes?”

“Your boots. The metal-tipped, suede ones I bought you for your birthday,” she says with a winning smile. “I also mayneed you to drive me there. Apparently, D-Low is weird about people getting rideshares to his house, and there’s no way I can drive in those shoes.” She twists around in a flurry of skirts and then frowns at me. “Why does your face look like that?”

I wriggle again, trying to dislodge my arms at least so I can unravel the rest of me. “Like what?”

“Ah, it was your ‘I hate famous people’ face. 

“More likely to be my ‘I need to pee but I’m stuck like this’ face,” I reply. “Although you have to admit, it’s all a bit weird and incestuous. Everyone knows each other at these parties.”

She gives me a long look, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she keeps eye contact for a moment longer than is comfortable. Then, she cracks up, laughing at herself. “Of course, it is. Everyone is an ex or an ex’s ex or has been linked by the tabloids at least once.” Her smile fades, and I just know she’s thinking about my brush with all of that. It’s the time we do not speak of, as though it never happened. Although it is the only way I managed to afford to pay off my degree and can afford my tiny flat that’s only a half hour bus ride out of the city centre. 

Miri’s own ill-fated romance with Bam Fortune ended after a few short months, exactly as was planned. He’s since found a pack, and they’ve been engaged twice, and got married and divorced all in the past decade. He seemed pretty cut up about the divorce the last time I bumped into him when I was picking Miri up from another awful party. I don’t know if his marriage was part of The Roadmap too, or if it was the genuine article.

“I’m trying to see if Wolf Son would consider me for his next fling before he gets back with Jessie Joy.”

“Uh huh.” If I twist my left arm behind my back, I think I should be able to get the leverage to unwrap myself. Or maybe I can push my knee up and it’ll mean I can pull the duvet away from my back.

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” Miri plops onto the bottom of the bed, pulling on the boots. She doesn’t seem to have noticed my supine beetle impression.

“If that’s what you want to do, go for it,” I pant at her. My leg comes up, and I’m able to release some of the tension in the duvet, which means I’m finally able to pull myself out of its constraint. 

Now that she’s wearing the boots, it’s like Miri’s attention is able to widen to other things. She eyes my flushed face and tangled black hair and then the mess that is my bedroom-cum-office with the piles of files and papers everywhere. 

“So this is what you’re doing with your life, is it?” she jokes, sounding so much like my mother I can’t help but recoil. “I’m joking,” she adds quickly.   

“Miri, it’s eight in the morning, and I work from home, so I don’t need to be up yet. Plus, I spent all night working on things for Plexus.”

That’s the other good thing that came out of my little foray with fame. I had enough money leftover so that I could start my own non-profit omega network. It’s for all the omegas that aren’t ‘quite right’. Those whose scents aren’t the typical sweet sugar and vanilla, who don’t have regular heats, or who can’t scent others. We even have people who used to be bonded, but it didn’t work out for them who are waiting for clinical trials on bond severance to start testing on actual omegas, rather than relying entirely on betas. 

Plexus started out as a forum for people to share their experiences, and it’s morphed into a whole creature of its own. We now have thousands of members all around the world who are constantly messaging on the forums, making videos and lifting each other up when the world insists on dragging them down. 

But it’s not enough. 

We have visions for meetups, so we can see each other face to face and have in-person sessions. We also don’t have enough funding or sway to change things. We need more influential members, more people speaking in the right ears.  

Plus, right now, it’s like having a whole second job on top of my actual job. 

“Maybe you should come to this gathering with me,” Miri says. “I’m technically a plus one, but you could be my plus one. I’m sure there’ll be some people there that have influence or at least a platform.” She narrows her eyes at the state of me. “But you’ll have to get up. Trinity’s coming to mine for hair and makeup in an hour.”

That’s the other part of this game Miri’s playing that I don’t understand. Everyone she spends time with is weaving a complex web of real and fake relationships, real and fake values, spun into a tapestry that means they make as much money as they can until people get bored of them. She fell into it after she tried and failed to transition out of being a child star actress, and she seems happy enough. But she always has to be ‘on’, always immaculately turned out, even if she’s just going down to the shops to buy some milk. She literally has a professional come by at least a couple of times a week to ensure she looks presentable. Whereas I work from home, which means I only wear shoes when I have to go for a medical appointment, which is more often than I’d like. 

I eventually manage to extract myself from my bed and head bleary-eyed into the bathroom. By the time I’m showered and dressed, Miri is practically vibrating with excitement on my bed.

“So Wolfie just texted me,” she says, waving her phone in front of my face. “He’s heading to the rehearsal space right now, and he asked me to meet him there, and we’ll both go to D-Low’s together.” 

“What happened to getting your hair and makeup done?” Although now I’m looking at her  properly she already seems to be wearing a full face of makeup and her hair is as beautifully coiffed as ever. 

“I’m just going to have to do it myself,” she replies decisively, already pulling a case from her massive handbag and decanting the contents onto my dresser and spraying herself liberally with descenter. 

I slink into the kitchen to fetch us coffee and buttered toast, returning to check my schedule for the day. But it seems like my duties as her taxi driver aren’t over just because Miri doesn’t need to go straight to her gathering. Instead, she insists on me doing my makeup and hair and somehow persuades me to agree to take her down to the rehearsal space. She insists that Wolf Son might have some contacts that can help with Plexus, and because she’s my best friend, I wind up going along with it. I don’t know how much of that is thanks to my flawed omega nature, and how much is because Miri was the only person there for me during one of the darkest periods of my life. 

I eye her suspiciously as the coffee kicks in. Miri might be a steamroller inside a shell of sunshine, but she doesn’t usually appear when I’m sleeping and she’s never quite so insistent about introducing me to her circle. 

