Page 1 of Royal Omega

Chapter One - Carissa

Omega Balls are dullas fuck.

Every waltz, every trip to the punch bowl makes me want to scream. I don’t scream, of course. My coach taught me better than that.

Do what you have to do to keep yourself sane, Madame LaForge always said.Be it heat drugs, piercings, ferals, or fight clubs, you have to find a way to manage your urges. You have one goal here, and that’s to secure a pack. Whatever it takes, that’s what you’ll do.

I’m lucky I managed to find something that works for me. Spoiler alert: it isn’t piercings.

I’m currently standing by the punch bowl, while my date, a Mr. Robert Kaplan Van BoringFace, fights with his packmates on the phone in a far corner of the ballroom. He thinks I can’t tell that they’re fighting because he’s smiling and waving at me every few minutes, but I made a point to learn to read lips back when I was working the gossip circuit at the Herald. It came in awfully handy then, and it still does, from time to time.

These days, I have little use for the information he’s spouting, though I’m sure my mother would pay handsomely for it. It seems that the Kaplan pack is out of cash, and they’re about to lose their business. It’s do-or-die time, and Bobby thinks that mating with me will mean financial backing from my family. Without it, they’re sunk.

Poor guy. There’s no chance I’m getting myself involved with him. Not because of his failing business, or even because he’s trying to trick me; he’s just so boring. Even now, fighting with the other alphas in his pack, his speech is slow and uneasy, filled with ‘sorry’s and ‘um-I’m-not-sure’s. It’s enough to make me want to set something on fire just to feel the heat.

Grow a knot, man.

If we mated, I’d run him (and the other milquetoasts in his pack) ragged in a month, and we’d all be miserable. And forsureif my parents decided to help out his company, he’d wish they didn’t.

Maybe I can find a way to help him, though. He’s not a bad guy.

As I’m musing about who could help Bobby and his pack, my mother glides toward me with her usual elegance, a gin martini in her hand. Two olives, easy on the vermouth. I learned that order when I was five.

“What are you over here thinking about, my love?” she asks. “With that body and that dress? You’re wasting yourself over here. You should be out on the floor, not languishing by the punch bowl with the wallflowers.”

The girls around me stiffen ever so slightly, and I glance at them, offering them an apologetic look. “I was about to get some punch, Mother, just like the other people standing here. No one is ‘languishing.’”

My mother raises an eyebrow as if she begs to differ, and I know when she opens her mouth again, she’ll say something even more insulting, so I hurry to add: “...But I’d rather take a turn through the room with you, if that appeals.”

Smiling broadly, my mother offers me her arm. Our gowns rustle against each other as we walk across the polished wooden floors.

“I think Bobby is going to ask to mate you tonight,” my mother says.

“Yeah he might. But only because he thinks he has to.”

My mother’s eyes sharpen. Iris Castle is nothing if not shrewd. “Is that so? What did you hear? Is Strategy Builders in trouble?”

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