The Omega's rebellion

Rivals and mates

My feet carried me back to the village in a daze, my mind still reeling from the encounter with the formidable Lucas Blackwood.

What a strange, unsettling man—no, not a man.

A werewolf, like something straight out of the nightmarish tales I'd been told as a child.

Yet there had been no trace of the menacing monster from those stories in the scorching heat of his touch, the rough velvet of his voice as it caressed over me with that arrogant demand.

You belong to me now.

My cheeks flushed at the memory of how easily I had melted against him, shamelessly arching into the sinful glide of his hands and mouth.

I was no hapless maiden, yet Lucas had unraveled me with such devastating ease, stripping away every pretense until I burned only for his punishing caress.

The cloying scent of pine and earth still clung to my skin, mingling with the lingering musk of masculine desire in a heady, illicit blend that robbed me of breath.

Just the fleeting recollection of his tawny, powerful frame pressed against me was enough to ignite a reckless conflagration low in my core.

"Well, well, well..." A familiar, grating voice jolted me from my wanton reverie. "If it isn't the little sheep, stumbling back from her trysts."

I lifted my gaze to find Celine and Dionne, my two most relentless tormentors, leering at me from the edge of the forest path.

Straightening my spine, I lifted my chin in silent challenge, refusing to betray the slightest weakness before these vicious hyenas.

"Out frolicking with your woodland nymphs again?" Celine crooned with mock sympathy, her lips pulled into a mocking pout.

Dionne snickered, trailing her gaze over me in a blatant leer. "You're in rare form this evening, Eyvie. All flushed and disheveled—did your dirty little dances not satisfy you for once?"

Heat crept into my cheeks, but I forced myself not to flinch, to hold their lecherous stares without recoil.

These two delighted in tormenting me, in reducing me to humiliated tears—I would not give them the satisfaction this time.

"I don't know what puerile games you two are playing," I replied with studied indifference, "but I haven't time for your pathetic attempts at cruelty."

"Ooh," Celine's grin widened to show her fangs, "seems the little sheep has grown some claws."

The air between us practically vibrated with the sudden tension, the throbbing thrum of their aggressive pheromones caressing over me like a ominous caress. I knew better than to rise to their taunts.

"There you are!"

A new voice, rich and velvety and achingly familiar, sliced through the charged atmosphere.

My pulse kicked up a stumbling rhythm as Ethan emerged from the tree line—my Ethan, with his mahogany hair tousled by the breeze and those hypnotic jade eyes glittering with fathomless depths.

"The alphas have summoned all available omegas," he informed me, his intense stare raking over me in a way that made my skin prickle. "There's to be a... well, a sort of audition."

"An audition?" Dionne echoed with a harsh bark of laughter. "You don't mean for...?"

"Keep your vile tongue behind your teeth, Dionne," Ethan growled, his eyes flashing brilliant emerald in warning.

Defiant silence reigned for a heartbeat before Celine spoke again, her voice dripping with disdain. "Well then, we'd best not keep our esteemed alphas waiting."

The two she-wolves flashed me sneers of malicious glee before stalking off in the direction of the village square, where already a small crowd had begun to gather.

"Are you alright?" Ethan was at my side in two strides, his fingers curling around my elbow in a steadying grip. "What did those miserable cretins accost you with this time?"

I shook my head in a silent dismissal. "Nothing I can't handle."

Those captivating eyes raked over me again, seeing far more than I intended.

Ethan's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, but he simply gave a curt nod and began steering me toward the growing throng.

"What's going on?" I murmured, watching the alpha elders assemble at the head of the crowd. "Why the summons for omegas?"

Ethan's jaw ticked again, a muscle feathering along that sharp blade as if he grappled with some indecision.

At length, he released a low growl of displeasure.

"The Crimson Moon pack alfa is holding some sort of... procurement," he practically spat the word, as if it left a foul taste on his tongue. "He's come to select a potential mate from our omegas."

My breath stalled in my lungs even as something like giddy elation blossomed within me. Could he possibly mean...?

"Lucas Blackwood is here?" I hissed, peering intently through the assembled masses as if I might catch a glimpse of those molten amber eyes between the shifting bodies. "The one I encountered in the forest?"

Ethan went utterly still beside me, his fingers flexing around my arm with unconscious pressure. When at last he spoke, his voice was little more than a guttural rasp.

"You've met the Blackwood alpha?"

I swallowed hard, weighing the wisdom of revealing that forbidden, heated encounter in the glade.

Something indefinable flickered in the liquid jade depths of Ethan's eyes, some roiling emotion that made me shift uncomfortably.

"We...exchanged words," I hedged with careful understatement.

It was no lie, precisely, but neither the full truth. Ethan's nostrils flared infinitesimally, as if tasting the falsehood on the air between us.

"Indeed," was his inscrutable reply.

Then, without further preamble, that lean, muscular frame was propelling me through the crowd, powerful shoulders parting the masses until we stood at the forefront.

I could no longer stifle my instinctive recoil at the sight of the infamous Lucas Blackwood perched indolently on a raised dais, his body a study in arrogant masculine perfection.

My knees went weak, a treacherous inner chorus clamoring for me to throw myself at his feet, to grovel for the blistering attentions he had bestowed upon me so generously in the shadowed groves.

I could still taste the dark spice of his skin on my tongue, the notes of redwood and earth and some other unplaceable masculine musk that had my mouth watering in aching recollection.

An infuriatingly smug half-smile kicked up one corner of Blackwood's lips, his gaze pinning me in place like a cobra fixating on its prey.

A dangerous frisson of yearning shivered through me before I ruthlessly smothered it. I was no one's prey.

"Brothers!" One of the elders, Zachariah, addressed the crowd in a reedy tone. "We have been graced by the presence of the Crimson Moon alpha, Lucas Blackwood."