Pack Next Door (Sweetwater City Reverse Harem Omegaverse #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Mia

The first box I open is marked KITCHEN, and I pull the vase out, holding my breath like the glass might shatter just from being looked at too hard.

It’s just glass. Clear, slightly wavy, the kind you’d find on a styled shelf in a catalog where nothing is ever touched and no one ever eats cereal over the sink at midnight.

But it’s the first thing I bought for my new house after seeing it at the Sweetwater Modern.

It’s mine. I wrap my fingers around the rim and hold it up to the light coming through the front windows.

Late afternoon sun turns the suburban quiet into honey.

This is it. This is the part where my life finally starts looking like the one I’ve been privately storyboarding since I was old enough to understand what pack meant.

I set the vase dead center on the kitchen island and step back as if someone’s taking photos.

White countertops. A sink that doesn’t have a ring.

Cabinets that shut without slamming. The smell of fresh paint still lingering under the lemon cleaner I used this morning.

I cracked the front window an inch to let the breeze carry the fumes away.

It smells clean. It smells like…nothing.

No history, no pheromones. Just a blank slate.

Outside, my tiny front yard has a baby hydrangea bush that looks like it’s trying to be brave. A fierce, ridiculous urge to go out there and guard it shoots through me.

A daydream, sure. But I chased it on purpose.

I moved here with a plan. I wanted a neighborhood where people wave and mean it.

Where the sidewalks have chalk drawings and the porches have seasonal wreaths.

Where a polite, polished pack with good manners and who want a family lives next door and notices me.

You know, in a...fate way.

In an “omega wanted” way.

I press my palm to the cool countertop and release a slow breath to ground myself.

“Mia.” I say it out loud, letting it bounce off the bare walls. “You are a grown adult. You did not move here to audition for a romance.”

But my stupid, hopeful, romance-soaked brain immediately supplies: You kind of did, though.

I try to distract myself with tasks. I’ve made a list. I love lists. Lists make me feel like my life is a series of solvable problems. Unpack kitchen. Unpack bedroom. Hang curtains. Also: set up office.

Because I’m here chasing a daydream, yes, but I’m also here because my rent in the city was a number that kept climbing and my freelance clients have no respect for time zones.

I’m here because I can work from anywhere, and anywhere with a fenced yard and fewer sirens at night simply started to sound like a place I could finally breathe.

My laptop sits on the dining table, the only thing I prioritized over the vase. The lid is open, and the screen is already glowing. An email from my editor is pinned at the top of my inbox. Subject line: Reminder: DUE TOMORROW 9AM.

My shoulders want to crawl up into my ears.

“After I unpack,” I say, turning my back on the glowing screen before I can change my mind.

I open a box marked OFFICE/MISC in thick black marker and immediately regret it. It’s a chaos box. Paperclips. A stapler. Three notebooks with half-used pages. A pack of pens that all work but only if you hold them at a particular angle and whisper encouragement.

And then, at the bottom, my scent blockers.

I freeze.

This must have been the last box I packed in my bedroom, just throwing in whatever was left on my desk and nightstand. A testament to how badly I needed to get out of that apartment.

They’re still sealed. I haven’t needed them. Not lately. My heats have been regular enough that I can schedule my life around them, tuck myself away, be responsible. I’m an omega in the modern world; I know how to be careful.

Still, my fingers twitch with the urge to just drop the damn thing back in the box. Because blockers are not a forever plan. They’re what you do when you don’t have anyone to catch you. When you don’t have a pack.

I set them back in the box like I can hide the thought under packing paper.

My phone buzzes with a notification from the neighborhood app I downloaded for “community engagement,” which is just my nicer phrasing for I want to know who lives here.

Welcome to Sweetwater Pines! it chirps at me. Lost Dog Alert: Jack Russell Terrier named Pip. Faster than he looks and smarter than all of us. Last seen digging for treasure near the park.

Community alerts. Hydrangeas. Polite packs.

It’s so perfect that my chest aches with the sweetness of it.

Maybe I’ll meet a gentle alpha who brings me cider. A beta friend who shows me where the good coffee is at the market. Maybe another omega across the street who becomes my second best friend and we trade recipes and complain about seasonal allergies.

Or a pack who says, ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

I shake my head hard, as if that will dislodge the fantasy like water from my ears.

“Unpack,” I tell myself again.

I carry boxes into the living room, line them up with skill that would make a moving company weep.

I clip the curtains onto the existing rods, because I want the house to feel like mine.

I fluff the throw pillows. I unpack the framed photos even though I only have a few: my mom smiling at a picnic, my best friend Sierra making a face at the camera, a photo of the beach from a vacation I took alone because I was hoping to meet the perfect pack on the getaway.

Spoiler, I didn’t meet the pack of my dreams and all I got was sand in places I can’t name.

I set the last frame on the mantel and step back.

The room looks…good.

It looks like someone lives here.

It looks like someone could walk in and decide to stay.

A sound outside breaks through my thoughts. Metal on metal, the deep thunk of a truck door closing, and the rumble of an engine. I grab one of the throw pillows from the couch and move to the front window, hugging it to my chest as I peek through the curtain.

A moving truck is backing into the driveway of the house next door.

My heart does this stupid little flutter, like a bird realizing it’s not trapped after all.

New neighbors.

I watch shamelessly as the cab door opens and a man jumps down.

Then another.

Then another.

Oh.

Wow.

They’re…gorgeous.

Not in a “movie star who’s never eaten carbs” way. In a “real man who exists in the world and would ruin you and then make you breakfast” way.

The first one I see is tall and broad-shouldered, ash-blonde hair swept back from his face. He moves with purpose, scanning the driveway, waving instructions at the others like he’s done this a hundred times. There’s a tiredness in his posture that reads ‘responsible.’

