Baby + the Late Night Howlers Read online

  I frowned. That made the stakes of choosing a pack higher than I’d previously thought. Rebecca’s story of changing packs left me unsettled too. If the instinct Director Tapp told me to follow wasn’t as simple and reliable for choosing my pack, then the decision ahead of me was looming larger and riskier than I expected.

  “How do you know if you’re making the right decision?” I asked.

  Rebecca nodded. “We all let different things drive our choices. I compromised between instinct and practicality and that was the right decision for me. I know omegas who were bonding and knotting for the first time on the same night. I don’t find sex so sacred not to have let myself indulge and experiment some before finally making a choice. I recommend the same for you. But don’t bond lightly. That can’t be undone.”

  3

  Scorch

  “Hey, boss.”

  I frowned as I looked up to find Bomber hanging in the doorway of my office at the club, his eyes bright and excited.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Bomber’s grin twitched. “Hey, handsome? Hey…captain?” I resisted the urge to growl, and his smile relaxed. “Hey, Prez.”

  My frown deepened and Bomber sighed and slid into the room, nudging the door shut behind him. I raised my arm up to the back of the couch, hoping he’d take the invitation to slide in next to me. He did, and some of the building tension of the day melted away. I pressed my face into his hair. He still smelled like me from the night before and it smoothed down the barbs spearing anxiety through my chest.

  “You gotta get used to us calling you that, Scorch,” Bomber said. His head tilted back to look at me and I took the opportunity to dive down, snatching a kiss off his lips with a nip of my teeth.

  “That’s a process,” I said, leaning back. “I can still be Scorch if it’s not club business, right? Speaking of, what did you need?”

  I was hoping it wasn’t club business. I’d only been Prez for three months and already I was missing the role of VP, being the one to advise but not decide. I missed Nine too, as a Prez for the club and friend to me. A better alpha. I was learning to live with that pain, just like the rest of the pack. I also preferred when things between Bomber and me were personal. Always more fun. I slid my hand between his thighs and he grinned at me with that all-knowing look of his.

  “It’s club business…sort of,” Bomber said, and I stiffened. “Pack business.”

  That wasn’t quite the same.

  “The Omega Center called. They want us to renew.”

  I frowned and leaned back from him. “It’s been three years.”

  Three years since we’d stopped paying our dues, after eight years of waiting for an omega to choose us. There’d been close calls, few and far between, but no omega wanted a strip mall and a pack of bikers.

  “I know.” His lips were twitching and that glow was flickering in eyes.

  Suddenly, I understood. “You think it’s about her?” The omega who Bomber had helped, and then came home practically dripping with her scent. I’d been so wound up, waiting for him to bring back the news from Devil’s Noose regarding our truce. And the scent had been so…

  I’d never smelled anything like it.

  I still wasn’t sure whether or not I owed Bomber an apology for how crazy I’d gotten when he was in reach, smelling like that. It wasn’t just the scent, not entirely, even though it’d been a long fucking time since I’d smelled a ripe omega, let alone one who was all honeysuckle and beeswax and cake batter. It was that it was Bomber and that scent. Like I thought he’d magically turned himself into the omega of my dreams.

  “It’s gotta be,” Bomber said, grin blooming. “I mean it’s been, what, not even a week since I dropped her off? And she was losing her damn mind every time she got a whiff of you. If they kept our file…”

  “What’d they say?” I asked, rising up off the couch. It was impossible, but just the mention of her and I thought I smelled her sweetness in the room with us. I wanted to pin Bomber down to the cushions, suck him dry, and then fill him up all over again. Just like I had that night.

  “They have an interested omega. She wants an interview. We don’t have to turn in back pay, just renew. Let them know if we have any new members.”

  We’d lost a member. But we hadn’t gained any.

  “She’s not gonna choose us,” I said, glancing down at Bomber. He scowled at me, and I raised my hands in response. “Hey. They never do. Those binders are full of mansions and doctors and private planes. Omegas want pretty nests, they don’t want bars and dispensaries and motorcycles.”

  “She can have a pretty nest,” Bomber said, voice rising. “Come on. The guys would say yes.”

