Page 1 of Sweetheart: Part One

ONE

Day One

VEX

I broke a dozen laws as I wrung my fingers anxiously, staring up at the iron gates before me.

Contacts altered the golden eyes that marked me an outcast omega. Drugs smothered my scent, leaving me identifiable only as a beta. And finally, makeup covered a poisoned bite on my neck: a pack bond that the world demanded should be visible.

And the pack who had claimed me against my will lurked in the back of my mind. Present with me always. A vile promise that I couldn’t fail at the task they’d sent me here for.

The car door slammed behind me, leaving me alone with my suitcase in the warm summer air. Leaving me free of them for the first time since they’d bitten me what felt like an eternity ago. How long had I been locked in a room, visited only by the pack lead I never wanted?

And now, before me was a mansion of a million dreams.

I had seen it in pictures in magazines. It was the home of the Crimson Fury pack: actors famous not only for their films, but also their charity work across New Oxford.

This was a pack I’d grown up obsessed with. But now that I was here, I wished I wasn’t for what I was about to do.

Because these alphas were my mates, and I was here to deceive them.

I pressed the button on the stone pillar, my stomach twisting tight as I thrust that thought away.

They were in that house right now.

I hugged myself in the lingering silence, broken only by the rustle of privacy hedges obscuring the property ahead. Around me were the peaceful sounds of a suburban neighbourhood, the rustle of trees or chirping of birds; and it was starkly unfamiliar to anything I’d ever known.

I wanted Aisha or my mom.

But like everything else, they were gone.

I had nothing and no one left.

After being stolen from my home, I was kept in a windowless cell with peeling wallpaper, then sold to the pack who’d bitten me. A pack who’d locked me in a room until today; whose only interest in me was the mates they knew were mine, waiting in the mansion ahead.

I jumped as a crisp, bored voice crackled through the comms. "State your purpose."

"I'm here for the… job." I tried to sound confident, but my nerves came through. “The… Sweetheart position.”

"Ah." There was a clear sigh through the intercom. A louder buzz sounded, and the gates creaked open.

An alpha’s Sweetheart.

Against my will, I’d been trained for this job. Against my will, I was here at last, under dark bond commands that forced me in mind and body.

But commands or not, I needed it to work out, because it was my only escape.

I was disguised as a beta because Sweethearts were beta companions to packs of alphas who didn’t want omegas. It was the only way to get close to a pack as isolated as these celebrities. To my mates—even if they didn’t know it yet.

And I didn’t have room to fuck this up.

I had to do better than any Sweetheart before me.

Because the Crimson Fury pack had never accepted a contract of a Sweetheart beyond the first week.

LOVE

I felt a flash of anticipation from Ebony, and then my phone buzzed. I glanced down at it to see group chat was going off.

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