In charge.

My stomach dips.

Then there’s a strawberry-blonde man. Brighter, like someone turned up the saturation.

He’s grinning as he hauls something heavy from the truck, laughing at something one of the others says.

There’s a kind of reckless charm to him, like he lives his life at full volume and assumes the world will adjust.

Behind him come two men who make my breath catch.

Twins.

Identical dark hair, identical jawlines, identical shoulders that stretch their t-shirts in a way that should probably be outlawed in a family neighborhood.

They move like they share a brain. One steps left as the other steps right, their hands reaching for the same box without needing to talk.

When one glances up at the house, the other does too, their eyes tracking the same point.

Me.

Whoops. I go still. Like a rabbit sensing a hawk, except the hawks are four very attractive men and I’m standing in my own living room with a curtain half-open and a throw pillow clutched to my chest like I’m a Victorian maiden who’s just seen a man’s bare ankle.

One of the twins tilts his head. His mouth curves into a smirk.

My face goes hot.

I drop the curtain and step back like I’ve been burned, tossing the pillow onto the nearest chair. A breeze must have shifted, because their scents hit me next.

A thick wave of slow-poured molasses and black espresso. The powdery, bitter richness of dark baker’s chocolate. It smells like sugar burning on high heat. So sweet, sharp, and violent that my omega shrinks back in the face of something that volatile.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”

I press my hands to my cheeks. My skin feels too hot. My scent is probably doing something mortifying.

I force myself to breathe slowly, to be rational.

They’re just neighbors.

Neighbors can be attractive.

Neighbors can be a pack.

My omega goes: Potential pack, potential pack, potential pack—

“Not them.” I press my palms to the counter.

I force my body to move. Back to the kitchen island. My hands shake as I rip open the next carton with my dinner plates and carry them to the cabinet. One by one, I stack them on the shelf, focusing on the simple rhythm of it. Unpack. Organize. Breathe.

The sounds from next door bleed through the open window. Voices, laughter, the scrape of furniture. They’re loud. Not the polite lawn-mower drone of the suburbs. Adult men loud. Confident loud. The kind of loud that assumes no one will dare complain.

I grab a dish towel and wipe down the counter, trying to ignore them.

It doesn’t work.

Fragments of conversation drift in.

“—router can’t go there, are you kidding—”

“—if we put the server rack in the office it’ll cook—”

“—I’m telling you, it needs ventilation—”

Server rack?

My hand stills, the towel pressed against the counter.

Who moves into a suburban house with server equipment?

I shouldn’t look. I know I shouldn’t look.

I look.

Creeping back to the window, I peek through the curtain just in time to see the strawberry-blonde hauling something sleek and expensive-looking across the lawn. Metal, vents, cables dangling. His muscles flex under his t-shirt like the equipment weighs nothing.

Suddenly, he glances up and catches my eye.

Heat flares in my chest.

He grins, winks, and never breaks eye contact.

My entire body short-circuits. Thoughts sliding off their tracks, crashing into each other in a pile-up I can’t control.

I blink, unable to look away as he shifts the weight to one arm, risking the expensive tech, and flashes me a two-finger salute.

The server tilts, and my heart leaps into my throat.

“Careful—!” I whisper as if he can hear me through the glass.

He overcorrects and wobbles. For one terrible second, I’m sure it’s going to fall and smash and somehow I’ll be responsible because I witnessed it.

Then the ash-blonde moves.

He reaches out one hand, and steadies the equipment like it weighs nothing. Then his gaze snaps to the strawberry-blonde.

Even from here, I feel it.

That look.

Sharp. Controlled. Final.

Get it together.

Something low in my belly tightens.

It’s so unfair. It’s just a look. It’s not even directed at me. But it slides under my skin like a hook, sinking deep.

The strawberry-blonde throws his head back and laughs, a bright, open sound carrying easily across the lawn. He says something I can’t hear and the ash-blonde responds, short and clipped, ignoring the two dark-haired brothers watching from the truck ramp.

Then Smirk Twin glances up.

His eyes flick over me. A beat later, the other twin’s gaze follows.

I swear I feel the weight of it through the window. Like a hand on my throat.

I jerk away from the window, clutching my dish towel like it will keep me from melting into the floor.

This is not happening.

This is not real life.

This is the start of a book I would absolutely binge at two in the morning and then message Sierra about in all caps.

I should be calm.

I should be polite.

I should be normal.

Instead, I stand in my kitchen, heart racing, and whisper, “Oh no.”

I moved here for soft. I moved here for safe. I moved here for a beta who knows coffee and an alpha who warms my side of the bed before I get in.

I did not move here for that. For a pack that smells like burning sugar and looks like trouble wrapped in expensive t-shirts.

But my heart is hammering against my ribs in a disloyal, frantic rhythm. And my omega is doing that thing she does. That quiet internal scan I’ve been running on every potential mate since I was nineteen.

Are they capable?

The image of the ash-blonde catching the server rack flashes in my mind.

Yes.

Are they strong?

The memory of the strawberry-blonde hauling electronics like a toy hits me.

Yes.

Could they protect what’s theirs?

God, they look like they would burn the world down if anyone dared to touch it.

This wasn’t the plan. They are loud, they are intense, and they are absolutely not the polite, picket-fence fantasy I ordered.

So why does the air in my empty kitchen suddenly feel too thin?

“Stop it.” I shove my hands into the packing paper.

I turn back to the boxes trying to drown out the noise from next door. I need to focus. I need to be rational. I need to stay away from the window, because if I look again, I have a terrible feeling I might not want to look away.