Chapter 1
one
JULIA
If there was one thing the Cristenello family excelled at, it was a dramatic send-off.
Standing on the tarmac in front of Dimitri’s obnoxiously sleek private jet, flanked by a literal wall of my massive, overprotective Alpha brothers and my radiant new sister-in-law, Kit, I was struck by the reality of what I was about to do.
If someone had told me a week ago I’d be leaving my family behind to fly to Wyoming to meet my scent matched pack, I would have laughed in their face and told them to lay off the alcohol.
Now, however, it was all too real, and I had the sudden, overwhelming urge to sprint in the opposite direction. Or throw up. Honestly, it was a toss-up.
The warm spring breeze whipped across the private airfield, tossing my hair and ruffling my shirt, but it did absolutely nothing to melt the icy knot of absolute panic sitting heavy in my stomach.
I was really, actually doing this. After six years of fighting the OMA tooth and nail, I was boarding a plane to meet a pack I’d never even spoken to.
“You don’t have to go.” Dimitri, the newly minted head of our family and objectively one of the most terrifying Alphas on the East Coast, crossed his arms over his broad chest. Besides the fact that he would have been here anyway, he was standing in for our dads, who were currently visiting Italy to celebrate their “retirement.” D stared down at me with a frown so deep it looked permanently carved into his features.
“Are you certain about this, Jules? Say the word, and I’ll have the pilot power down the engines right now. ”
I wrapped my coat tighter around myself, fighting a shiver.
“I’m not certain about anything, D,” I admitted, the truth slipping out before my usual sarcasm could mask it.
“But this pack is a perfect scent match... and I can’t ignore that.
Believe me, I’ve tried, but it’s like my Omega hijacked my better sense and won’t give it back until I go along with her plan to meet them.
Apparently, this is normal. Just another one of the many joys that comes with the designation.
” I forced a sassy smile to curve my lips, hoping it would appease some of his worry.
“Still,” Marco drawled, leaning against the sleek black SUV we’d arrived in, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“Never thought I’d see the day our little Jules willingly shipped herself off to bum-fuck-nowhere, Wyoming.
What are you even gonna do out there? Churn butter? Milk a cow in your designer boots?”
The sharp smack of Giovanni’s hand connecting with the back of Marco’s head echoed over the roar of the jet engines.
“Ow! What the fuck, Gio?”
“Shut up, idiota,” Gio muttered, shooting our brother a lethal glare. “She’s nervous enough without you opening your mouth.”
Kit stepped forward, her floral, earthy scent wrapping around me like a comforting blanket.
She rested a gentle hand on my arm, her eyes shining with that steady, empathetic light she possessed.
“Ignore them,” she told me softly. “It’s terrifying, I know.
But finding your pack... when it’s right, it changes everything.
It makes all the unknown, scary parts worth it. ”
Before I could reply, Tommas—the only brother who wasn’t afraid to show his softer side—pulled me into a tight side hug. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, his grip fierce enough to remind me exactly who I belonged to before the OMA ever got their hands on me.
I was a Cristenello, a mafia princess by blood.
It may have been a name I’d done my damnedest to escape, but running from a legacy didn’t mean I wanted to run from my family.
The syndicate was one thing, but the men standing on this tarmac were mine.
I loved my big, ridiculously overprotective brothers and my dads with everything I had.
Stepping onto that plane meant leaving my entire world behind, and God, I was going to miss them so much it physically hurt.
“Listen to me, Jules,” Tommas murmured, his voice dropping low enough that the wind nearly stole the words.
“If you get out there and you need us, you call. I don’t care what the OMA says, and I don’t give a shit about their archaic courtship rules.
You say the word, and we’ll tear the whole damn state of Wyoming apart to bring you home. ”
I let out a wet, breathless laugh, blinking back the sudden burn of tears. “Thanks, Tommy. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I squeezed him back, then stepped away before I lost my nerve.
Looking at my fiercely loving family, the urge to stay was so strong, my heart actually ached.
I could just get back in the SUV. I could go home, resume my familiar rebellion, and hide in the safe little bubble the Cristenello name afforded me.
