Pack Fever: Omegaverse Romance

Prologue

They say storms can rip your life apart, but I like to think they’re clearing the path, sweeping away the old to pave the way for new beginnings.

That’s the moment a boom of thunder shakes the air. A deep growl from the belly of the sky has me flinching in the passenger seat of my dad’s old rusty sedan. Forked lightning tears through the darkening afternoon skies.

I love the rain and staring at the enormous droplets hitting my window, but not on a day we’re rushing through traffic and are on a deadline.

Dad’s knuckles are white from how tightly he grips the steering wheel, which is tugging left and right, pulling us all over the drenched road from the storm pounding onto us. Rain beats down, a drumroll on the roof of our car, and every vehicle zooming past us sends a cascade of water splashing against the window.

“What’s their rush?” he hisses, shaking his head.

I smirk at my dad, who follows every road rule, but on days like today, I’m kind of hoping he’d hurry up a bit more.

“Are you excited, princess?” he asks, glancing over at me quickly, his brows raised from his concentrated expression, the edges of his mouth lifting. “You’re going to blow them away at the audition.”

Just hearing the words has my knees bouncing with excitement. It’s been my dream to appear in The Song, a television show that can elevate someone’s career to stardom. Every winner signs a contract with a music producer. At sixteen, I’m still years away from hitting my Omega heat, when I’ll be forced to match with an Alpha pack.

Yep, this is my moment to shine. To win the auditions and the show! If I get a recording contract, the Alphas I get matched up with by Nexus will have to accept that part of my life will be consumed by my music and career.

“I guess all that begging to convince you finally worked,” I tease. I’d been hounding him for the past three months to take me after discovering my video submission was selected.

A great splash of water crashes into our windshield, and we swerve. I’m slightly freaking out as my heart thunders in my throat.

“It sure did,” he answers with a shaky voice, not looking at me but staring intently at the blur of rain, brake lights, and splashing water on the freeway in front of us.

I sit back in my seat, holding onto my seatbelt, strapping myself in as security. I wish the rain would just stop so we could be there already, and hopefully not be late.

“You know your great-grandmother had an unbelievable voice,” he finally says, breaking the repetitive thump of the thrashing windshield wipers.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about her,” I say, with mirth behind my voice.

“Well, she was exceptional, sought after by many. But sweetie, what I haven’t told you is that when I hear you sing, it’s like she’s come back to life, only you’ve got a fire she never had.”

I laugh, my chest close to bursting at hearing his compliment. Despite the storm raging, us running late, and knowing our world isn’t always fair to Omegas by keeping us controlled and locked up, today I feel different. Like, somehow, I am powerful, and anything is possible.

Holding on to that feeling, I remember my parents once telling me that my first word came out more of a hum, as though I came into this world with a song in my heart. Today feels right, as if this is my calling.

I keep glancing at the clock on the dashboard, chewing on a hangnail as the numbers are ticking away, getting closer to four o’clock. We’re going to be super late.

Dad catches me staring and grins that reassuring smile he always gives me.

“We’ll make it, Danica. Just hold on.”

He switches lanes, the car swaying a bit too sharply. My stomach lurches with an awful feeling when we hit a water puddle that has us skidding faster to get out of our lane. Pulse on fire, I glance into my side mirror at the headlights appearing out of nowhere behind us, barreling toward us with an unimaginable speed. Missing a breath, I grip the door handle, expecting an impact.

“Dad, watch out!”

It all happens too fast, too savage.

“Fuck!” Dad splutters, his hands working to swerve us back into our lane.

But the impact from the back slams into us so hard, so abrupt, I scream. We’re shoved across the freeway diagonally at a ridiculous speed. My throat is raw from my cries while my hands grab hold of anything to steady myself.

Dad’s fighting the wheel, muscles taut, face set in a grim determination, but our sedan has a will of its own.

Somehow, we dodge other cars in the moving traffic but end up careening right for a concrete divider, the corner of our car colliding into it like a sledgehammer blow.

