Page 2 of Lavender and Lightning

The beta’s voice soothes something in me, and even that pie and juice scent is making me breathe a little easier. “Okay,” I whisper, closing my eyes again and bracing myself.

Cherry Pie counts down from three, and all the hands tighten at once. Suddenly, I’m weightless, even as pain screams up my left arm and through my chest. I bite my lip to hold back a sob as my legs tingle with white-hot pins and needles. I’m laid flat on a hard board, and more burning agony pinballs up my spine and neck. I try to breathe through it, try to use the techniques for endurance I’d mastered so long ago, but it only makes my chest burn with each desperate inhale.

“Hard part’s over, sugar. You’re doing great,” Cherry Pie says, voice fading in and out.

“My chest. My arm—”

“Don’t look, sugar. We’ve got you. Just stay awake. Lee said you’ve got an alpha? Tell me about him,” the alpha prompts.

I try to swallow, but my throat is raw, and my nose is plugged from my tears. When I take a gasping breath, it only makes my chest hurt more. Everything is fading out again as I try to focus. Cherry Pie is asking me more questions, but I can’t seem to piece his words together enough to understand. The edges of my vision blur and turn to black, the dizziness returning with a vengeance. Someone calls my name, but I can’t keep my eyes open. Everything turns to droning static as I fall into blackness again.

one

Lydia

Myeyesflyopen,my chest heaving with a sudden gasp. The water in the bathtub sloshes around me as I scramble upright, wiping away the moisture from my face, and only relaxing when my hand doesn’t come back stained with blood. My fingers slip on the edge of the tub as I lean against it to regain my balance. When I unthinkingly put weight on my left arm, sharp pain flares and I suck in a harsh breath. I manage to get upright and steady despite the handicap, and I glare at the plastic covered cast that encases my arm from mid-bicep, holding my elbow at nearly a ninety-degree bend, and past my wrist.

It’s been three days since the accident that totaled my car on my birthday, and I’m still achy all over, battered and bruised. It hurts to take deep breaths, and superficial cuts cover my right arm. I try to pull my knees to my chest, but have to stop as my purple-and-black mottled joints protest the movement. Giving up, I let my head hang forward, my hair sticking to my back. The clock on the wall of my studio apartment’s kitchenette ticks loud enough for me to hear even through the mostly closed door, but otherwise, it’s quiet. I look up to the ceiling, the block of morning light that filters through the narrow, frosted window bright against the chipping white paint. I let out a silent sigh. Time is slipping away from me again.

“Hey, Rhett. I’m done,” I shout, trying my best to keep the bland resignation in my chest out of my voice.

Not a moment later, Rhett Cooper pokes his head into my tiny bathroom. His golden blond hair gleams in the morning sun, icy blue eyes alert to my every move. With my broken arm, bruised ribs, and mild concussion, the emergency room doctors told me I shouldn’t be alone right away, at least not until I can see my primary for a more thorough evaluation and prognosis. So, a member of Pack St. Clair has been with me every moment for the last seventy-two hours. It’s been an adjustment, especially after spending the last four years basically on my own. No matter how much the constant babysitting annoys and chafes, I try to keep my sour mood to myself. They’ve been nothing but accommodating, and it wouldn’t be fair to them if I made this difficult because I didn’t want to be coddled.

Rhett reaches down and helps me get to my feet, wrapping me in a big fluffy towel the moment I set my feet on the bathmat. I step out from his reach as he lets out the stopper of the tub, hugging the towel close. Moving to the sink, I look at the reflection in the aged mirror. My toffee brown hair hangs in limp strands around my face, my green eyes vibrant, even with the dark circles under them. There’s a bruise across my chest, a wide stripe of black and purple from where the seatbelt had been. Only one end is visible above the towel, but there’s still residual soreness all the way across my ribs and hips.

“What can I help with, love?” Rhett asks, sliding up behind me and gently resting his hands on my shoulders.

I bite my lip to stop my knee-jerk denial from escaping. I want to tell him to go back out to the main living area, to let me get ready on my own. But the ticking of the clock reminds me that we don’t have time for me to be stubborn today. And Rhett’s bright-eyed concern makes me melt. There’s something about the way he looks at me like he can’t believe I’m real that makes me forget all about being a strong, independent woman.

“I need to dry my hair if we’re going to get out of here on time,” I say at last.

“No worries, love,” he says without missing a beat, grabbing my hair dryer off the edge of the sink and kissing my cheek as he straightens.