Which means something else is going on here. Judging by the brightness of her eyes and the sheer enthusiasm she’s showing for seeing this Wolf guy is unusual to say the least. I open my mouth to ask her exactly what’s going on with her, but my skin is tingling in a way that tells me she wouldn’t tell me. It’s times like these that are always a kicker. If I had any ability to smell her scent, I’d be able to pick up on any lingering hint of her emotions to give me a clue. 

Instead of questioning her, I quietly help her to do her already perfect makeup and hair and then sit there while she does the same to me, even though it’s pouring with rain outside. From the way she squeezes my hand once we’re ready to leave and then again when we’re in the car on the way to the rehearsal space, I know I made the right choice and she’ll tell me what she’s thinking and feeling when she’s ready. 

I just hope that allowing my omega instincts to take the lead here don’t come around to bite me in the arse.

Skoll

“I don’t want to do this.” I feel like a pouting prick, but the words are true enough as Oberon practically drags me through the door to our rehearsal space. “PR relationships are bullshit meant for hack actors or people too unlikeable to get fans any other way. If our fans found out we were only dating an omega to manipulate them, they’d do their nut.”

Oberon huffs at me, nudging me into the empty rehearsal room and shoving a coffee under my nose. “That’s not why we’re doing it.” 

“Then why are we?” I cross my ankle over my knee and grab a marker as Oberon plops a pile of merch into my lap to sign. 

“Because the fans have officially lost their minds.” He grabs his own marker and adds his autograph to the badges, t-shirts and posters when I’m done with them. 

“These for the hospital?” I ask. 

He nods. “Titan wants us to do more of his charity stuff.”

“So we buy an alpaca farm or something,” I say. “Take the summers off to knit baby blankets. Why the hell do we need a fake relationship? Why can’t we do something real?”

The words are out before I can stop them. Before I can realise exactly why I’m so bothered by this whole stupid situation or that I’m revealing too much. 

“Is it the fake part you’re objecting to?” He blinks at me. “Not the relationship bit?”

I shrug off the discomfort climbing up my chest. I’m glad that there are industrial-strength air filters in here, preventing me from broadcasting my feelings. Just because I’ve never been relationship material in the past doesn’t mean it’s not something I’d be interested in. I want connection just as much as anyone else. And I used to get that from gigging, from touring. But Oberon is right. The past few years have been growing steadily messier.

But they’ve been nothing compared to the past week; things have been an absolute clusterfuck. 

“I never gave a shit about being famous. You know that,” I tell him. “All I wanted was to play music, so why do we have to play the stupid fame game?”

“Because our reputation is dogshit,” Titan says as he slinks into the room, wearing a truly ridiculous pair of sunglasses.

“What is that on your face, man?”

He grabs my coffee and slurps it obnoxiously, all while giving me the finger. “Fashion choice.”

“He’s right,” Oberon adds with a smirk. “Not about the ugly sunglasses and the even uglier moustache. After what those omegas did last weekend—”

Our shows have always been a little… wild. A place people could let loose in every sense. But with the masks and the lore the fans created around us when we wouldn’t reveal any details about our personal lives, things have started to get weird. 

Some fans are so obsessed with finding our omega muse they’ve convinced themselves that they can track her down or do rituals to become her. What happened last weekend was that a bunch of them took a lot of different drugs and followed a ritual they read about online, which left at least two of them in the hospital. 

“Plus, Charon and his rutting issues are well known,” Titan grumbles. “As much as we might try to hide it, it’s an open secret among the fans. What omega would want to be in an actual relationship with a pack that’s known for fans winding up in the hospital and for going into rut every other month?”

“I’m sure some would,” I reply mutinously. 

“Then they’d be very disappointed when they actually got to know us, wouldn’t they?” Oberon replies. “They come in expecting us to be mindless, growling alphas, and then Titan starts yacking their ear off about his master’s thesis.”

“Then why do we need to tell them who we are? Surely, that was the point of the masks, so that we could keep our privacy?”

“You want to lie to our omega? To pretend like we’re not part of one of the biggest masked rock bands the world has ever seen? All right then.” Oberon shifts in his seat, and the back of my neck prickles as I gear up for a sermon. “So what do you do for a living, guys? What do you spend your time doing? You’re part of a pack. Why don’t the four of you have a house together? Why do—”

“All right, all right,” I interrupt him, glowering. “I get your point.”

I bloody hate when he’s right. Which, according to him, is all the damn time. 

“So we fake it with an omega who wants a spot on reality TV or to transition from being a soap star to being a popstar. Then other omegas see how well we’ve treated them, and they’ll be lining up to be ours. Is that the gist of your plan?” I’m done with my pile of stuff to sign and dump it into Oberon’s lap before tapping my fingertips on the case of my bass.

“Where’s Charon?” I ask. “He’s late for practice.”

“He’s not coming in yet,” Titan replies, shooting Oberon a shifty look. 

My neck tingles again, but this time it’s with apprehension. “Why not? He’s not fallen into rut again, has he?”

It’s happening more and more frequently and at random intervals, so it’s never something we can predict. We’ve tried countless medications, meditation, even a week-long retreat in the mountains. None of it worked, and he wound up screwing half of the staff. His damn pheromones are crazy strong. Add to that enough charisma to sink a ship, and the whole fame thing, and he’s practically irresistible to most.

“Not a rut this time. He’s just… sleeping in,” Titan says. 

My neck’s still prickling, and I stare at Oberon’s implacable expression before shifting to Titan, who has a slight flush visible just above the stupid moustache. Dude really is a terrible liar. 

“You’re lying,” I say. “Why are you lying to me, and what does Titan know that I don’t?”

Oberon lets out a frustrated huff, getting slowly to his feet with his hands out like he’s placating me.

