Chapter 9
June
We arrived at the party together, but we might as well have been strangers with the speed my alphas walked away and left me on my own.
“Hi, Mom.” I brush a kiss across her cheek, inhaling her lavender and wild honey scent. My dad nods at me, his attention elsewhere, bored as always at these society parties.
I hadn’t wanted to come. They gave me no option but to. If there’s something they need me to do, they send Veronica.
“Pack Wells requests that you dress for a party at seven.”
That’s what Veronica had said this morning over breakfast, her smile sympathetic as she delivered what amounted to an order.
I was ready and waiting by the door at 6:58.
Haven Academy taught me not to complain, make a scene, or embarrass my alpha.
I’d wanted to open the front door and walk out of the house and never go back.
But where would I go? To my parents? Mom would shake her head and send me right back; Dad would tell me not to upset Mom, and that would be that.
I’d be right back where I started: with my scent matches, who I’m learning to hate.
I stand beside my parents, scanning the packed ballroom of one of the city’s best hotels.
“Aren’t you dancing?” Mom asks me, sipping from the same glass of champagne she’s been holding for the last twenty minutes.
She’s not much of a drinker. Neither am I, but tonight I wish I were. It might be easier to ignore all the stares as people wonder why I’m with my parents instead of my alphas.
I’m in a midnight-blue velvet dress. It has off-the-shoulder sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a flowing full skirt.
I paired it with my great-grandmother’s gold bracelet, which I almost never take off.
While my dress draws some lingering looks from a couple of alphas nearby, the three men I spot on the other side of the room when a couple walks past don’t so much as look at me.
I no longer exist to them. Not when we’re in their mansion, and not while we’re at this party.
“Not tonight, Mom,” I say, looking away from them.
Mom nods and turns to ask my dad something. As long as I’m not making a scene the way I did at my mate bonding ceremony, I doubt she cares what I do, or if I’m even happy. When my mom finally has enough of my dad’s complaints about being bored, and they leave early, I stand alone.
People have been staring ever since I arrived at my first party as a newly mated omega, and my alphas haven’t spoken one word to me. They were more subtle about staring and whispering while I was with my parents. Now that they’ve gone, the whispers are getting louder.
The ballroom is hot and stifling; the scents from alphas and omegas are oppressive. The night feels endless. I’m bored out of my mind, but I have no interest in making small talk with anyone. I just want to be alone where I can pretend I don’t have three scent matches who hate me.
The first server who offered me a glass of champagne was easy to refuse, especially with my mom standing next to me, giving me a look that said not to even bother. The second is a little harder. But I shake my head, and he moves on with his tray of champagne flutes to the couple beside me.
Thoroughly bored out of my mind and needing a distraction, I take a champagne flute from the third server and sip from my glass, tiny bubbles bursting on my tongue as my gaze sweeps the room.
My glass is empty far too soon.
With my mind a little hazy and my mood slightly brighter, I hand the empty glass to a passing server and start looking for another as a dark-haired alpha approaches.
He flashes a mouthful of straight white teeth. “Would you like to…” His gaze dips, and his voice trails off.
He stares.
Three claiming bites on my throat mark me as taken.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” he says as he quickly walks away.
He retreats, alert and wary as he glances around, wanting to make sure no alphas are about to tackle him for daring to approach me.
Alphas are too possessive of their omegas to leave them alone for long, especially in public.
He needn’t have bothered. Callum, Archer, and Torin have barely looked at me all night.
My alphas don’t want me. The claiming bites on my skin mean no other alpha would want me either.
I take another glass of champagne from a server, drain it, and pass off my empty flute. The world feels a little brighter. One more couldn’t hurt, could it? Tonight almost feels like fun now.
I’m lifting my third glass to my mouth when a hand grips my wrist and a male voice whispers harshly into my ear. “You’ve had enough.”
Torin.
I turn to look at him, but he avoids my gaze. None of them ever wants to look at me, yet they don’t seem to want to let me go either.
He takes the glass from me, passes it to a server, and walks away. Leaving me alone.
Again.
“Torin…?” I follow him.
The champagne has made me brave. If I hadn’t had two glasses of it, I wouldn’t be following him through the crowds to get him to understand that he has no reason to hate me.