  “And then feel like shit all over again when we don’t get picked,” I yelled back.

  “Scorch. Man. I’m telling you, if you’d been in that bar, she’d’ve presented herself like a goddamn dessert tray.”

  I swallowed. Bomber had described her, Baby, at length. Tall, moon pale, red hair, freckles on every inch he could see. Curves measured out in explicit detail. If she was the dessert tray, I would’ve been the rabid dog laying waste if my reaction to Bomber was any sign.

  “The pack can afford the subscription,” Bomber said.

  Nasty words rose to my tongue. That Bomber wasn’t even an alpha, what the hell did he care. Except he didn’t care about being an alpha or a beta. It was what I loved…

  Shit.

  “What if she doesn’t want you around?” I asked, my stare dropping to my boots.

  Bomber sucked in a breath. He needed to be prepared. I needed to be prepared. Omegas didn’t like their alpha’s scent drifting around on just anyone. If she chose the pack, which was unlikely, my relationship with Bomber could be an issue for her. An unhappy omega made for an unhappy pack. Fuck, I was kind of scared about how readily I might give Bomber up if an omega asked me to. I couldn’t imagine it now, but I knew how these situations sometimes went. An unbonded alpha was wild, free, a bit feral. But one good knot in an omega and priorities shifted.

  I’d also seen how beautiful a home was with an omega at the center. And I wanted that. Bad.

  Bomber sighed and crossed the space I had put between us, lifting his hands and settling them on my chest. “I will always be in your life. I am a part of this club and this pack. But if some day down the line, I’m not in your bed, you and I will be okay. If she’s the right omega for this pack, it’s only gonna make everything better.”

  That wasn’t what I really wanted to hear. “We’ll take a vote.”

  Bomber snorted and shook his head. “A vote. Sure. Wonder how that will go.”

  It was unanimous, of course. The pack renewed.

  4

  Baby

  I took a parting look at Pack Evans’ home as we pulled away in the Center’s SUV and released a wistful sigh. The property was exquisite. There was an orchard for goodness sake. And the pack was…sweet. Close to my age, which was apparently young for an alpha pack to form. They didn’t send me into a perfuming tailspin, but it made me feel both anxious and special with the way their eyes lit up every time I looked at one of them.

  And the nesting room…

  It had been a temptation. At the Center, I hadn’t understood the appeal of a nest. Not until Daniel showed me the small room by the rose garden, dimly lit by a skylight, with an enormous platform bed, every pillow known to man, and the fluffiest duvet I’d ever seen. I finally felt like an omega looking at that nest. Like I could dive straight in and tell someone I wanted chocolate and it would just…be brought to me, no questions asked.

  “Not the right fit, is it?” Yvonne asked, studying the furrow between my brows.

  “No,” I said, sighing and turning back to face the front of the car.

  Nest regardless, I didn’t want those men.

  “Shame,” Yvonne murmured.

  “Yeah. Shame.”

  We were leaving the suburbs for the city again, headed to my next interview, and I
tried to focus on Pack Evans rather than where we were going next. To Dark Cherries. To Deep Woods. To Black Coffee. To Beach Day. To Rose Bush.

  To Apple Pie and Seth.

  There were six alphas in Seth's pack that made me breathless with only a whiff of them. The other six all smelled like safe, comforting things, which was an appeal of its own. Not perfect matches, but agreeable ones. It’d been three days since I’d smelled the pack, and I hadn’t stopped thinking of them since. If I was right about it being Seth's pack, and I was pretty damn sure, I knew a little of what to expect.

  They were an MC, which meant I was looking at something vastly different than the refined country estate I’d just left. Which…yeah, was kind of a shame. I was raised in the city, in apartments, but the seclusion of the Pack Evans house was unexpectedly comforting. Omegas were sensitive, apparently, and preferred homes away from crowds. This hadn’t sunk in for me yet, but I believed the statistics.

  I also knew this pack had the good sense to have a beta like Seth. One who’d seen me in trouble and not taken advantage in any of the many ways he could have, and even some of the ways I wanted him to. I wanted to believe that was promising.

