An older alpha holds it open for me, which forces me to come way too close to him as I slide in. He smells of chewing tobacco and wet grass, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. That feeling intensifies when he lingers close rather than moving out of my way.
Suddenly, though, Ben is there, pushing himself between me and the rival alpha. He hardly stands taller than me, but in that moment Ben appears massive, imposing. And I scent him for the first time—tangerines and cinnamon. Somehow the two strong scents don’t clash. Instead they make perfect sense together. Just like his mash of features. It’s all so very, very good.
I lean into him, lowering my face to his collarbone and breathing in the sweet scent of my mate.
Ben places a hand on my lower back as his heart thumps wildly in his chest. He feels it too.
We all feel it, I bet.
“Can I help you with something, Miss?” the elderly beta woman behind the desk shouts, breaking us apart.
Heat rushes to my cheeks and I mutter a quick apology.
Ben grunts and lets go of my trembling body. “I’ll go wait in the truck.”
When he leaves, he takes that intoxicating scent and the promise of future sex with him. Finally I can think straight again.
“I’m picking up a package for Sofia Smith,” I tell her smoothly, sliding a fake ID across the counter.
The postal worker glances from my ID to me and back again, then frowns and hands the card back. For a moment, I worry I’ve been caught, that she’ll send my package away without ever letting me lay hands on what’s inside.
“A recent lower forty-eight transplant, I see,” she grumbles before disappearing to the back room. This woman doesn’t even know me yet seems to hate me all the same. Is it because I’m an out-of-towner? Because I’m omega? Or maybe it was that little scene with Alpha Ben in the doorway.
Thank God he saw himself out. How would I have explained collecting a mysterious package with a fake ID? I’d practically gotten caught in my lie, just because I couldn’t think straight with him so close and smelling so ready to seal our mate bond.
I need to be more careful, but at the same time I can’t risk wasting any more time than I have already.
I said yes to Miles’s offer. Hell, I practically made the offer for him. Wavering in my commitment now must seem incredibly suspicious to the guys.
And if I wait until my heat hits to mate with them, well… I’ll lose my damn mind. Probably confess to everything between orgasms.
Fuck.
My plan is a good one, but it also requires a lot from me. I’ve spent too much time looking at the distant future when I need to be planning the here and now.
I need to find a way to keep my body and brain from talking to each other. Be the perfect omega on the outside while carefully guarding my inside.
BEN
Fuck me. I’m mated to a cherry sundae, and I want more than anything to take a bite.
I should have stayed in the truck, but when I saw that asshole grandpa get too close to Violet, I rushed to put some distance between them. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it.
Is this what it’s like to be ruled by pheromones?
I’ve been better at keeping my distance than the others have. I agreed to complete our pack because I knew it was an important rite of passage, and I knew it was important to the guys.
Me though? I probably could have gone my whole life without ever having sex again. It’s a small price to pay to keep us all safe.
The guys, they don’t know what happened back before we were a pack, when we were just a group of down-on-our-luck teenagers doing whatever it took to survive.
I kept my secret then, and I’ve kept it all these years since. But Violet makes me want to shout all my deepest insecurities from the top of Denali. I want her to know me, but she can’t unless I come clean.
What will the others think when the truth comes to light? I’ve worried all these years that if they knew, they’d cut me from the pack. They wouldn’t let me within a hundred miles of this sweet, new omega they’ve found for us to claim.
I’ve really fucked this one up.
If I reveal my past to Violet now, would she try to understand? Or would she finally run away from us, just like I worried she was trying to do earlier when I caught her alone in the truck? Would the others kick me out, leave me homeless and even worse off than I started?