Despite myself, I blush. Rhett has been doting and affectionate from the start of our relationship. His natural alpha instincts to care for the people in his life took some getting used to, with my hard-won independence battling my omega urge to melt and let him fuss over me. We’re still finding our balance, but the connection between us has become a fundamental part of my being. His whiskey and leather scent soothes something in my soul I’ve never experienced before. We took our time, not rushing into bed despite the electric attraction on both sides, but it was worth the wait to get to this level of connection.

The last few months have been a whirlwind. Meeting him and his pack mate, Mateo Hutchenson. Getting swept off my feet by these incredible men. Developing friendships, and possibly more, with the other two members of their pack, Rhett’s long-term partner and beta, Lucas Klausen, and the prime alpha of the pack, Alexandra St. Clair. My relationships with Lucas and Alexandra are still very new and nebulous, but I can feel that same inexorable draw to them that I felt with Rhett and Mateo. I’ve fallen so deeply for both alphas, and at times I forget how I could have existed without them. Even them learning that I have more baggage than an airport didn’t dissuade them from their pursuits. And my feelings for them weren’t diminished at all by learning that they have a past nearly as complicated as my own.

Rhett starts up the hair dryer, and I let him work, my mind drifting. As I have many times these past few days, I wrestle with the ball of nervous snakes in my gut as I remember where I’m going today. Once I’m ready, Rhett is driving me to the courthouse to meet with Mateo and Alexandra. Today is the day we’re going before a judge to sign the paperwork and officially make me part of Pack St. Clair.

I’m not nervous at the prospect of joining this pack, not really. If I’m being completely honest with myself, I’ve known for a long time now that these alphas, and their beta, are my future. There isn’t a single daydream of the road ahead of me that didn’t have them on it. But the circumstances surrounding my sudden induction are enough to make my stomach twist itself into ever-tightening knots.

Before Rhett and I caught each other’s scents across a hotel lobby, I’d been living what could generously be called a decent, if boring, life. I woke up, went to work at Grandmother Wila’s Flower Shoppe, and occasionally worked an event. I’d spend my nights alone or with my best friend, Gabby Fitzgerald, my boss’s granddaughter and my co-worker. I didn’t go out, and certainly didn’t put myself out there romantically. Sure, Gabby had tried to set me up with a few of her beta friends, but it had been casual at best. I was safe. I was anonymous. Which was exactly how I liked it.

Because drawing attention could mean my family figuring out where I was. Four Christmases ago, my ex-boyfriend and abuser, Darren McLaughlin, had proposed marriage, and when I rejected him, he attempted to force me into a mating bond. He used his alpha bark to try to force my heat. But my body rejected the order, not yielding to the normally inexorable command that comes with a bark. And because I never went into heat, the mating bond never took hold, despite his best efforts. I ran the next day, and have been trying to stay hidden ever since.

My family–my mother, Diane Anderson, specifically–believed the lie Darren fed them, and have been treating him like a son, while casting me as the crazy, over-sensitive omega who was too defiant for my own good. I found out most recently that my mother has been pretending that I’m a missing person rather than a victim fleeing her abuser. And Darren has been spouting the family line because it makes him look like the wronged party in all of this. How could anyone reject the son of famed televangelist, Pastor Joe McLaughlin, after all.

I’ve always known it was a matter of time before all of this would catch up to me. I didn’t expect it to be because the alphas I decided to open up to romantically had their own batshit ex, hellbent on ruining their lives.

Seth Douglas is an omega like me, but our similarities stop there. He’s built like a brick shit house, with muscles in places I didn’t even know you could get them. Some people would call him conventionally attractive, but there isn’t any amount of polishing and primping that could mask the true ugliness that lurks below his tanned skin. He’s manipulative, cruel, petty, and obsessed with Pack St. Clair. He used the natural charms inherent to the omega designation to lure them in, and then trapped Mateo and Alexandra into bonds they didn’t want. But when they rejected him, he refused to be silenced and has been a thorn in their sides for the last several years.

And now that I’ve gained Pack St. Clair’s attention, Seth has made it his mission to force me away from them, by any means necessary.

Up to and including leaking my location to my ex.

I know this because on the night of my accident, he texted me several pictures that someone had taken without my knowledge or consent, including one of Mateo and me making love in my own bed. If the photos weren’t bad enough, a text followed, promising punishment for my “naughty behavior.”

If it were just the photos and the threat, it would be stressful, but nothing I couldn’t handle. But if Darren knew my location, it would only take him revealing that information to my father for my entire world to come crashing down. My father, Samuel Anderson Sr., is still considered my prime alpha in the eyes of the law, despite us having next to no contact over the last four years. But because I’m unbonded, I still technically belong to my family pack, and the prime alpha has ultimate authority over all members of their pack. If he wanted, he could use his rank and order me home and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

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