The couple on my right turn when I call out loudly after him to slow down. Torin pretends he doesn’t hear me, plunging into the crowds and disappearing from view. My steps slow, and my cheeks burn as yet more people turn to stare at me.
More minutes pass, and I lose sight of Torin, Archer, and Callum.
Maybe they’ve gone without me. It’s easy to imagine they climbed back into the limo we arrived in, went back to the house and haven’t even noticed they left me behind.
An amused female voice, pitched high enough for me to hear it over the band playing behind me, says, "Your omega is looking a little neglected."
The crowd parts, and my heart squeezes at the way she’s smiling up at Callum.
Callum shrugs. “She’ll find some way to entertain herself.”
“Isn’t that your job?” She inches a little closer to him.
I’ve never had a jealous bone in my body before. Until now. Now I want to shove her away from my scent match.
He takes a sip from his glass, and his eyes flick to me as if he’s always known I was there watching.
“That seems to be the thing with Haven Academy. They say they produce an elegant, polished omega. I find them to be empty-headed and clingy. Now you have a little more going on. What did you say your name was again?”
“Liana,” the woman says, practically purring.
The sound of my pounding heart fills my head.
With tears burning my eyes, I push my way through the crowded ballroom, desperate to get away from Callum and words I wish I could forget. On my way out, a smiling server offers me more champagne that might dull this pain.
Snatching up a glass of champagne from his metal tray, I’m lifting it to my mouth when a hand grips my wrist. My eyes fly to Archer.
He leans toward me. “Control yourself,” he hisses. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
I stare at him, breathing hard. They were the pack of my dreams until they weren't.
What changed? What did I do to deserve this?
I want to fling my glass into his face. But I settle for pulling my arm from his, passing my glass of champagne to a server, and walking away. The whispers follow, an endless wave of questions wondering what I must have done to turn my alphas cold.
In the bathroom, I put my head in my hands, trying not to cry.
“They were all over Liana,” a female voice says from right outside my door.
Another woman laughs. “Must not be not getting what they need from her.”
I lift my head to stare at the door, hoping it isn’t me they’re talking about.
“Juniper went to Haven Academy, and that finishing school is known for training omegas well.”
I briefly close my eyes, dreading having come into the bathroom and not left this party while I had the chance. Now there’s no way of leaving without humiliating myself by having to pass by the women talking about me.
“Maybe the training didn’t take.” Water starts up. “Maybe she’s dull. That’s what else Haven is good for. Elegant but dull.”
Laughter rings out, and my cheeks burn.
“She has the looks but doesn’t know how to please her alphas. Two weeks since their bonding, and they look bored out of their minds. They’ll be out fucking a beta before the month is out if they haven’t already started.”
My heart clenches when I remember Callum talking to the beautiful Liana, seeming not to care that I was listening. In fact, he’d looked right at me before he told her I was clingy.
“Juniper’s pretty, though.”
“Pretty? Maybe she was once.” Another woman snorts. “Not with those bags under her eyes. She looks like she’s been ridden hard and put away wet.”
“And not even the good kind of ride,” another woman adds with a giggle.
Laughter rings out just outside my door, and I lower my head to stare at the floor.
A tear rolls down my cheek. I scrub it away, blinking away more tears as I will those women to just go away.
I never understood why my alphas wanted to come to this party. My parents sent invitations to other parties, but my alphas showed no interest in those. But this, held in one of the city’s most exclusive hotels, is the one they said yes to.
Now I know why. They didn’t want to come dance or catch up with friends.
They brought me here to hurt me. To humiliate me as publicly as possible.
A knock sounds at my door. “Hey! I need the bathroom. Are you coming out?”
I don’t say a word. There are only two stalls, and I desperately cling to the hope that whoever is in the one next to mine will finish up in the next two seconds.
Knock, knock.
“There are only two bathrooms here, and you’ve been in there forever. You can come out, or I can get someone to open the door.”
With a resigned sigh, I get to my feet, dread weighing me down.
I take a breath for courage and release it as I unlock and open my door.
A brunette in a lilac dress loses her scowl, and her eyes widen as I step outside. She knows exactly who I am and what I overheard them say about me. Wiping all expression from her face, she doesn’t say a word as I pass her on my way to the door.
The bathroom is silent.