“She’s bloody well here, isn’t she?” I spring to my feet. “No way. You’re not just springing her on us like this. How long have you been planning all this, anyway?”

“A while,” Oberon admits. 

“You and Andie from the sodding marketing team. I bet you decided to team up and put together your little lies to sell more tickets,” I spit. “I bet you—”

“Maybe you should go outside to cool off,” Titan interrupts before I can really lay into our lead singer. “We can’t have you meeting her if you break each other’s noses again.”

“That was an accident and you know it. And I’m not meeting her.”

“Look, it’s either this or you know the management company is going to be pushing their stupid reality dating show again where we pick off omegas every week. Greg was practically salivating over it when he was explaining it to me the other week.”

I’m suddenly twelve years old again and filled with feelings surging through my body that I don’t know what to do with as my body morphs from boy into alpha. 

I do need to get out of here. Otherwise, I’m going to either lamp someone, or I’ll have a damn panic attack.

Omegas are supposed to be a calming influence; someone that adds balance to the pack. Like the rest of us are all wild beasts who need chaining to a poor omega-shaped rock. 

I stride out of the room, feeling unreasonably annoyed when the door shuts with a soft snick, rather than slamming. 

Because I’m a child having a tantrum, apparently. 

Except, I’ve spent enough years fighting with my reckless instincts and leashing my emotions to know when I’m being an arse. I need air and movement, right now, or my nervous system will rebel, and I’ll wind up a shaky, sweating mess in the corner. 

I’m partway to the front door when I catch a scent that somehow hasn’t been sucked up by the air filters. It’s almost overwhelmingly floral. Like I’ve stuck my head in a rosebush. My nose and throat itch horribly.

I know what that smell means. 

Omega.

I slink behind a wall just in time to catch a flash of blonde hair going past, followed by a female voice disappearing into the rehearsal space. My brain retreats to my feet as I dive for the emergency exit and charge into the courtyard outside. Where I twat right into something soft and bright blue.

From the stifled yelp as I stagger, almost tripping over my own feet, I gather I’ve hit straight into a person.

A woman. She’s sprawled on the concrete amongst the cigarette butts and blows a stream of air to shift her thick black hair out of her face.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry,” I blurt, sticking my hand out to help her up. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

She doesn’t hesitate to grab my hand, and I heft her up easily. A little too easily, since she almost goes flying in the other direction. She lets out a strangled groan as she staggers forward.

“Ooh, I think I must have landed badly on my leg.” She droops, like her knee has given out from under her. “Definitely landed badly.” Two pale blue eyes flick up to meet mine, and she gives me a strained smile that’s more like a grimace than anything. 

She pulls her hand away and sucks in a sharp breath, and when I look down, there’s blood on my hand. Which must mean there’s blood on her hands too.

What a colossal dickhead I am. 

Then, she sways on her feet, and my instincts take over. “I’m going to touch you now,” I growl at her right as I scoop her into my arms. She lets out another little yelp, squirming with her bright purple fingernails clawing the air, dangerously close to my eyeballs.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you inside,” I tell her as my chest breaks into a horribly rusty rumbling as I attempt to comfort her. Shit. Am I… purring right now?

 “You can’t walk if you’ve hurt your knee and you’re bleeding,” he insists. “There must be a first aid kit inside.”

“I’m pretty sure I could have hobbled,” she replies. “You didn’t need to carry me.”

“Not in those shoes,” I say. I don’t know why, but her shoes are doing something to me. They’re so damn pretty and delicate. The tops are all lacy, and there’s a bow around her ankle that’s making my palms itch. My hands feel like two hot hams clasping her leg and her waist, too rough and ungainly to be hauling her about like this. 

As soon as we get inside, I head straight for reception where there’s a leather sofa, which I carefully deposit the women on. As I pull back, I sniff the air around her, trying to catch her scent. But there’s nothing. 

She must be a beta. 

Charging back to the reception desk, my heart’s pounding in my ears as I rasp at the woman behind the counter, begging for a first aid kit. By the time they find one and hand it over, my accidental victim has her trouser leg rolled up and is inspecting a knee that’s already looking swollen. 

“Damn, I’m so sorry.” I fumble with the kit. I don’t know why I’m such a fucking mess over this. When I broke both Titan's and my noses also by accident, it didn’t leave me feeling anything like this. 

“It’s not about to fall off, you know,” the woman tells me drily. 

“No, but it might swell up worse. You need to rest and ice it. You weren’t here for rehearsal, were you?”

She snorts. “No. I mean, I like to drum, but that’s not what I’m here for. My friend has a meeting, and she’s weird about driving when she’s nervous, so I tagged along too.”

I drop to my knees and dab at her hands with an antiseptic wipe, but there’s not much I can do about her knee. 

Then a woman’s laugh floats down the corridor toward us, the air filling with the cloying scent of roses. Which is when I truly lose my mind.

“We need to get out of here.”

Delilah

The alpha sweeps me into his arms without hesitation and darts along the corridor until we’re in the entryway of the building. He keeps peering behind him, like he’s expecting someone to come chasing after him while I cling to his shoulders. He’s tall and is carrying me with one arm under my knees and the other around my back and under one arm. 

In other words, it’s a bridal carry, like he’s about to carry me over the threshold of our new life together. It’s incredibly strange, and I can feel every inch of his hard chest, and he seems to be pumping out an insane amount of heat and a kind of wild energy that’s so far managed to knock me over and pick me up again. My knee is throbbing in time with my pounding heart, and I’m pretty sure I need ice right now and to keep it elevated, or the mystery alpha is right, it’ll swell up to twice its usual size. 

