1
Gatlin
This parking lot smelled overwhelmingly of vomit and dried bodily fluids. How the outdoors, with all this fresh mountain air, could have such overwhelming scents was truly a miracle of nature. The crumbling building, lit only with flashing neon signs, sat in the center of a lot filled with pickup trucks. To the left of my group, a couple were fucking down a side alley and the male sounded like a boar with a hot poker up its ass.
I realized why it smelled so much like puke when I stepped into a small puddle of it, and it splashed up onto the laces of my boots. Humans were fucking disgusting sometimes. I lifted my hand to motion us forward and we walked into the club, which was devoid of security at the front door.
The establishment vibrated with too much bass, like a tribal drumbeat, and it had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The smell of sweat and lust permeated every corner, and we tightened our formation around Raiden.
The distressed scent of an unfamiliar Omega had me growling low under my breath, and the humans who lingered too close quickly moved away. Not because they could hear the growl, but because they could feel the coiled violence that rolled off my Pack.
Finlo stepped closer to me, leaning in to be heard over the ear-shattering noise of the music. “Are we sure this is the place? Perhaps Seven’s nose is broken?” the other Alpha asked.
Seven scowled, baring his teeth at Finlo. Seven was a Beta, but he was a strong Beta. Too strong. It was a generally held belief that a strong Beta would resist orders and cause problems. And it was true, Seven did cause issues at times, especially when given orders. But our Pack weren’t hardcore traditionalists when it came to hierarchies. I treated Seven the way I’d treat any other Alpha—hell, any other Manix—with respect and understanding. In return, Seven was grateful to even have a Pack, even if it was one filled with misfits. He was loyal and loved, and that was worth something too.
“My nose didn’t lie. There is an Omega here, one that is close to heat.”
Ellar hovered over Raiden, practically glued to his side. “I trust Seven’s tracking. His nose is his best trait. Goddess knows, it isn’t his winning personality,” he joked, making Raiden chuckle. Unlike Seven, the family’s other Beta was like me. A half-blood Manix. He’d had no other choice than to join us, because no one else would muddy their bloodlines with a half-caste.
This was us. A tiny, ill-formed Pack, except for our one crowning jewel—our Omega.
One of the last male Omegas left, he’d chosen us to be his mates. When an Omega comes of age, he is allowed to choose which Pack he joins. No one had been more shocked than us when he’d chosen ours. Until Raiden, we’d been a rag-tag bunch of mutts on the outskirts of Manix society.
I looked over my shoulder at Raiden, whose soft expression met mine. Just a look from him shored up my resolve. Although our natural instincts wanted to protect and coddle Raiden, he was a warrior in his own right. Maybe that's why he picked us. He didn’t want to be pampered and adored. He wanted to fight and fuck, which was wildly un-Omega like. Despite the fact that Iknewhe could defend himself against humans, my Alpha instincts insisted that he be protected at all times. He was the heart of our Pack after all.
I scanned the crowd, but the overwhelming conflicting scents muddled everything. “We’ll split up. Raiden will come with me. Trust Seven’s nose,” I warned Finlo.
Finlo was my childhood best friend, and had chosen to build a Pack with me rather than join one of the more prestigious warrior Packs more suited to his bloodlines. I owed him everything.
He nodded and split off, the two Betas following behind him. I tucked Raiden closer to me as we waded further into the club. There were stages dotted around the room, each lit up with a different color. Blue, red, purple. On each stage, a woman danced, spinning around a pole. I’d been born in human society, raised here until I was eleven, and I knew what a strip club was. But Raiden didn’t, and his eyes almost bulged out of his head. He shook his head at me as he grinned.
“My sire was right, the only place you could take me is into the gutter,” he teased.
Yeah, not everyone had been overjoyed that Raiden had chosen my Pack. I nudged his shoulder with mine, despite the fact that I wanted to reach out and place a kiss on his temple. “Admit it, you like being dirty down here in the gutter with me.”
He laughed, reaching down to squeeze my hand as we parted the crowd. “Wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
We were getting a few weird looks, and that was another reason we needed to split up. Together, we seemed inhuman. Ridiculously tall and broad, we looked like the warrior race we’d once been, before we were killed off and forced to flee to the mountains of Montana, forever separate until we were slowly dying out for other reasons.
Manix. We were the real reason the word manic entered the English language. It was the way early humans described the rut, where we thirsted for blood or sex, and wreaked havoc. But now there were barely two thousand of us left. Of that, there were less than a hundred full-blooded female Manix. Only twenty-five Omegas, but none of those were female.
We were dying out at a rapid rate. Which is why when Seven said he’d scented an Omega female on the wind, we’d come on this wild goose chase. I was happy to chase a wild goose if it gave my Pack a chance at a real future.
I stayed at Raiden’s back, my eyes trawling in front of us for threats. “Scent anything?” I asked, despite the fact it galled me. I was half-blood, the result of a Manix male and a human female. Mating with humans was frowned upon, and according to the Manix Legion, little better than lying with a beast. As a result, I was little better than an animal to the upper crust of Manix society.
I pushed down the residual rage I felt toward the Legion and searched the crowd. Raiden tilted his head, his pupils blowing out wide. “That way,” he said softly, his feet taking him in the right direction before he’d even lifted his arm. If I’d had any doubt about Seven’s nose, it disappeared at that moment. I kept my hand on Raiden’s belt as he moved through the crowd with single-minded focus. He might have been the smallest of us, but he was still over six feet in height, tall in comparison to a human.
He stopped in front of a small platform, bathed in blue light so it appeared like it was in the depths of the sea. Raiden’s eyes went wide and his knees nearly buckled as he looked up at the girl on the stage. Finally, her scent permeated my duller senses.
And when I scented her? My dick went rock hard.
She danced in heels that had to be six inches high, her movements easy as her body swayed to the music. She kept her eyes closed, like she could block out the world if she just deprived herself of the sight of these salivating humans.
She was small, tiny in comparison to a Manix female. Her body curved sharply though, her figure like an hourglass of old. Given the overwhelming smell of lust that hung like a cloud around us, she had a body that men would bankrupt themselves to have just a touch.
Wearing basically nothing, her scent was like a caress, followed by a slap to the face. I could feel the Omega presence, scent her oncoming heat cycle. I cast a worried look at Raiden, whose whole body was taut with the urge to rut.
Breeding in Manix society had historically occurred in one of two ways. A female could be impregnated by a single Manix male, and would usually give birth to a solitary offspring. Or, a female and male Omega could mate during a heat cycle, and the male Omega would draw the viable eggs into himself. Afterwards, the pack would lie together during the rut and all the eggs had a chance to be fertilized. It was animalistic, feral sex that would leave the entire Pack drained and weak.