But the moment the thought crossed my mind, the phantom memory of the best scents I’d ever smelled in my life put me in a chokehold.
My traitorous body tightened with need so strong I almost whined right there on the tarmac.
It was crazy how easily those preserved scents from the binder had rewired my entire existence.
That’s how I knew I had to go, because if I didn’t, my inner Omega would tear me apart from the inside out just to get to them. The faceless men those delicious scents belonged to.
God, I’m in trouble.
I backed away before I could talk myself back out of the decision. Throwing up one last, confident wave I didn’t truly feel, I turned and headed for the jet where Vivienne was waiting.
Behind me, the wind carried Dimitri’s low, gravelly growl. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
“She’s going to be fine,” Kit’s calm voice drifted after his. “Think about how strongly you felt when you scented me. How impossible it was to walk away. Now picture what that’s like for Julia. She needs to go, D. It’s biological.”
I let their voices fade into the roar of the jet engines, deeply grateful for my sister-in-law.
If anyone could soothe my brothers’ rampant Alpha anxiety, it was Kit.
She knew exactly what it meant to be vulnerable in this world.
Before my brothers had kicked down the doors of a rival mafia syndicate to rescue her, Kit had lived through the nightmare of actually being sold at an underground Omega auction.
It was the same black-market ring I had narrowly escaped being sold to just months later.
My brothers had claimed Kit the second they scented her in that rescue, giving her a happily-ever-after that rewired our family.
That shared trauma, and the Cristenello syndicate’s subsequent wrath, was exactly why Chadderick Hurst, the head of the OMA, had granted me a rare exemption to take my family’s private jet instead of standard agency transport.
Hurst knew damn well that after the OMA had practically let me get snatched out from under them, my fathers and brothers would sooner burn the agency to the ground than let me out of their sight without their own heavily armed security detail.
Which explained why Vivienne, my matching coordinator, was currently standing at the base of the plane’s folding stairs, clutching a sleek leather folder like a shield amidst the half-dozen men flanking the runway with weapons they didn’t bother to conceal.
“I must reiterate, Ms. Cristenello, that this is highly irregular,” Vivienne said, her voice tight as her eyes darted nervously toward where Tommas was still watching us like a hawk. “The Agency strongly prefers to handle the transportation of our matched Omegas to ensure... proper protocol.”
“And given the Agency’s past track record with my personal safety, Viv, you’re lucky my brothers are even letting you breathe the same air as me right now,” I replied, flashing her a sharp, humorless smile. “Let’s just call my family’s private jet a necessary compromise.”
Vivienne’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she wisely chose not to argue the point with four powerful Alphas standing a mere thirty feet away.
Instead, she held out the leather folder.
“Your travel itinerary. As well as the official OMA courtship guidelines. I highly suggest you review them before you land.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I lied smoothly, snatching the folder and tucking it under my arm.
“Safe travels, Julia. And... good luck.” For a second, the strict, institutional mask slipped, and I saw a flicker of genuine sincerity in her eyes—a brief callback to the stunned woman who had handed me the scent binder just a few days ago.
I offered a curt nod, the closest thing to a truce she was going to get, and turned to climb the stairs.
At the top, I paused, and my hand gripped the cold metal rail as a rare moment of vulnerability clawed at my throat. I never thought I’d miss Silver City, but now that I was leaving…
Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders, stepped inside, and didn’t look back.
The heavy cabin door sealed shut with a definitive thud, and the sudden silence was almost as daunting as the silence of my cell phone.
Dropping into one of the oversized leather seats, I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at the screen. Or, more importantly, my message thread with Adeline.
It was nothing but one-sided blue bubbles that had gone unanswered. Apparently, I was masochistic, because I read through my last dozen unhinged, pleading, apologetic texts while my chest ached with fresh waves of guilt.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I tapped the screen and typed out one more.
I’m getting on the plane. I am so, so sorry, Addy. I love you. Please just talk to me.
I hit send, watched the little blue bubble pop up at the bottom of the screen, and waited.
But just like all the others, no response came.
The sadness of losing my best friend was suffocating in its intensity, and yet, I couldn’t even blame her for icing me out. I had stolen her dream. By pure, agonizing accident, my biology had laid claim to the one thing she wanted most in the world.