Too bad that the alpha seems entirely distracted right now as I need to get home. I need to find Miri and give her the keys to my car so that she can get herself home. It’ll wreck her plans with Wolf Son, but I can’t see any other options. Grabbing my phone, I hit her number, but it rings and rings until eventually it cuts off. I try again, but get the same result and when I send her a text and it goes unanswered, I have to consider my alternative choices here.

The alpha is still peering over his shoulder, his chest still rumbling like a mix between a very large cat and a tractor engine, and for some reason, the sound of it is causing my shoulders to unwind from right below my ears. 

“Is everything all right?” I ask the alpha softly. Although I can’t scent him like any normal omega could, there’s no way he can be anything else. It’s not an appearance thing either; he’s not one of the alphas that physically take up more space than everyone else. It’s more the way he sent me flying and then immediately sprang into action and was fixing me up before I knew what was happening. 

He jumps at the sound of my voice, as though he’d somehow forgotten that he is carrying me. 

“All good,” he mutters. “Nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. There’s just someone I’m trying to avoid.”

As he says the words, a woman floats down the hallway in our direction, and the alpha darts backwards, almost like he’s… hiding.  

“Shit,” he hisses. “It’s her. The omega. Those fuckers have sent her to look for me. I just know it.” 

I fight a laugh, peering over his shoulder as the swirl of hair and fluid material flits by. “Hate to break it to you, but if you’re trying to avoid omegas, you’re not doing a very good job,” I tell him.

He’s shaven headed and both the arms cradling me to his chest are tanned with a full sleeve down his right arm. He also has scarily light eyes that make my stomach pitch whenever his gaze meets mine. 

He stares down at me. “You are?

“I’ve never heard of an alpha running away from an omega before,” I continue breezily. “Usually people are weird about multiple omegas being in one place, like we’re feral cats that’ll start hissing at each other.”

He lets out a heavy sigh, still clutching me to his chest like I’m his only protection against the world. 

“It’s not like I’m afraid of omegas in general. I’m hiding from a specific omega,” he mumbles. “An omega my management wants to set us up with. We need to fix our image and stop the fans from losing their minds and this is their solution.”

I blink up at him, realising that since he just knocked me off my feet outside of a rehearsal space, he’s likely to be some kind of musician. “Are you… are you in Wolf Son Unchained?” I ask.

“I’m not.” His eyes dart to one side and he jostles me slightly, like he’s considering putting me down, but seems to decide against it. 

My eyebrows shoot up as I smile at him. “The way that you answered that makes me feel like you might be and that I should have recognised you.”

He pats at his face. “No, I’m definitely not.” Peering behind him, he looks down at me again. “I want to get your knee seen to, or it’s going to swell up. Don’t worry, I’ll take you somewhere safe.” His face creases up as he winces. “That sounded a lot more serial killer-y than I meant it to. I don’t usually have to mind what I say.”

“Because you’re an alpha.” I guess.

“Because no one takes what I say seriously enough to upset them.”

Oh. Well, that’s a more open explanation than I was expecting. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a response and is already darting out of the door and into the rain.

“We’ll get a taxi,” he mutters, almost like he’s talking to himself. “Can’t risk heading back there.”

My stomach twists as the rain hits my face. My knee really is throbbing and I can either try to persuade this guy to help me find Miri inside, or I can do something that all my omega instincts should be screaming at me not to.

“I have my car parked just down the street,” I tell him. “Do you think you could drive me to the doctor?”

“Oh. Of course.” He charges forward, once again in entirely the wrong direction to where I’m parked. 

“It’s to the left,” I tell him. “The little blue car.”

He continues on, striding until we reach the row of cars. “It matches your eyes,” he murmurs. “And your nails.”

I unlock the car and he opens the door before carefully depositing me on the passenger’s seat and slipping around until he’s behind the steering wheel. The car lurches forward and I wince as my knee bashes against the seat. The alpha then sets off like a bat out of hell and I force my stinging hands to unclench.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a doctor’s office about five minutes from here,” I tell him.

He doesn’t seem to hear me, instead rooting around in the pocket of his black jeans, plucking his phone out and thrusting it in my direction. “We’ll go to the pack house. Raf’s as good as any doctor.”

Not even two minutes into the drive and I’m realising I really shouldn’t have let a strange alpha drive my car. A strange alpha whose name I don’t even know. Now that I’m looking at him without the distraction of the rain and with my knee no longer throbbing quite so much, he really is devastating. 

But just because he’s good-looking doesn’t mean that he’s safe. 

“My phone. Can you call Raf, let him know we’re coming,” he says before rattling off his pin number. His background picture is himself with another four men—two are absolutely huge and intimidating, one with long, dark hair and a half smile, another is wearing a shirt and suit trousers, his sleeves rolled up while all the others are dressed casually. He’s got shorter hair that’s a sandy colour and tattoos up both arms and a stony expression on his face. Beside him is a man whose face is almost entirely obscured by a thick, dark beard and bushy eyebrows. Then there’s a smaller guy standing at the very end of their line, with blonde hair who looks vaguely like I might have seen him somewhere before. 

The alpha is now waving his fingers at me while I pull my attention away from the photo and head to his contacts, finding the right one quickly and hitting the call button and putting it on speaker. 

“What’s wrong?” A gravelly voice rasps through the phone. 

“Raf, I have an omega with me,” the alpha in my car says. “I knocked her over and I’m bringing her back to the house so you can look at her knee.”

“You—” There’s a long pause on the other end of the phone and the alpha beside me takes this as an opportunity to keep talking.

“We’ll be there in like two minutes, man.”

There’s another long pause. “Fine,” the other man barks, causing me to shiver slightly. “I’ll be waiting.” 

He hangs up the phone first, leaving me clutching it in my slightly sweaty palm. 

“He’ll take care of you,” the alpha tells me with a distracted nod. 

