Pack fever omegaverse ro.., p.1
Pack Fever: Omegaverse Romance, page 1
Pack Fever
LOVE KNOT WAR OMEGAVERSE ROMANCE
LIORA ROSE
Pack Fever © Copyright 2024 Liora Rose
Graphic Design by Temptation Creations
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For permission contact: authorliorarose@gmail.com
Contents
Pack Fever
Fever
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
About Liora Rose
Books By Liora Rose
The spotlight was my dream, but fate had a different stage in mind.
In the neon glow of a club, I find him. His eyes—wild and untamed—call to me. His gaze promises a future written in the stars, a melody for my heart, but as quick as a chord is struck, he’s torn from me.
Next thing I know, I’m destined for the Nexus facility, a place where Omegas like me meet their Alphas, a place where my future will be sealed.
Yet, as I learned long ago, tragedy is a shadow that clings to my heels, and when it strikes again, I seize the moment and escape the guards.
But freedom has its own price.
That’s when I crash into Fever, the world’s hottest rock band. Caught red-handed, I brace for the worst, but they see past the thief, see the Omega in me—with a secret big enough to blow up everything.
Now, I’m tangled up in their world, claimed as theirs. But I’m worried they won’t feel the same when they discover I’m not just an Omega but a broken one.
Four beats, one heart—will the melody of destiny play my song?
Author’s Note
Pack Fever might contain some possible trigger content that some might find troubling. Pack Fever is not intended to be a dark book, but there are some sensitive situations—grief, death of a family member, trauma, details of an accident that leads to death, possessive men, and violence (not to the heroine).
Prologue
DANICA
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
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…
Chapter
One
DANICA
5 Years Later
Islip out from the front door of the apartment building, and my feet rush over the front lawn just as that persistent melody that’s been my shadow for the past couple of months plays in my mind. A tune I can’t stop hearing, which has a heartbeat of its own, yet it feels like it’s missing something…
The stars above have stories to tell, but none as bright as us…
I’ve been stuck on the next verse, but it’ll come to me. It has to, or I’ll go insane…
Glancing left and right, the midnight moonlight throws a silvery hue over the silent suburban street while my heart hammers in my chest at being caught. Mom and my younger sister, Ruby, are asleep in their rooms upstairs in our cramped government-supplied public housing.
Do I feel guilty for breaking the rules by sneaking out at night?
Hell, no!
Does it irritate me that even at twenty-one years old, I’m given no freedom?
Fuck, yes!
Omegas in the making, like me—those expected to go into heat any time over the next few years—will be appointed an Alpha pack for life. In the meantime, we’re governed by rules that are to be enforced by our parents.
Omegas shall not go outdoors unescorted.
They shall not interact with men not approved as Alphas for them.
They shall attend Nexus Omega-approved schools only.
We’re controlled, treated like precious jewels. I’m going to go out of my mind if I stay in the house a second longer.
The benefit of not showing any signs of going into heat yet means no hot flushes, no wild desires. I’m not exactly excited about my heat to come, but it should still be a few years away, so I try not to give it too much thought. Or I’ll panic.
Before we come into heat, we’re no different from any other female Beta. So, if anyone asks tonight, I’ll just flash my fake Beta ID.
Alphas hold power in society, and the majority of them are male. Betas, who are the most common, make up most of the population. They are left alone to do as they please for the simple reason that they are rarely permitted to marry Alphas, and their bodies can never satisfy the needs of an Omega. Not the way an Alpha can. So, both males and females live their existence in peace, watching the rest of us like we’re freaks in a circus.
Then there are Omegas who are seen as celebrities but also kept in gilded cages. Once our insatiable, hormonal heat consumes us, our bodies prepare for mating and falling pregnant. Only Alphas can satisfy us and ease the pain. Funnily enough, while we can’t be with a Beta male to ease our pain, Alpha males can have children with a Beta female.
Yep, Omegas are niche and in high demand since there are fewer of us compared to Betas and Alphas.
It’s crude and barbaric, yet our biology makes us victims of this lifestyle.
Except tonight’s about freedom from everything. With my heels in hand and the cool grass on my bare feet, I run past the front gate and onto the sidewalk. Then I rush down the block to be out of sight in case my mother or anyone else glances out from our apartment building and reports me.
Three blocks later, I’m huffing out of breath, but across the road, Kayla and Casey are waiting for me. They wave at me like crazy, all dressed up and looking spectacular.
“You’re late,” Casey calls out with laughter in her voice. Her white-blonde hair cascades down to her waist, shining under the streetlights, and her skin is perfectly sun-kissed from some Hawaiian heritage in her blood. She lives with her older brother, who raised her after their parents vanished, but she’s the kindest person I’ve ever met. Tonight, she’s rocking it with her black leather pants and crop-top showing off her midriff and the glint of her belly button ring.
“Only by a few minutes,” I answer, rushing across the quiet road, grinning at my other girl, Kayla, whose dark-blonde hair is swept off her face but keeps tumbling over an eye. Her deep-blue eyes are grinning at me. With her bright pink lips and the black dress she’s wearing with a hem ending high-thigh, she looks hot. Those knee-high boots scream goddess. I love seeing her smile, as so often I catch her with heartache painted on her face. She won’t talk about it, but I know something’s happening at her home. I need to find out more to help her.
But not tonight. Tonight’s about freedom.
“Girls, you both look amazing!” I hug them, wishing more than anything I could move out with them into our own apartment and forget we’re all going to be matched with Alphas soon. Our lives will never be the same again. “I feel so out of place compared to you both.”
I glance down at myself, pouting at my jeans sitting low on my hips, the heels I’m stepping into, and a black halter top with a zipper down the front and long sleeves. I hate showing my arms from the scars I got during the car accident. The outfit looked cute in the mirror, especially with the silver bangles, but compared to my friends, I’m dressed down.
“Don’t be crazy. You look adorable and sexy as fuck.” Kayla chuckles and throws an arm around my shoulders, drawing me back against her. “Anyway, tonight’s about escape and getting drunk.”
“Umm, we’re missing someone,” I say, wriggling from her strong grip and glancing around. “Where’s Jess?”