Everything in me wished I could rewind the damn clock.
That I hadn’t gone into that room with her.
Maybe, if she’d gone alone, she would be happily mated right now and I would be…
Well, fuck. I would be miserable, because no matter which way I looked at the entire situation, the moment I went to visit her and her pack, I would have gotten one whiff of her guys and upended her world.
But by then, they’d be off the market. Taken by my best friend. And that would be worse for everyone involved.
God, there was no right answer. No penance or way to soften the blow. To make this hurt less. But leaving my best friend heartbroken and alone wasn’t going to happen on my watch, either.
Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the leather seat and silently vowed that I would find a way to make it right.
Somehow, some way, I was going to fix what I’d broken.
I didn’t care what the OMA dictated or how this archaic system was supposed to work.
If my biology was going to pit my happiness against my best friend’s, then I wasn’t just going to fix this.
I was going to rewrite the damn rules.
Adeline deserved a say in her future. Hell, all us Omegas did, and if anyone was stubborn enough to find a way to dismantle this whole rigged system, it was a Cristenello. I just had to survive this courtship first.
Before long, the plane taxied down the runway and lifted into the clouds, the New York skyline falling away below, taking my old life with it.
Over the next few hours, the plush comfort of Dimitri’s jet did nothing to settle my nerves.
I drank a glass of overpriced champagne, ignoring the OMA courtship rulebook Vivienne had shoved into my hands, and instead found myself staring at the leather binder resting on the empty seat beside me.
I didn’t even need to open it. The phantom scents were already permanently branded into my brain.
The warm, safe rush of sandalwood and cinnamon.
The intoxicating blend of toasted marshmallow, sun-warmed oak and honeyed graham cracker.
The gruff, comforting sweep of woodsmoke and cardamom mingling with cold stone and dark tobacco.
And underneath it all, the deep, demanding strike of wild sage and rich coffee.
Honestly, the memory of those layered, devastating pheromones was the only thing keeping me from hunting down one of Dimitri’s emergency parachutes, popping the cabin door, and bailing on this entire crazy endeavor somewhere over the Midwest.
Just thinking about them made my skin flush even as a knot of heavy anticipation settled low in my stomach.
I wanted to be furious with them for existing.
I wanted to hate them for being the catalyst that broke my best friend’s heart.
But every time I tried to summon up my usual fiery indignation, my traitorous biology purred, demanding this plane land so I could finally meet my mates.
When the intercom eventually crackled and the pilot announced our initial descent into Coldwater Creek, Wyoming, the gravity of the situation hit me.
Holy shit. I was actually doing this.
I leaned over to look out the small window.
The familiar, sprawling concrete jungle of the East Coast had been replaced by endless stretches of rugged plains, towering, snow-capped mountains melting in spring, and an impossibly vast, open sky.
Marco hadn’t been kidding. It really was bum-fuck-nowhere.
I gripped the leather armrests, my knuckles turning white as the landing gear engaged with a heavy mechanical clunk beneath me.
It’s fine. I desperately tried to regulate my suddenly shallow breathing.
It’s just a meeting. If they’re arrogant, or boring, or if they try to pull that dominant, chest-beating Alpha crap I despise, I can just turn around.
I’ll get right back on this jet, call Tommas, and pretend this entire thing never happened.
Deep down, my inner Omega let out a smug, dismissive little scoff at the lie. She knew damn well that walking away from a true scent match was going to be next to impossible.
The tires hit the runway with a sharp screech, the reverse thrusters roaring to life as the jet shuddered and slowed. We taxied for what felt like an eternity before finally rolling to a stop. The engines whined down, plunging the cabin into that heavy, expectant silence once again.
I unbuckled my seatbelt with trembling fingers and stood up just as the latch on the heavy cabin door clicked.
It hissed as it unsealed, the stairs slowly lowering to the tarmac.
Instantly, the crisp, shockingly clean Wyoming breeze swept into the cabin.
But it wasn’t just the cold mountain air that made my breath catch in my throat.
Tangled in the wind was the faint, undeniable trace of warm cinnamon, vetiver, and sandalwood.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
My new reality was waiting right outside the door.