Judging by that phone call, he’s just as likely to turn me away at the door, but since Miri still hasn’t responded to me, I’ll take my chances. I really could do with some ice and painkillers right about now. 

“So we’re going to… your pack house,” I say. “You’re in a pack.” 

“Twelve years since we met. Eleven and a bit since we bonded.” He delivers the words proudly, with his head tossed back. 

“You ever meet anyone who you seemed to just get you from the first moment you met?” he continues. “Music, values, all the chunks of yourself you don’t usually allow to see the light of day?” 

“I do, actually,” I reply. “Although I couldn’t imagine tying myself to them for life, and having a direct line to Miri would be a surefire way of driving me insane.”

“It’s not like we’re in each other’s heads. Not yet, anyway.”

“Because you’re on the hunt for an omega.”

“No.” He shakes his head vigorously. “Well, yes. They want a fake one.”

And you? I want to ask. But it’s an incredibly invasive question for someone I’ve just met, who is driving my car like he has a thousand thoughts running through his head at once and only two of them relate to either the road or the car. I’m trying not to react every time he acts like a traffic light crept up on him, or pauses for far too long at a junction without seeming to recall he’s supposed to be the one driving. 

“Sorry.” He smiles, displaying a dimple on one side that sets off a flutter of butterflies in my gut.  

He continues weaving through the leafy suburban streets that edge the city before pulling off at an open gate that leads down a long driveway before stopping outside a massive house. My car must look comically small on the huge driveway, but I guess if they’re all as massive as the behemoth standing scowling in the doorway, they need a big house to fit them all in. 

I push open the car door and carefully climb out, hobbling on one leg and leaning against the side of the car before I’m swept up into a strong pair of arms again. Emitting an undignified shriek as I’m spun around, I have to stifle another yelp as the alpha from the doorway appears right in front of us.

He’s even bigger and more intimidating up close like this. His hair is a sandy colour with more grey in it than I could see from the photo on the other alpha’s phone. 

“You’re injured?” he growls, his eyes raking over me like he’s assessing for any signs of damage with just the force of his eyeballs. 

“My knee,” I reply. 

He levels me with a look that has an icy shiver rolling down my spine. But then I remember that I’m not the one who wanted to come here. 

“I thought we were going to find a doctor,” I say with a shrug. “I’m still happy to go to one.” In fact, I’d prefer it. 

“This was quicker. You can take a look at her, right, Raf?” the alpha holding me says, spinning me around slightly. 

“You’re an omega?” the other alpha says. “You’re descented. Good. That’s good.” 

“You can’t just comment on an omega’s scent, Raf.” 

“Let’s get inside.” 

With me still carried in the smaller alpha’s arms, we head toward the front door and into the packhouse.

Delilah

I’m carried into a mostly bare foyer with a lot of bare white walls and a domed ceiling, with a circular staircase right in the centre. There’s a distinct lack of colour and a white leather sofa that the alpha carrying me carefully deposits me onto. I eye the material as I bounce uncomfortably on the hard surface before glancing around.

“I’ll be back,” the first alpha tells me before darting off, throwing open the door to the next room and disappearing into the cavernous house. The door slams behind him, and I’m sure it echoes right the way up the stairs. 

Leaving me alone with the world’s most intimidating alpha, inside his massive, intimidating shell of a house. 

“You should have put a towel down. I’m afraid of bleeding all over this sofa,” I joke to the alpha.

“You’re bleeding?” he growls at me, looming with his arms folded and a stony expression on his face. 

“No,” I reply with an awkward laugh. “Well, yes, my knees are both a bit scraped up, but I’m sure they’re not bleeding anymore.”

“You need to elevate your leg,” he says. 

He’s not wrong. Too bad that this sofa is cushionless and the rest of the foyer is entirely empty. I slip my shoes off and then lift my leg with a wince that I try my best to stifle. Since I can’t exactly stick my leg over the top of the sofa, I flop onto my back and keep my knee bent slightly, then turn to peer up at the alpha who hasn’t moved a muscle. 

I really am incredibly uncomfortable and regretting this entire thing. 

“Why were you hurrying around outside the rehearsal space?” he asks, arms folded.

Stifling a sigh, I gaze longingly at the door the first alpha disappeared through. So much for an icepack and a painkiller… or a trip to the doctor. Since I can’t move too much right now, and I am in this guy’s house, I fight my instinct to tell him it’s none of his business. 

“I was dropping my friend off,” I tell him. “She was meeting someone inside.”

“And you had to escort her to the door?” he asks. 

I chuckle. “If you’d seen the shoes she was wearing, you wouldn’t need to ask that question.” With an awkward shrug, I continue, “Anyway, I was the one who wound up splatting onto the pavement and then your friend said he’d take me to get my knee looked at. I was kind of expecting to be seeing a doctor or a nurse right about now.”

He gives me a long look, like he’s got X-ray vision to see right through my bullshit. But since I’m speaking the truth and I don’t really care what this random alpha thinks of me, I stare right back. Still, he’s an intense guy, and it feels a little like I’m staring directly into a bright light or into the eyes of a predator that’s deciding if it wants to bother eating me. 

A door slams upstairs, and that finally draws his attention off me. 

“I’d better go check on that,” he says. “Skoll should be back in a minute with your ice. Unless he got distracted by a spiderweb or spotted a cat in the garden and followed to see where it went.” He lets out a heavy sigh, muttering under his breath, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He gives me a final lingering look, like he’s warning me with his eyes not to move or touch anything. Jokes on him. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to, and this house doesn’t exactly invite further inspection. 

I slip my phone out of my pocket and dial Miri again, but it goes straight to voicemail, and she still hasn’t seen my message. So much for being my ride-or-die sister, always there when I need her. 

