Closing my eyes as I chewed, I tried to remember that fleeting moment today when the fans were screaming and I felt almost normal for a hot second. The stage lights had made it easier to forget, blinding me and blocking out the world for a while. The minute the last song finished—an encore that ran the concert overly long and pissed off the venue management—normalcy inevitably faded and was quickly replaced by the swelling, overwhelming apathy that so recently seemed to be my default.
Tray and Mac linked up with MVP pass holders almost immediately—a college group of Betas decked out in far too much pink boasting enough body glitter that they all shimmered like two-thousand-era book vampires—and Dixon had two older Omega cougars with badly dyed hair and blue eye shadow falling all over him by the time the stadium began emptying.The boys had all goaded me, saying there were enough ‘fans’ to go around. I’d told them to bugger off and let me be. Dixon had given me the most shit, saying I might as well turn in my Alpha card if I kept this up.
He never used to be so relentless. He was just always on edge.
Because of me.
My obsession.
4
RYDER
A YEAR AGO… OBLIVION HAZE’S TOUR BUS
I thoughtabout the year-ago kiss again, the one that had pushed me off course and made the rock star life tarnish. That Omega had scorched right through me, leaving behind nothing but ash. She’d burned everything.
After her destruction, when I began to grow again, there were different flowers taking root, different trees rising towards the sky, different expectations of what my land should become. It changed my perspective and redefined my future. I didn’t want only fame. I didn’t want drug-hazed nights of debauchery. I wanted her. Needed her. Desired her with every fiber of my humanity and Alpha nature. I wanted to mark her and be marked in return. Nest with her. Bed her. Lock in so tightly that we’d never separate. And if we did? It would always be too soon and so fucking painful.
God, the way she'd smelled, the way she'd moved. Like she was tailor-made for me.The second our lips had touched; I’d had this insane moment of ferocious certainty that she was supposed to bemine. Over time, I’d convinced Dixon, Mac, and Tray—or rather I’d fooled myself into believing I’d convinced them—that if they’d only seen my mystery Omega, they’d all know why I was obsessed. Hell, maybe if we’d all mether, she’d have cast her spell across them too. We’d all be irreversibly hooked on the fan with sparkling, soulful blue eyes. My pack would have hunted for her with me. No doubt we’d have found her by now, simply because our Alphas would have united to find our goddamn mate.
If only… if only… if only.
Though, also, the idea of sharing her made my inner Alpha bare its teeth, snarling with jealousy.
The first sight of her was enough. The way she’d stared back at me through jarring spotlights and dense special effects fog. Her beautiful face was burned into my memory. Out of the blue, the vision of her would return with brutal force. Taunting me with the fact that I’d not found her. Maybe I’d never find her. Maybe that all-too-brief backstage moment was all we’d share in this lifetime.
Every day, even as the little details faded, I became more convinced that what I’d experienced with her was real, maybe the realest thing I’d ever felt. When the guys laughed, or told me I was being a fucking pansy, I wanted to scream at them.You don’t understand! You can’t understand until you feel it yourself!That shifting of worlds. That puzzle piece clicking into place, as if it was always there even if you’d never seen it. The way time began to move again, suddenly showing you that for all your miserable, damn life you’d been frozen in place. Until fate intervened. Until she arrived.
And the minute hand of your internal clock ticked, the sound deafening after so much silence.
And then the hour hand of that same, never-used timepiece yawned and stretched and also began to slowly, yet surely, move.
The guys thought I was insane, that I’d lost my mind and with it my sense of purpose. I’d forgotten the dream. The music. The reason Oblivion Haze existed in the first place. I was crazy. I knew that. The part of my brain, soul, and heart dedicated to her was the only sanity left.
Finishing the last bite of banana, I downed the remaining orange juice and stood up to walk over to the trash can. I pulled open the lower cabinet door right of the small compact dishwasher and hooked the receptacle’s edge with one finger to pull it out. The rollers protested,squeaking and fighting against the pull. I looked down to discover something chunky had dried on the rails. Gross. Not my problem. The cleaners would get it at some point. If not, the deep scrub after the tour would sort the issue. I chunked all the trash into the already too full trash bag.
Blinking up at the microwave, the time stared back. Almost midnight.
I was depressed in a bus alone. And my big post-concert victory meal had been a bottle of top shelf tequila, orange juice, and a cold, unripe banana. I couldn’t keep living this way. That’s what no one understood. It’s not like I was choosing to be the saddest fucking sack in the world.
If I could forget her and go back to carefree Ryder Hendrix, sex god singer of Oblivion Haze, I certainly fucking would.
I had tried to move on. Iwastrying. Just last week I’d told the guys we should find one scent match for our pack. I hadn’t even made it abouther. It was just… if it couldn’t be my mystery Omega, then I sure as fuck didn’t want four others in my goddamn house. On the surface, I said it would keep us all closer. One Omega meant our attention wouldn’t be divided outside the band we’d built. We’d still be one pack, one unit. When Alphas mated separately, the pack inevitably grew larger. Eventually, one Alpha and Omega pair became the de facto leaders of the group. The dynamics were just too different than what we’d created inside Oblivion Haze.
Sometimes, large packs with multi-pairings fractured. Sub-Alphas and sub-Omegas craved more than second tier citizenship. Not all large-scale packs did it well like the poor Fortune Pack; God rest their souls. I couldn’t fucking imagine having my entire pack wiped out in a plane crash.
Twenty-two souls were lost that day on the way to Verbier, Switzerland. Nineteen of the Fortune pack, the Alpha pilots, and a Beta flight attendant. I’d read somewhere that the only survivor had fallen off the grid. I didn’t blame them. I’d crawl into a hole and die if I lost the guys. The family’s law firm had kept the survivor’s photo out of the press throughout everything—the initial tragedy, the follow-up stories. Even the ‘Search for the Missing Fortune Survivor’ documentary that aired six months ago could only show a person’s shadow with a big question markover where the face should be. I couldn’t remember the name. It didn’t matter.
I needed to get over Seattle. Every part of it.
Maybe I should try harder. Put myself out there again. There’d been one or two Omegas that had smelled pretty good. I could have easily given them a chance. But how do you accept a bubbling creek when you’ve already navigated violent, adrenaline spiking rapids? How do you settle for less than perfect after getting a taste of perfection?
Before that damn Seattle concert, I’d fucked models and actresses. I’d even screwed a world-class chemist who’d formulated a perfume that intensified natural scent to a cosmic level. Being intimate with her had been like tripping on mushrooms. Wavy and wild, ending in an orgasm so intense I hurt the next day. My bed had hosted the kind of partners most guys dream about. Back then, I was ignorant. And it was bliss. I hadn’t known something was missing. Something that left me unbelievably hollow. I didn’t realize that the string of physical satisfaction was just a bandage holding me together. An attempt to feel something real.
God, they used to beg me.
Kiss me, Ryder.
