Seraphina Bryce: Omega Unleashed (Dylan St. James Omegaverse #3)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

SERAPHINA

T op down, seats stuffed with duffle bags of all my shit from my dorm room, warm air blowing through the loose strands of my wild red hair, and the grand facade of the Omega Finishing School in my rearview mirror, where it fucking belonged.

It all put me in a fantastic mood. I’d just skipped out of my last final exam, ignored every bitch who tried to talk to me along the way, hopped right into my little red Beemer, and split.

“Freedom!” I shouted, pumping my fist in the air like a weirdo as I drove down the winding road that led away from the joke of an institution that was supposed to be providing me a college education.

Summer break was officially here, which meant I had three whole months until I had to return to my jailers one final time—for my senior year at the OFS.

It also meant I was back to work full-time for Jere, and I couldn’t wait to find out what he had in store for us this summer.

Sneaking through the jungles of Latin America to raid a camp harboring criminals on the run from the law?

A trip to Prague for a little espionage involving unsavory politicians?

Commandeering the yacht of a drug kingpin in Miami before some much-needed relaxation time on the beach?

Unlikely, but I was dreaming big.

It was a short drive from the OFS to my family home in the Bluebonnet Palisades. Both were situated in the picturesque hills on the northwest side of Ciudad del Sol, the natural habitat of the city’s richest packs and beta citizens. The Palisades was a sprawling gated community filled with mansions—mostly gaudy monstrosities, but some, like my parents’ place or Cam’s family home down the road from us, weren’t terrible.

I grew up here, one precious omega princess among many, sheltered from the real world by our parents’ wealth and sent to prep school nearby until graduation at age eighteen. Then it was off to the OFS—also conveniently nearby—to learn to be a high-class piece of arm candy for a pack of the same socioeconomic status as my family.

Don’t get me wrong—I was eternally grateful for the fact that I enjoyed enough privilege to avoid the “omega cattle call,” as Dylan called it, which would’ve had me matched with a pack by the government by the time I turned eighteen. Instead, I got to faff around a fake college for four extra years.

But now that I was facing down the end of those four years and the total loss of personal agency that awaited me at the end? Fuck that.

Luckily, I’d made myself so unattractive to every courting pack that graced the OFS campus that I had no prospects. My mother didn’t know what to do with me.

There was a lot of shit my mother didn’t know these days.

I parked the Beem in the circular driveway in front of the Bryce Pack estate—an eight-bedroom Spanish-style home, not including the two-bedroom pool house. The house even had a full gym and second headquarters for Bryce Solutions, the private security company run by three of my four dads.

I was an off-the-books employee of sorts for that company. If things were different, I’d be dreaming of the day I could become a real one.

Before I managed to get a sandaled foot onto the gleaming hardwood staircase that led up to my bedroom, a stern voice barked from down the hall, “Seraphina! Come into my office, please.”

I sighed and dropped the duffle I had slung over my shoulder to the floor before turning in the opposite direction and trudging down the hallway. My dads each kept an office in a wing off the foyer—except Jere, whose lair was upstairs in a remote corner of the mansion.

I shoved through the door at the end of the hall. Andrew, or just Dad , as we called him, sat behind his stately desk, golden-brown eyes framed by dark-rimmed glasses and wide shoulders slightly hunched as he studied something on his laptop.

Mom was here too. She sat primly on the leather loveseat next to Dad’s bookshelf, her blonde hair in perfect waves around her face, radiant and youthful even at the age of fifty.

Cam once told me that all the knotting helped omegas keep that youthful glow, which was not a thing I necessarily needed to contemplate about my mother and my four Alpha fathers.

They both glanced up at my entrance.

“You rang?”

Mom frowned at my outfit, as she so often did. Today I wore ripped denim shorts and a giant Tom Petty shirt that obscured all but the frays of my shorts. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, fixing her frown into a warm smile. “How were finals?”

“Illusory, per usual.”

She huffed, and Dad chose that moment to close his laptop with an audible snap. “Have a seat, Seraphina. We need to chat.”

I slinked forward, wondering if Dad took any notice of how silently I was now able to tread across the floor.

“What’s this about?” I asked as I flopped into one of the chairs that faced Dad’s desk.

He stared me down, those golden-brown eyes daring me to fuck around. “I don’t think I have to explain to you the dire situation you’ve put yourself in—” he began.

My insides froze. Did he know…?

“—with the way you’ve conducted yourself toward every courting pack on the OFS roster,” he finished, and my butthole unclenched. “Your senior year is approaching, and you have zero prospects, Seraphina. Zero .”

I shrugged. “I’m not worried about it.”

With any luck, I could just fade out of sight after graduation. There were plenty of perfectly well-behaved omega girls at school for the rich assholes to court. No one would miss me.

“You should be worried about it,” Dad snapped. “The protections of the OFS do not extend to you beyond graduation, Seraphina. And despite our work lobbying for change these past few years, the laws regarding bonding remain as they’ve always been. You can’t run around unbonded after graduation. It isn’t safe, nor is it legal.”

I didn’t give a fuck about either of those things. “I’ll get the hard stuff from Dylan?—”

Mom gasped. “No, honey. Why would you want to do that to your body?”