Oddly enough, though, I don’t feel like I’m in danger. For once, I don’t need to pull out my usual breathing techniques or visualisation shortcuts. Which makes no sense. If any time is good to start panicking, you’d think being injured in a strange packhouse would be it. 

I know I lack some of the usual omega instincts, designed to keep us safe. But they also make us more reactive. I spent a lot of years juggling mine and fighting against my body and my nervous system. 

So it’s odd I don’t feel the need to hide or flee. 

Another door slams upstairs. Then, the door opens, and the shaven-headed alpha reappears with his arms laden and a pleased grin on his face.

“Hi,” I say. “Skoll, isn’t it?”

His grin drops, and I push up on my elbows, my gut twisting with a sudden surge of anxiety that I’ve got his name completely wrong. “That’s what Rafe called you. Is that not right?”

“It’s what some people call me,” he says, although his easy posture has gone and his shoulders are now stiffer than before. 

“I’m Delilah,” I reply before carefully probing, “What should I call you?” 

“Blake. That’s my real name.” He slides onto the sofa beside me, dropping icepacks, frozen peas, bandages and a whole pile of snacks beside me as he wraps the icepack in a towel and delicately holds it to my knee. “What happened to Rafe?”

“He’s checking on something upstairs,” I reply. 

He lets out a disgruntled rumble. “Did he look at your knee, at least?”

When I shake my head, he gives a filthy curse under his breath. “He seems protective,” I comment. I’m assuming that’s what the entire scene with Rafe looming over me, like he thought I might nip off and steal the silverware at any moment, was about. 

Blake doesn’t answer, instead carefully pulling my leg into his lap so he can keep the icepack in place. Then he lifts his head, cocking his head to one side as he observes me. 

“Nice place you have here.” I make a clumsy attempt at conversation since it seems like he’s going to sit there silently. “It’s very… white.”

His eyes flit between mine for a moment, judging how serious I am, and then he breaks into another devastating smile. “It’s a rental. Soulless, isn’t it? It’s always tricky finding somewhere that’ll fit all five egos in one place, and when we were looking for somewhere Oberon kept wanging on about wanting no outside influences. A blank canvas.”

“Has it helped?” I ask. Part of me really wants to ask more questions, but I can already tell that would be a bad idea. No doubt, his shoulders wouldn’t stiffen all over again just like they did when he thought I knew his name. 

Yeah, I didn’t miss that. Sometimes, having omega senses that are tuned in to every minute change in expression or posture comes in useful. Most of the time, it’s just plain exhausting. 

He lets out a low chuckle that finds its way deep inside me until it feels like it’s tickling the inside of my ribs. “No.”

“Are you musicians?” I ask. It’s a pretty firm guess, considering he was inside a rehearsal space when we met and his mention of blank canvases.” 

He nods. “But I’d rather talk about you. What is it you do, Delilah?”

And so I find myself chatting his ear off about Plexus while he unwraps a series of snacks for me while I wait for the icepack and painkillers he hands over to take effect. We start with a banana and then various sweets, until he’s hand-peeling the wrappers off these little chocolate mints. All the while, he’s listening with wrapt attention, asking me questions and nodding along.

“Is it what you do full time?” he asks, popping a chocolate into his mouth and sucking gently.

I laugh. “I wish. It’s my evenings and weekends right now, every spare moment I have to give.” I’ve skimmed over all the personal details of how I got into it, since revealing my list of idiosyncrasies and medical issues isn’t exactly something you bring up when you’ve just met someone. 

Especially not when you’re flirting. And I might be a little rusty in that department, but this guy is either so charismatic that he’s oozing charm, or flirting is exactly what we’re doing right now. 

Knowing my luck, it’ll be the former. And he probably has a sister who’s an omega, and that’s why he seems so interested in the omega network. 

The letterbox rattles as a handful of mail is shoved through and plops onto the floor. Another door slams upstairs, and there’s the sound of raised voices, which is just enough to snap me out of the spell he’s cast over us both. Somehow, he’s turned this cold, uncomfortable corner of the house into something cosy and comfortable enough for me to put my guard down.

But I can’t stay here all day. My knee is no longer throbbing, and the swelling doesn’t look half as bad as it did when I first got here. Which means I should get moving.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” I ask. 

Blake leaps to his feet, scattering snacks everywhere, in his eagerness to help me up. I stifle another laugh. I’ve been on my own and taking care of myself for a long time now, but I have to say it’s pretty nice for someone to want to feed me and look after me… even if that apparently means escorting me to the toilet. 

I head inside a bathroom that’s all white tiles and gold taps, with a huge, ornate mirror over the sink. Despite the weirdness of the situation, I’m enjoying his company. He’s intense. That’s for sure. You’d think that I’d chopped my leg off by the level of his attentiveness. 

After carefully lowering myself to the toilet, I take care of business and then wash my hands, grimacing at the sight of my reflection. My hair has dried plastered to my head from the rain, and my cheeks are flushed and shiny. I’m just noticing that I have mud all up my legs too, which probably means I’ve made a mess of their horrible white sofa. 

Well, there’s nothing for it. I’ll offer to sponge it down and then I’ll be on my way before I can knock over any priceless vases or smear chocolate all over the walls. I head out of the bathroom, expecting to find Blake waiting to escort me to my car, but find the hallway entirely deserted.

Using the wall as a mobility aid, I make my way back to the foyer, fiddling with my car keys in my pocket. 

—and step into chaos.

The front door is wide open, and there’s a damp breeze flowing in from outside. Raised voices are all echoing off the bare walls and ceiling, and I can see nothing but black clothing, tattoos, and an ungodly amount of hair. 

“Do none of you check your phones? I said no visitors.” Rafe’s hiss is loud enough to cut through all the noise. 

