Page 13 of Sweetheart: Part One

And I wasn’t ready for the panic I felt at the idea that the foundation on my neck was fading to reveal that poisoned bite. The one I couldn’t let them see. I was fraying around the edges, the stitches of my unwanted pack bond, unravelling. I began to feel the alphas lurking on the other end of it, and they began to feel me.

For the first time in my life, I wished to be alone with my fear.

I shoved that bond closed the best I could

But there was the matter of theothercommands. The orders that had nothing to do with my mission or secrecy. They were given to me for the sake of cruelty and nothing else.

My suitcase had already been left beside my door, and I grabbed my make-up bag from it, then made for the bathroom.

More extravagance met me: a huge tub, walk-in shower with glass doors, and a wide mirror that spanned the whole wall around the countertop and sinks.

I hauled myself up onto the marble counter, crossed my legs, and unzipped my makeup bag. Fighting my tears, and keeping the bond as tightly closed as I could, I opened the page of a little black notebook. With trembling fingers, I did the vile and pointless task that demanded completion.

If my alphas gave me a command, I had to follow it, my body would move on its own accord. Icouldfight their orders, but when I did, the dark bond lit up, leaving me in unfathomable pain. This particular command had triggered the moment I’d first been afraid of Ebony, scratching at the back of my mind to act the moment I was alone.

After I’d finished and tucked the book away, I dabbed away at the makeup destroyed by tears and fixed it, slowly and carefully.

Running on adrenaline for months on end, I hadn’t been able to slow down enough to consider real expectations of my mates. If I had,thiswouldn’t have been it. It was a testament to the depths of fucked I was, that even now, Ebony Starless remained my salvation.

The open book on the marble counter, the chains in my mind forcing my hand even now, were proof of worse lurking.

It happened three months ago, after I posted online about my scent match with the Crimson Fury pack. A week later a monster lay in wait for me to return home—the place I was supposed to be safe.

I’d been kidnapped and kept locked away in a horrible prison with faded wallpaper and no windows. There, the days blurred together and I’d had nothing but my own voice to keep me sane. I’d known why I was there: to be bitten by a pack of alphas and left at their mercy.

It was legal for them to dark bond an omega like me. I was a gold pack omega, which it had been a choice I’d made for the sake of survival, but it had put me at risk of one of those bonds.

When an omega perfumed, they have one year to go to the Institute for an injection that would bind them and their alpha offspring to the government’s laws. Without that injection, those omegas gave birth to rogue alphas like Ebony. Loose cannons who could lose control, even kill their own pack mates. They were volatile and dangerous. With the injections, that volatility was tempered down.

I knew the truth, though. Those laws were designed to keepbetassafe. They had never been written for omegas. At the age of sixteen, when I’d perfumed, I’d already witnessed the cost of that firsthand.

Isolated, and afraid, I hadn’t gone for my injection, turning myself into an outcast.

Omegas feared having golden eyes for the risk of being dark bonded without protection, but there were veins of society in which omegas may be dark bonded, anyway—places where the law was trampled and distant. And if an omegawasto be dark bonded, they were better off with golden eyes. Therewerelines I could cross that normal omegas could not. Crossing those lines was a last resort, it wasn’t only agonising, but the consequences may leave me worse off. But itwasa chance. So when someone asked me why I—or anyone—would ever choose to go gold pack, I didn’t have an answer. Anyone that had to ask didn’t know the world I had known.

It was a choice.

And that was what I valued more than anything.

It’s why I wasn’t yet broken. Not even when my freedom had been ripped from me, and my dignity worn down, day by day as the alphas in my unwanted bond tried to force me to become their silent, unquestioning puppet.

They hadalmostwon that fight, but my eyes were the reason they wouldneverwin.

Still, I would forever be left to the mercy of vicious doubt, because I would never know if the choice I made would have left me better, or worse.

I wished I could be as free and trusting as my non-golden-eyed counterparts. Omegas who might meet their mates and feel nothing but giddy excitement and anticipation. Who wouldn’t ruin a pack by association. Who could be who they were, and still be sure it was enough. Enough for what though?

A claim?

For… love?

Was that what I wanted?

Deep down, I knew. I knew the dreams I’d spent years trampling, convincing myself they were echoes of a child long dead. I was further from them now, than I’d ever been.

In this pristine bathroom of expensive marble, I’d been staring into the mirror for an age. With my contacts present, my rich brown eyes stared back.

The fresh layer of foundation hid the ruddy pink of my nose, so I reached for the locked pouch at the bottom of the makeup bag.

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