  The club would have businesses, a structure outside of normal pack dynamics, and the alphas would be used to being deferred to. I was less wild about that. Omega I may have suddenly been, but I’d been a beta for a lot longer. Or I thought of myself as one. I liked my independence, and I liked my ability to make my own decisions. If a biker pack was going to have an issue with that, then they weren’t the pack for me.

  Which brought me to the fourth thing I knew. Six of those alphas had scents I wanted to bathe in. More than bathe, I wanted to inject them directly into my bloodstream. I wasn’t even sure if I could make it through the interview without spreading myself out on a flat surface for one of those alphas and I hadn’t even met them yet. I hoped my omega reactions to their scent wouldn’t outweigh my old beta independence when it came down to it.

  We drove down from the suburbs, south into the city, passing the business district, Uptown where the galleries were and the ritzy apartments, Downtown with the municipal buildings. We made it into Old Uptown, where Lola and I lived, where the Devil’s Noose was located, and then we just kept heading south. Seth had let me take a serious detour to the Omega Center with his car as it turned out. We were in the heart of Old Downtown, on the edge of where the neighborhoods were filled with artists, and just about into the projects, when we pulled into the parking lot of a reasonably sized strip mall with two stories of apartments on top.

  A sign at the corner read LNH Plaza, with the list of businesses stacked below. Dusty’s Garage, the Green Thumb Dispensary with a marijuana leaf glowing on the side, Full Moon Diner, Roughhouse Gym, and finally, Late Night Howlers Bar and MC. The building looked well cared for—there were curtains in the apartment windows and a few amusing signs. Bikes lined the far end of the parking lot, leaving the front spaces for customers. As Old Downtown strip malls went, it was decent.

  Still, it was a long way from the country estate.

  “You’re under no obligation to attend the interviews once they’re arranged,” Yvonne said at my side.

  I snorted and shook my head, smoothing down the long blue skirt of my dress and pushing open the door of the car as it parked in front of the bar. I was going to see this through. If I made it back out of the interview unmated, I would consider it a success.

  Of course, it might be a success even if I didn’t.

  Slow your roll, Baby, I reminded myself.

  And I would have. Honestly. I would’ve been totally cool and collected if Seth hadn’t swung open the bar door at that moment, grinning ear to ear, his green eyes winking and his patches displayed proudly on his bomber jacket.

  “Hey, precious.”

  I ran right for him, not stopping or slowing down until our chests collided with an ‘oof’ of breath, and we stumbled back into the dark of the club entangled.

  “I was hoping you’d be here,” I gasped in his ear.

  His arms tightened around my waist. He smelled like alpha Apple Pie, but I didn’t even care about that. Well, my body had its opinions, but my heart was thumping for entirely Seth related reasons. I’d met this guy once, for maybe an hour, and running into his arms felt like going home.

  “I was hoping you were the one who wanted the interview,” he answered, just as quiet.

  Yvonne finally followed in, swinging the door open and revealing the man waiting in the hall behind Seth. The alpha I’d been lusting after. He was tall, beautifully handsome with full lips, large eyes, rich brown skin, and tight black curls cropped close around his head. He smelled like apple pie and he was looking at me like I’d just pulled a gun on him, all shock and terror. He was dressed in blue jeans with a white henley and that black leather vest on his chest, a wolf howling up over his heart.

  “I know you’re new to this, but that one’s not an alpha,” Yvonne said to me, too dry to tell if she was joking.

  Seth released me, both of us grinning and I glanced at Yvonne. “He’s part of the pack.”

  Apple Pie made a brief strangled noise and then cleared his throat.

  “Welcome to Pack Howler,” he said, and I leaned into Seth's side at the soft, mellow, silky tone of his alpha’s voice. “I’m Scorch.” Yvonne cleared her throat, and Scorch’s eyes widened. “Jonah. I’m Jonah.”

  “Baby,” I said, clinging to his beta’s side, hoping Seth didn’t mind the way my fingers were digging into him as if he was the anchor that could keep me from launching myself down the hall to the alpha staring at me.