Peering around, I spot him halfway up the stairs and then turn my attention back to the front door. 

“This is what we agreed. You’re being rude, Skoll.”

“You’re fucking rude. I never agreed to any of this. Is she—”

I choose that moment to limp forward, and it’s like pulling the plug on all the noise. Everyone stops shouting, and I make a grab for my bag on the sofa, grimacing at the flakes of mud I can see everywhere. 

Opening my mouth to squeak out a salutation, I quickly close it again as a blonde woman steps through the door, squeezing between the two men arguing with Blake. She looks like a beautiful flower emerging from the walls of a dungeon. While I… I look like I’ve been rolling around in a puddle. 

Her eyes widen as they rest on me, and she stops abruptly, glancing to the behemoth of an alpha standing beside her. 

“Who’s this?” he asks. If barbarian chic were a thing, he’s got it in spades. Slightly wild, long dark hair that reaches down his back, and so many tattoos stretching up both arms and onto his neck. They seem to be an interesting mix of brightly coloured flowers and constellations. 

It’s his eyes that catch me out, though. They’re brown and soft and staring right into mine with an expression I can’t begin to name, which causes my stomach to flip over itself.

“This is Delilah,” Skoll/Blake says, tossing his head back and flicking out his tongue to reveal a piercing right through the middle. “She’s our omega.”

Oberon

“She’s what?”

Right about now, I wish we had the mind link that completed packs develop as they bond. That way, I’d be able to understand what the fuck Skoll is thinking right about now, and also why Rafe is standing with his arms folded, frozen on the stairs. He looks like he’s planted himself there, a physical barrier between Charon on the top floor of the house and the rest of us. 

Which tells me he must be worse. How can he be worse?

Right on cue, there’s a terrible sound that echoes from upstairs. It’s a moan of deep, unrelenting pain that leaves my skin cold. 

Both omegas’ heads lift and tilt toward the sound. The black-haired one even takes a step forward, closer to the stairs before wincing and flopping onto the sofa. I’ve never put much stock in the idea that omegas can sense and soothe alpha pain. Mostly because I have two omega sisters who are both lovely and wonderful but are as emotionally intelligent as planks of wood. 

But their reaction is exactly why we wanted her here. Just by being in the same house as Charon should help to soothe him and ease the worst symptoms when his hormones go into overdrive like they are at the moment. And we’re willing to try anything at this point. 

That’s why Alice is here, anyway. She’s the omega Rafe and I met a few weeks ago who has agreed to act the part of our omega. Not the black-haired omega Skoll has dragged in from who knows where. 

We need to fix our image and to give the more rabid fans something to distract them before they start sacrificing themselves or chopping off pieces of themselves or whatever’s next in their plan to worship the band. 

“You wanted a fake omega, right? Well, I found one for us.”

“What the hell, man? You can’t just drag some poor woman off the street.”

There’s another pained yell from upstairs, and my entire body wants to crawl inside itself in sympathy. 

“Can’t we do something about that?” Titan mutters from beside me.

“You need to sign an NDA,” Rafe barks down the stairs. “Both of you.”

“That’s the best part,” Skoll says, striding over to the confused-looking omega on the sofa and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “She doesn’t know who we are.”

It’s almost comical how all our heads snap up to look at her. She just gives a shrug and an awkward smile, edging out from under Skoll’s arm.

“Anyway,” she says. “I’m going to head off. It was nice to meet you all. Thanks for the ice pack, Blake, but I think I’m all set now.” She gets to her feet and limps forward, while Skoll looks at her like she just kicked his puppy. 

“But, Delilah—”

She limps toward me and Titan, and we both shift out of her way, leaving her pathway to the door uninterrupted. As much as Skoll might say she’s an omega—our omega—she doesn’t smell like one. She doesn’t smell like anything at all. 

Then she’s stepping out of the door, and there’s the sound of a car starting and crunching down the driveway while Skoll stares at the open doorway. 

Titan gives me a look as he swings it closed again. 

“But I really like her,” Skoll says. “She’d be perfect as our omega.”

“Our fake omega,” I correct. “Right?”

“He’s lost it,” Titan mutters to me. 

“She was nice. She does omega things for charity. I knocked her on her arse, and she didn’t seem to blame me for a second. She didn’t know who we are, man.”

“All right, Blake,” Titan says while Charon moans again, the sound filling the entryway. 

Seriously, the man has some pipes on him. 

“Do you want me to go to him?” Alice asks. “It might help.”

Right. That’s why she’s here, to soothe Charon first, and then we can sort all the rest. 

Rafe’s still on the stairs, looking torn in two as he stares at the closed front door. “She still should have signed the NDA. Did you get her address?”

“Course, I did,” Skol replies. “First thing I did was knock her on her arse and take her ID so that I could make a copy for you.”

“You did?”

It says something about how frazzled Rafe is right now that he even thinks that could be a possibility. 

“No, I didn’t,” Skoll clarifies. 

“Maybe we can deal with it later,” I say. I’m fully aware that we must be making a terrible impression on Alice. I’d like to say it’s not normally such a shitshow, but just recently, it’s always been something. From obsessive fans, to paps going through our bins and then claiming we ingest the blood of virgins for breakfast, to Charon’s increasing issues, to Titan slowly losing his mind over the constant lack of privacy and eyes on us.

We’re a messy bunch. 

“Let’s head upstairs,” I say, shooting Alice an apologetic smile that earns me a snort from Titan. 

“I’ll get the NDA,” Rafe says, eyeing us all as we traipse upstairs with Skoll trailing at the back. 

Upstairs, there are six bedrooms and an entire wing of the house that none of us has stepped inside over the three months we’ve been living here. That’s where the omega’s nest suite is located, somewhere that’s entirely off-limits to the rest of us.

