Chapter One
Leila
“Leila!”
“Leila Kaye!”
“Look here, Leila Kaye!”
Oh God...
I push my way through the hungry crowds of reporters currently shoving their mics at my face in a desperate bid for whatever answers they expect me to offer to their questions—rude questions.
“Leila, how does it feel to no longer be the best Omega out there? Do you miss being special?” one of the reporters asks, pushing closer to me until I can almost feel his breath on my cheeks.
I ignore them as I continue in my struggle to push past them.
“What are your comments on being the daughter of a criminal?” another asks insensitively. But when have reporters ever been known for their tact and sensitivity?
“We heard you haven’t visited your mother since she was incarcerated. Are you cutting her off?” yet another asks.
I lift my hand up, shielding myself with my bag as flashes of light hit my face. It’s been like this for a while.
While I’ve never truly been free from stares and whispers because I was the strongest Omega, I’ve never had to face a public spectacle such as this before, nor have I been spoken about for something negative.
This is worse than anything I could ever have been prepared for, although I can proudly say that I have been handling this with as much grace as I could manage.
“Do you have no loyalty to your mother, or has she refused to see you for not standing by her?”
The question throws me off balance and almost causes me to pause, but that would be a mistake. I’m only a few inches from my car now, and it will mark another day to have survived them.
“Leila, do you secretly hate your sister for having the life that you want with the most powerful Alpha, Ares Linds, that was supposed to be yours?”
Oh God. I really hope Cassie won’t see any of this. Not that she would ever think that I have bad blood with her for anything. But the last thing I want is for her to feel pity for me or feel bad because of this situation.
“Leila Kaye,” another reporter shoves his way through the horde, nearly falling into me. He brushes my skin with the mic before righting himself. “Now that Ares Linds has been taken, are there any other prospects lined up for your hand?”
I increase my pace, going as fast as my legs can carry me through the reporters chasing after me with their questions. As I approach my car, I am nearly at a full sprint.
Almost there!
The car door from the driver’s side pushes open, and my bodyguard, Luke, pokes his head out. He starts to come out of the car, clearly heading to my rescue, but I shake my head desperately, stopping him in his tracks.
“Get back in the car, Luke!” I yell, forcing him to retreat quickly back into his seat as I leap the rest of the way to the car.
I yank open the door to the backseat and jump in, shutting the door behind me. I breathe a sigh of relief and look out through the rolled-up window, seeing the reporters rushing towards the car, still desperate for any crumb of information I’ll allow from my lips.
“Just answer one question, Leila!”
“Give us something, anything!” another shouts.
Their voices are muffled outside the thick window pane, but their words still reach me.
How long will it take them to give up on chasing reads with my name and move on to something else?
While I can’t blame them for ruining our lives—my mother did that all on her own—if they were just a little more merciful with their crass headlines and their digging for information, all this would’ve been forgotten already.
“Drive, Luke.”
Luke peels out of the campus parking lot and away from the reporters who stand there, staring after my vehicle until it vanishes from their sight.
I hold my head in my hands and sigh.
“Fuck.”
The word falls out of my lips in a breathy sigh. It’s been such a stressful day. I had known that it would be bad, but this is pretty awful. I don’t know how much of it I can take.
I suppose it could have been worse. We tried to prepare for this, with everyone doing their best to handle things in a way that kept most of the heat off me. But there’s no true way to keep all of it away.
Bad news sells faster, and at the moment, there isn’t any news worse than my life.
I smile sadly. Only a few months ago, my life had been perfect. I had been the most powerful Omega with the strongest pheromones. I had been the envy of every Omega around, especially for my ability to wield it as a weapon, even against lesser Alphas, being able to drive them to fight mindlessly.
All that had come to an end when I found that I had a half-sister who was an illegitimate child from an affair my dad had with a maid.
My mom, who had found out about my dad’s cheating much earlier on, before either of us was born, had gone so far as to use illegal blockers on her, basically crippling and nearly killing my sister.
She had lived like that for most of her life, and all this was only recently found out. That alone was enough to put a stigma on my family, but it wasn’t the end of all that happened.
My sister had also married the most powerful Alpha, someone I had been in marriage talks with.
I laugh and shake my head. Crazy.
Many crazy things have happened in a short period of time, and now my life is nothing like what it was always meant to be or what it used to be.
It was difficult to keep my face neutral as the reporters shouted questions about my mother and how I felt about Cassie taking my place and the life that should have been mine.
These desperate tabloids continue to try to milk my misfortune in their attempt at getting clicks.
The reporters are not the only ones who have been making things weird or difficult for me. It’s been obvious to me that everybody is using this as an opportunity to express the resentment they have towards me and that has piled up over the years.
My classmates have all been giving me strange looks filled with so much disdain throughout the lectures.
Fuck! I slide down the car seat and press my head against the slightly heated window. I hadn’t really come to terms with all of this before, but now, having to deal with the reporters and everything, it sort of clears things up for me.