  Jonah’s expression shifted, warming from shock to a steamy heat that bounced between Seth and me, the corners of his lips curling up. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Baby.”

  On his tongue, my name sounded unfinished, and I wanted to hear the rest as if it were up to him to share it with me. Between my thighs, his voice branded my core and made me ache. I was so screwed. I wanted to be even more thoroughly screwed.

  “Well. Let’s see the premises,” Yvonne said with clipped efficiency, and I shot her a glare. She definitely hadn’t called the Pack Evans house a “premises.”

  I stepped forward, expecting Seth to follow me and finding my footsteps unsteady when he didn’t. “Thank you...for giving me a chance to come meet you all,” I said, my eyes locked with Jonah’s warm gaze.

  There was something about the twitch of his body, the way he froze as I approached, which made me finally aware of the power exchange between an omega and her alpha. He looked torn between running to me and running away. In my steady approach, I didn’t just feel special and pretty and coveted as I had during my last interview. I felt in command, and by contrast, a bit out of control. The combination was heady, and my breathing was starting to turn uneven.

  A step later, and I was just a little too close. Nervous or not, Jonah was the alpha whose aroma made me want to present, and right now that aroma was blooming in the space between us. There was a moan in the back of my throat and a tremble in my thighs.

  “Baby,” he said, and there was that pause again. I wished I knew how he wanted to fill it. “Pretty sure this pack is the one with its luck turning around. Not one of us would’ve turned down the chance to meet you.”

  He purred the words, and I was lucky Seth and Yvonne reached my side before I did something embarrassing.

  “Come on, precious,” Seth said with a gentle hand on my back. “Meet the pack.”

  Jonah’s gaze traced me from head to toe once more before turning and leading the way. The hall was dark with forest green paint and wood paneling halfway up. There were old posters covering the empty space, bands and movies and concept art for motorcycles, neon beer signs.

  We reached the end of the hall and my feet stopped at the sight of a mass of men waiting in booths along the far side of the room. It was a big bar, with pool tables and low lights and a pinball machine playing a familiar jingle. It was clean. Or it was
tidy. It was also deeply embedded with the smell of alphas. My alphas, my hindbrain provided helpfully. The alphas I wanted. Under their scents, the stained carpet and ragged upholstery were heavily dressed in the smells of beer, alcohol, and sex. I’d always had a delicate sense of smell, but it was painfully strong now. The jumble in the air, the tang of beta arousal leftover in the bar and the alpha pheromones of release, left me a confused mix of irritated and desperate to be touched.

  I whined and Seth leaned into me, propping me up as I tried to swallow the sound. Not that it did any good. A solid dozen alphas all stiffened, their eyes fixing to me and their hands fastening around whatever was available in an effort to keep themselves from charging across the room to me. An alpha’s bark brought betas and omegas to heel. An omega’s whine demanded an alpha do whatever necessary to fix, destroy, or satisfy whatever ailed us.

  “I’m fine,” I squeaked out. I wasn’t. I had the irrational urge to either set the place on fire or immediately replace all the smells of other’s sexual satisfaction with my own.

  “She’s about a week from heat, if our guess is correct,” Yvonne offered the crowd.

  One of the alphas in a booth, which he occupied alone due to his enormous size, released a low growl and quickly stifled it.

  “We tried to air it out,” Jonah offered with a grimace, his stare darting between me and the bar. His hands were fisted at his side, throat bobbing with a swallow. His nostrils were flared and his eyes kept drifting down my body to my skirt. Maybe I should’ve worn pants. “We’ve been here a long time.”

  Meaning the bar, and probably the entire strip mall, was soaked in their pheromones and the history of their bed partners.

  It was a complicated form of torture. I wanted to go up to every single one of them and match who was who. Figure out which ones I’d been fantasizing about at bedtime. Apple Pie was a given, but was the one growling in the booth one of my favorites? I sort of hoped so but the room was too muddled to tell. He was a big burly looking alpha with honey blonde hair pulled back and a darker beard trimmed neatly around his jaw, and his cheeks were pink after he’d let that snarl out.