All the bedrooms are decorated in the same style as the rest of the house: grey carpets, white walls, huge gleaming windows all over the place that look out onto a garden we barely use. This entire house is lost on us, just like all the others have been. We’re barely here, always in another city, another country, touring the globe with our feet barely grazing the ground before we’re off again. 

The door to Charon’s room is slightly ajar, and he’s visible on the bed, curled up into a ball with his eyes squeezed shut. Before I met him, I’d never seen anyone go through a rut crisis like this. And it’s never what I’d expect. He’s not wildly humping the mattress, glassy-eyed and desperate to get laid. He’s just hurting. 

Alice enters the room, and I follow close behind. She heads over to the bed, putting a hand to his forehead and then turning around to frown at me.

“He’s not feverish.”

“We think it’s kind of like a migraine,” I reply. “Headache, shaking, senses going haywire so that sometimes he can’t taste or smell or see properly, and sometimes he’s oversensitive to every little thing.”

I don’t mention to her that it’s been getting worse over recent months. More regular crises and steadily getting worse, lasting longer.

“What should I do?” she asks.

I shrug. “Whatever feels right. They think that just your presence might help him.”

“Right.” She carefully perches on the edge of the bed, fiddling nervously with the sleeves of her dress. “Sorry, I’m not a medical professional.”

“No, you’re in pop, aren’t you?” Skoll says as he takes a seat on the floor by the window. He grins at Alice, and it feels like the rest of us let out a collective sigh. Maybe he is going to play nicely after all. 

“You did that Candy Floss song, right?” Skoll says. 

“It was mostly big in Germany.” She gives a modest shrug.

“Nah, I loved it,” he keeps going. “I was singing it in the shower for weeks. This would be a big thing for you then, eh? Pop princess to goddess. A lot of pap walks, parties, joining us while we tour.” He chuckles. “The fans can be a lot. They’ll either want to be you, worship you, or scratch your eyes out.”

She lets out a light laugh as I grumble Skoll’s name. 

“Where the hell is Rafe?” I mutter from my position leaning against the wall.

“Still obsessing over the paperwork,” Titan says while Skoll gives me a dangerous grin. 

Letting him talk to Alice unsupervised was definitely not part of the plan, so I’m torn as to whether I should go and find Rafe or stick around to curb any chaos he might be considering sowing. I try to shoot Titan a look and a nudge to send him in search of our pack leader, but he’s engrossed in his book and lost to the world. 

“I can’t,” Charon mutters, rolling onto his side. He groans and rolls onto the other side while Alice shifts closer, reaching out to touch him.

He jerks away and then lets out a terrible moan, scooting across the bed until he’s as far from her as he can get without falling out.

“Easy now, man. This is Alice. She’s here to help.”

“I can’t. Too much. I can’t breathe.”

I step forward. “Maybe give him some space,” I say gently to Alice. 

“What is that smell?” Charon chokes out, twisting around in Alice’s direction as she hops off the bed and takes a stumbling step backward. 

“Is it me?” She sounds horrified. “Am I the smell?”

“You do have a strong scent,” Skoll informs her. 

“Not strong,” Titan rumbles. “Just probably too much for Charon to handle right now. What is it? Honeysuckle and elderberry?”

“Like a fancy drink,” Skoll adds, still grinning widely. He opens the window and pushes it until there’s a stream of damp air coming in. 

“That’s better,” Charon says, throwing one arm over his eyes. 

Alice is still backing away, her eyes wide and hands out. “It’s not that strong,” I assure her while Skoll sniggers. “In fact, it’s quite a nice scent. But I think it’s too much for him to handle right now.”

“I didn’t use my usual amount of descenter,” she tells me, tugging again at her sleeves. “I thought it might help.”

And then she’s backing out of the room and retreating down the stairs, shaking her head and muttering to herself.

“That could have gone better,” Skoll says. 

“No thanks to any of you lot,” I tell them both. I mean, commenting on an omega’s scent has to be a faux pas. 

“It’s not like you can talk,” Skoll replies. 

“The curse of faint praise,” Titan murmurs. “‘It’s not that bad, really.”

“It made me want to puke,” Charon adds. 

Rubbing the palm of my hand over my forehead, I press hard, as though that’ll stop my brain from exploding. “She was perfect,” I say weakly. “Vetted. No skeletons in her past that might come back to haunt us. Even Greg liked her.”

“And that’s good, is it?” Titan asks mildly. 

… he has a good point. I don’t know when Greg’s opinion started meaning shit to me. Instead of going anywhere near that question, I huff a sigh. 

“What are we going to do?” I say. “Bathe her in descenter every time Charon has an attack?”

“You should probably go after her,” Titan says. 

Shit. He’s right about that too. The last thing I said to her was basically implying that she stinks, and then she left, and no one went after her. 

“That’s another thing about Delilah,” Skoll says as I head toward the door. “I couldn’t smell her at all.”

I charge down the stairs, leaving his voice echoing off the walls behind me. Titan’s right. We can’t have her thinking we hate her scent. I ignore the way my nose wrinkles slightly as I follow behind the scent of slightly charred honeysuckle and elderflower that’s been left to ripen for too long. 

But when I reach the bottom of the staircase, the door slams shut. Rafe is standing there, stuffing a piece of paper into a thick folio.

“Got her to sign at least,” he says.

“She signed the agreement to be our fake omega?” I ask as relief floods through my veins. 

Rafe snorts. “She signed the NDA. She also told us to shove the omega agreement up our arses.”

Shit. 

“What now then?” I ask as Charon groans again, the sound travelling down into the entryway. We both turn in unison, meeting Skoll’s gaze where he’s grinning smugly from the top of the stairs.