Page 1 of Pack’s Prize

CHAPTERONE

Ava

It was incrediblybrave of me to push through the padded velvet door and into Ardor the same week after leaving the men I had thought of as my pack.

Either that, or incredibly foolish.

I was alone and at least a little desperate, but I had been living trapped within a thick gray fog of sadness for so long even the cloying sludge of pheromones and sweat and sweetness and musk that washed over me as I stepped over the threshold felt like a cool breeze.

Yes, my instincts seemed to say. The pounding bassline reverberated through the soles of my highest high heels, my footsteps inaudible over the music but perfectly in time with the driving beat.Here, here, here.Maybe it was just my own wishful thinking–and okay, maybe I was alotdesperate–but… it feltright.

And if I were alone, well, it’s not like I could help that. It’s not like I had any omega friends that would want to come to a place like this.

Ardor.

Club Heat.

The Heat Center was the safe bet: sign up as an unattached omega and get matched with compatible alphas, guaranteed to satisfy. Reserve one of their rooms, exactly as cozy as necessary for one’s heat and not a fraction cozier, and spend a weekend or a week or however long it took with a pre-screened alpha pack. Most omegas who needed help went there; it was easy, transactional.

Ardor…

Well.

It wasn’t here to find a medically-necessary pack to spend a heat with.

What I wanted wasn’tmedicalat all. What I wanted was a night of unashamed, unadulterated pleasure.

One night, and then another, and then another, until I had forgotten Roman, and his pack, and the small, tired, miserable way they had made me feel.

I skipped the bar. It only served mocktails anyway, for consent purposes–one of the guardrails that kept this place from shutting down. Even still, the scent of so many bodies was making me lightheaded already. I went right for the dancefloor just as one song shifted into another: a high, twirling melody that floated above a thumping, grinding bassline. I wish I could say that I lost myself in the music, that I gave myself over to the rhythm or whatever, that it was the music that made my hips move and my head fall back, but…

When I moved my hips to the beat, it wasn’t with unselfconscious freedom, it was with purpose: I thought about the way they looked to the alphas around me, the way their instincts would be subconsciously sizing them up for breeding. When I tipped my head back and let my hair swish down my back, I did so knowing their eyes would be fixed to my long, unmarked neck, their bodies reacting to the scent I carried. When I trailed my hands down my sides, from my breasts to my thighs, my eyes closed, I knew they were watching and picturing their own hands tracing my curves.

Not all omegas liked the attention we tended to attract. Many chose to fly under the radar as much as possible and live mostly like a beta apart from quarterly visits to the heat center.

But I loved it.

I always had, ever since my presentation.

I smiled, genuinely for once, as the song ended, and I took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of unknown alphas deep into my lungs.

Now the fun part starts,I thought, straightening my shoulders.It was a good thing, actually, that Roman’s pack didn’t claim me.

If I said it enough times maybe I would start to believe it.

CHAPTERTWO

Michael

I didn’t wantto be at Ardor.

I knew some alphas loved it: the thrill of the chase, the hunt, the high that came with an omega’s willing submission, but…

I had that at home. Well, everything but theomegapart. But Theo, Elias, and I had everything else, and more. An omega’s submission wasnice, but that’s what they werefor. Analpha’ssubmission, though…

I rolled my shoulders back, down my spine, feeling my suit jacket hug my biceps. Even though I’d traded my artist’s smocks for custom suits years ago, I still found the conservative cut of even the mostperfectlytailored bespoke suit restrictive sometimes. Tonight was one of those times: I was primed to be annoyed by the smallest of inconveniences. At this moment, I wanted to get home, back to the expansive penthouse apartment the three of us shared, ourpied-a-terrein the city. I didn’t want to waste time here, looking for an omega I wasn’t even interested in. Neither, it appeared, did my packmates:

“This place…” Theo said, and trailed off. He let out a long, dramatic sigh. “Let’s just find someone and go.”

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