What she didn’t know was that I already had the illegal suppressants that would smother my omega biology enough that I could pass as a beta. I’d used them every summer since my freshman year ended, going off them just in time to show back up at school smelling like boozy cherries and omega nonsense.

Dad gave Mom a reassuring smile before he pointed his business face at me again. “Safety issues of the illegal suppressants aside, you cannot just do what Dylan did and live your life as a beta. You are a known omega from a famous pack. No one will believe you just woke up one day as a different designation. There is no such thing as a late-awakening beta. Dylan was able to do what she did because no one knew her as anything but a beta for the entirety of her adolescence, and her parents are an Alpha-beta couple. That was believable, albeit still extremely dangerous.”

“But—”

“Enough,” he snapped. “Whatever argument you think you have that the rules don’t apply to you, I have a better one as to why they do. Save it.”

I crossed my arms over Tom Petty’s face and glowered at him.

Mom clapped her hands in excitement, impervious as always to the conflict in the room. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Everything is going to work out. Your fathers have found you the perfect pack!”

It was my turn to gasp. “You wouldn’t dare ,” I hissed, glaring at Dad.

His expression didn’t budge. “This is happening, Seraphina. I know the Montgomerys well, and it is fortunate for us that their son and his pack have been unsuccessful in finding their omega at the North Texas OFS. I’ve spoken to Thomas and vetted his son’s pack. We’re in agreement that this is a good match.”

“What in the fuck kind of archaic arranged marriage bullshit is this?” I said, my voice rising along with my panic. “You’re just going to hand me to this random pack of fucking rich boys from up north like I’m a piece of property?”

“You have had your chance to choose a pack,” he replied, and he at least had the decency to frown at my distress. “You have been afforded so many opportunities that most omega girls are not, and you have chosen to squander that immense privilege. Now I am doing the only thing I can do for you, which is find you a decent pack from a family that I trust. Gabriel, Alexander, and Jasper?—”

I put my hands over my ears. “Nope. I do not give a fuck who they are. I am not a prized cow you can sell to your rich friends, Dad. I’m not doing it. Fuck no.”

“Seraphina, language,” Mom lamented.

“You don’t have a choice,” Dad said, softening his tone. Now he just looked sad, which was real fucking rich—it wasn’t his life he was destroying. “Unless you want to be tossed into the Department of Pack Unification lottery after graduation, this pack is your only hope, Seraphina. After school starts in the fall, you will meet them at courting events. After you’ve had enough time to court, we will hold a choosing gala for all of you, and you’ll sign a formal OFS Courtship Agreement. You will go in with an open mind, and you will not self-sabotage any longer.”

“Please, sweetheart?” Mom said with a little sniff. “I promise we just want you to be happy.”

“Just like you wanted my brothers to be happy when you tried to force them to pick a random omega with, like, two weeks’ notice when they were in love with someone else?”

She sighed, delicately wiping at her eyes. “Why are three out of my four children so difficult? Did I do something to deserve this, Andrew?”

“Of course not, my love,” he replied before spearing me with a look . “And it all worked out for your brothers in the end. We’ve all seen how happy Dylan is with them. And she came from a place of such deep distrust in the bonding process for reasons that were very valid. I still don’t know what your problem is, Seraphina. You’ve lived a happy life in a happy pack, and whichever Alphas caught your eye would have kept you safe and content or they would’ve answered to me . To Rodrigo and Jericho. To Austin and Seth.” He shook his head. “And yet, you’ve done nothing but ensure none of them have looked twice in your direction.”

There was no use arguing with them. My feelings about bonding were never going to be validated because I was special and privileged and protected by my scary Alpha fathers and brothers. I was supposed to know my place in this world, which was—at best —to find a pack of dudes to fawn all over me while I took their knots and bore their children.

Why would I ever want my life to be more than that?

I stared out the window over Dad’s shoulder. The sun was just beginning to set over the lush green hills in the distance. The stately manors of the Palisades appeared peaceful under it all, a utopia of wealth and success, rather than what it was—just another cog in the bullshit machine that kept Alphas and men at the top and omega women under their heels.

“I won’t do it,” I said softly. “I won’t bond with a pack of strangers just because you said so. This is my life.”

Dad sighed. “It’s done, Seraphina. You have the summer to come to terms with it. I promise we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought there was any other way. I will not have you dumped into the USDPU pool—especially not after everything we’ve seen since we started working with the St. Jameses.”

“I’m told they’re really lovely boys, sweetie,” Mom added. “You’ll see. Being the center of a bonded pack is the most amazing feeling.”

Being trapped in a bond by a pack was more like it.

I stood up and gave Dad one last glare. “Undo this bullshit. Call your rich friends and tell them I’m no longer for sale. Or after graduation, you’ll never see me again.”

Now he just smiled, the ass. “We have plenty of time for your new pack to change your mind.”

Ugh.

I turned and stomped out of the office.

At least Jere would keep me busy this summer. I wouldn’t give this betrothal a single fucking thought until I returned to the OFS in the fall.

And then I’d make Pack Montgomery regret ever hearing the name Seraphina Bryce.