Page 6 of Sweetheart: Part One

This wasn’t how it was supposed to feel, meeting my mate. Even now, a small part of me wanted to cross toward him, to reach out and… and do what? I wasn’t sure.

He was still just staring, obliterating the instinct that kept trying to surface, begging me to understand that he was safe.He must be safe.

Could he possiblyknowI was his mate?

Had something gone wrong with the drugs?

Fear collided with hormones that scent dampening drugs didn't touch, and my brain scrambled.

He’d heard me singing, I just knew it.

I hadn’t thought… Well, I just got here, and Rob had made it sound like they’d be a while…

I was spiralling again as this towering alpha watched me like I was prey. I’d fucked up already, and I wasn’t even quite sure how.

But Icouldn’tfuck up. The penalty was too high. With a dark bond marking the back of my neck, there was no getting out of it. No way except by this pack I was meeting today—andonlyif I did everything right. Because even if the Crimson Fury pack knew who I was, evenifthey wanted me, the pack who now owned me had to hand me over.

The only thing I’d been able to glean about the alphas who had left this bite on my neck was that they had it out for the Crimson Fury pack.

That was why they’d bitten me.

Scent matches—or fated mates—paired bonds could be strange things. Most often, once a bond was forged between alpha and omega, possibilities of scent matches dissolved.

Except under one circumstance: a dark bond like the one I had. Of the three possible bonds an omega could get, it was the only one that could be forced. I’d been bitten. I hadn’t been asked. And so I’d never handed away my rights to my scent match—even though the alphas who had claimed mehadgiven up their chance.

The Crimson Fury pack werestillmy mates. One of whom was Ebony Starless: this alpha staring me down with disgust in his eyes.

And still, he wasn’t more frightening than the alternative.

An omega’s bond with a pack couldn’t be destroyed except in this one instance: my mates could override the bond of the pack who’d bitten me.

“Seduce them, Vex. Make them fall for you so hard that they’ll give up anything to keep you.”

That’s what I was.

A ransom.

I was the fool who had spilled my heart online, claiming to be the scent match of one of the richest packs in New Oxford. In that post I’d admitted I was a gold pack omega—the lowest in society. Marked by the gold of my eyes, I wasn’t protected by the Alpha-Omega Institute. And I’d announced my status to the world, not for one moment imagining the consequences.

It was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. I’d scent matched with the Crimson Fury pack on one of the worst weeks of my life. Grieving and devastated, I’d found myself truly alone for the first time, only to discover my scent matches were four alphas completely out of reach. And somehow, asking online strangers had seemed like a good option.

Of course, my IP had been tracked, and I’d been kidnapped and sold.

With my breathing still shallow, I dragged myself out of the spiral.

Neither of us had said anything. He wasstilljust staring at me.

Finally, the cogs of rational thought began to turn again. I pushed myself to shaky feet. "I-I'm Vex." I held out my hand to him.

He flinched back—like,actuallyflinched away from me. The action wasn’t precisely hostile, but I drew my hand back to my side.

Get it together.

The Crimson Fury pack were extremely vocal about not wanting an omega, and the truth of my designation would blow up the contract I needed to claim.

“I’m here for the Sweetheart position,” I said.

“Vex?”Ebony spoke for the first time, his voice low and oddly melodious even with just the single syllable of my name. Or I was projecting what I knew of him; I’d heard this man a thousand times through the TV screen. Hearing him in person was jarring enough that more faculties returned to me.

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