My heart’s on fire, terror swallowing me. Time rushes past while my mind’s in slow motion, barely making sense of what’s going on. I’m thrown forward harshly against the seat belt that holds me in place, and the world suddenly tilts sickeningly.

We’re skewing sideways, metal groaning against cement, and for a horrifying moment, we’re half in the air, defying gravity.

I have the strangest thought of why Dad couldn’t have installed the airbags, knowing this old rust bucket had none when he bought it from a second-hand dealer. That thought vanishes as I stare over at the traffic at a flash of a moment, at the storm that booms as if it’s opening up the earth to swallow us.

We’re both screaming at this point out of fear, my dad’s arm across my stomach as he tries to protect me, which even I know in that second is too late. It’s a stretched-out moment where life hangs suspended, and everything else falls away.

I’m reminded of how wrong I’ve been about the storm being a harbinger of new beginnings. It’s not a new path, but a damn destroyer.

This is how my story is going to end.

Not with a song.

But with the screech of bending metal and the brutal violence of a storm.

The sedan slams to the ground sideways… on my side, the window smashing. I’m thrown against the broken glass from the impact. My arm is pinned, crushed against the cold, rain-covered road coated in shards of glass.

Then I hear the snap of bone that rings right through my body, and a sharp, white-hot pain sears through me. I cry out from the heavy pain that feels like my arm is being torn right off.

I scream in agony.

Burning pain zaps up my arm, and I’m shoved against my seatbelt as chunks of glass shove into the soft flesh all the way up my arm. Blood mingles with rainwater, and the pain is blinding.

At that same horrifying heartbeat, the car is flung onto its roof in a sickening, gut-wrenching flip. We’re upside down, then another car crashes into us, smashing Dad’s side. The nauseating crunch of metal, shattering glass, and Dad’s sharp grunt of pain cut through the chaos slice right through me.

I bellow loudly, shaken. My head smacks sideways into my passenger door frame, and the world blurs in and out, the pain zigzagging across my skull.

Blood trickles down over my brow. The seat belts hold us by some miracle, but we’re spinning, and I cry out. My dad’s arms swing wildly over his head, and something warm splashes across my cheek from his side.

I have no time to do anything but try not to throw up from the spinning.

That same ragged, panicked scream scrapes past my throat. Yet it doesn’t feel like it’s coming from me. My good hand grips the ceiling, knuckles white, and I close my eyes against the whirl of dark and light, and only the flash of lightning paints surreal shadows on the inside of my eyelids.

Shivers snake up my spine, waiting for us to hit something, and it’s killing me to keep hanging there.

The stench of burning tires tinges the air, and I’m praying to anyone in the universe listening to help us. This is not the day we die. Not today… please, not today.

We finally shudder to a stop.

I can’t stop the whirling of my head, the world twisting wildly in my vision. My arm’s throbbing with pain, my head is screaming, and I feel more blood dripping across my forehead.

“Dad?” I groan as I twist my head in his direction, trembling, crying, terrified.

He’s suspended in his seat belt, almost like a puppet with its strings cut. His arms hang lifelessly, swaying slightly with the rocking of the car.

But his eyes steal my breath.

They’re wide open.

Staring at nothing. Empty.

My heart splinters, and a silent scream echoes in my heart and in my head. It rips past my lips as I desperately reach over to him with my good hand, but he never responds. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.

Tears stream down my cheeks, and I reach for the hair half covering his face and push it aside, but it just falls back over his brow. I’m shaking viciously now, and all I can think is that it’s going to destroy my mother and sister. That we never should have gone to this stupid audition. Mom had been right. We should have stayed home during the storm.

My stomach turns, and I’m going to be sick.

“Dad, please,” I sob, my voice breaking.

He just hangs there, staring with his empty gaze.

Lightning flashes again, and in that split second, as the thunder rolls and rain lashes at us through the shattered windows, I’m completely alone.

As people are suddenly rushing over to us, I can’t stop screaming, not caring who hears.

He can’t be gone… He can’t…