I really cannot go back to living my normal life right now, at least not until things die down. Only then can I return to normal—or at least, some semblance of normalcy.
One thing is very clear: things will never be the same again, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
“Are you okay?”
Luke’s voice breaks past my mental struggle, and I look up, breaking out of the self-pity I’ve been wallowing in for the past few minutes since the car ride started.
Am I okay? I want to answer that but the words lodge in my throat.
“Shut up, Luke,” I say instead to his concerned question.
I’d rather not talk about this right now. Not when it will likely bring the tears with it. No matter what has happened, I’m not going to be a sniveling weakling.
My mind drifts to Cassie once again, the insensitive questions the reporters asked relating to her playing over and over in my mind.
I hold no hard feelings against her despite all that has happened. If anything, she deserves all of the happiness in the world after all the hardship that she’s been through in her life.
I smile through my pain as I think of how strong she’s become since she stopped taking the illegal blockers that were stopping her from coming into her powers.
It’s been wonderful training her and watching her become stronger. I’m glad to have been the one to train her, passing on everything I’ve learned from the intense trainings I got, albeit in a much better and relaxed fashion.
Her strength has far surpassed mine, making her fierce. She has become what she was always meant to be—the perfect white wolf, the strongest Omega, and the only one truly deserving of the spot as number one Omega, replacing me in the role I’ve played nearly all my life.
Although I am truly happy for her, it does mean exactly what the reporters say. There is no spot for a number two Omega, which makes it true that I am no longer special. It is also true that I haven’t spoken to my mom since she was incarcerated.
It is also true that while we’ve managed to avert the crisis to the degree that it could have blown into if it wasn’t for Cassie and Ares’ support, we’re no longer as respected as we once were, and many of the high standing families do not wish to be associated with us, which spells doom for me.
The car stops, and I look outside in confusion, surprised when I see the familiar building of the home I grew up in. Have I wallowed in my misery all the way home?
Somehow, that thought makes me even more depressed.
Luke shuts off the running engine, and I can feel his stare as he watches me from the rearview mirror. I shift uneasily in the car, feeling like he can see everything I’m struggling to hide with those watchful gray eyes of his.
“Stop staring at me,” I say suddenly, my voice wobbly and ending in a whimper.
I bite my bottom lip to stop the tears that well up inside of me from making an appearance just as he looks away immediately.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” he says softly.
The car is silent as I struggle to compose myself. Although she isn’t here to see me break down like this, my mother’s voice is in my head, chastising me for allowing myself to be weak. Yet that is not enough to make the tears retreat.
I reach for the door, ready to pull it open and hide away from the world until I can get my feelings under wraps and be as strong as I know as I can—or at least hide my weakness.
“Your heat will be starting soon,” Luke’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I look at him with wide eyes, leaning back into the seat. “Your emotions might spike.”
I had forgotten all about that in the madness of the moment. He’s giving me an excuse for my tears. I’m not weak. My heat is just approaching. I almost smile.
“Would you like me to come up and help you relax?”
My eyes snap up to his in the rearview mirror as I try to curtail my sulk. His gray eyes, which always seem like they know so much about me, stare straight into my soul.
I look away when I can no longer take what seems like an intrusion before nodding.
“Yes.”
I step out of the car immediately, not bothering to turn around to see if he’s following behind me.
The sound of the car door opening and shutting reaches my ears, and his footsteps, which fall into rhythm with mine, give me some comfort.
He remains a few steps behind me, his towering form creating a hulking black mass of a shadow to the front and side of me, which is quite fitting considering he’s been my shadow for quite some time, following me everywhere.
He’s proven himself to be quite helpful and useful to me a lot of the time. He’s like my pillar that I can always trust to be by my side even when everybody else fails to be.
I climb up the stairs to my room, allowing my arms to trail the rails with their wooden finish. It’s one of the things that have been changed since mother left.
So much has changed since she left, mostly because she destroyed a lot of things in her anger at being treated ‘unfairly,’ which could not be far from the truth.
Still, there’s so much around that continues to remind me of her. I cannot find comfort in them, and so I look away, ignoring them as I often do whenever I’m home.
Luke steps past me and pushes my door open, standing aside for me to go in ahead of him. He enters after me and closes the door softly.
I look him over while his back is to me. His shoulders are broad and large, matching his tall, 6’2” frame. His usually cropped brown hair has grown out once again, with shaggy ends that fall to the sides of his face beautifully.
He stands stiff as he always does, with legs wide apart, ready to defend me at any given opportunity. His shoulders finally relax as he turns the lock on my door and faces me, his normally strict gaze yielding to a bit of softness for my sake.
“Come here.”
I crook a finger at him, and he closes the gap between us in a second. A gasp escapes my slightly parted lips as he puts his massive hands under my butt and lifts me.
I wrap my legs around his waist trustingly and lower my lips to his, proudly basking in the hunger that fills those beautiful gray eyes before completely closing the distance in a scorching kiss.