Page 75 of Sweetheart: Part One

For a bond to stick between alpha and omega, one bite had to be on the neck. But Alastor had bitten me in the only place possible to hide. He’d bitten me on the back of my neck.

The bond was fresh, and navigating it was hard. It took a while to determine that there were four other alphas in this twisted bond with me. I had to figure this out because I needed to close it off. I didn’t want any of them feeling what I was.

Finally, I managed to get a grip on my end and slam it closed.

“Impressive,” Alastor said.

I clenched my jaw, ignoring the open offering of his response to that through the bond: a flash of lust.

Disgust turned my stomach, but before I could check if I’d kept the bond shut, he was whispering in my ear, “Maybe you’d be interesting to keep after all.”

Keep?

Fear paralysed me.

It was one thing to be dark bonded to a pack I didn’t want for the rest of my life, but there was worse that could happen. I’d heard horror stories of gold packs bonded for fun, only to be killed when the pack got bored.

There were many places a gold pack omega could end up, but I had just landed in the worst of them. For the first time in my life, a purr of terror caught in my throat before I stamped it down—something more vulnerable and broken than a sob, or even a whine.

As if reading my mind, the alpha at my back chuckled.“The plan is not to have you killed,” he told me, almost absent in tone.

“W-why then?” I asked.

“Because, little seductress,” the pack lead said, “we have a job for you.”

I’d failed at that job.

I was going back to them.

Stale Cigs: Bring it to me.

The order had popped up on my phone this morning, short and simple, and he’d followed it with an address. I recognised it the moment I tapped on the map. It was the strip with the cafe Drake had taken me to the other day.

I’d… failed.

I’d been free of them only a few days, but it was enough to give me the space I needed for terror to creep back in.

I was no longer numb from shock and hatred, not with the comfort Drake had offered.

No crying,I begged myself.

There was a flare of pleasure from my pack lead in the bond every time he knew I was distressed. I didn’t want to give him that.

The sun was warm overhead as I walked with the envelope clutched in shaking fingers. It felt so wrong and nice here, with pretty flowers along the walkways, cut grass and groomed bushes.

When I reached the strip, I didn’t need to be told which car waited for me. A long, black limo was pulled up in the lot.

I stared at it for as long as I could, before I felt the tug of his command restless in the back of my mind. Each step across the pavement was torture.

I didn’t want to go back…

But as I approached, I heard the door latch click, and it swung open. His scent was the first thing I caught. Perhaps it might be nice in another world, a gentle, woody tobacco.

But not to me.

To me he was stale cigarettes, and had been since the first time I’d met him.

Alastor was the only one in the limo.

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