1
ANITA
“You’ll come apart screaming if I touch you like this.”
My body responds before my brain does, slick heat pooling between my thighs at the sound of the deep, male narrator’s voice.
I shouldn’t be listening to this in public. I absolutely know that. And yet here I am, sitting on a ferry in the dead of winter, snow piled along the rails outside, sun sharp and blinding against the steel-gray water, letting Joe Hamilton ruin me one sentence at a time through my earbuds.
The audiobook is calledSay My Name, Omega. I’ve listened to it before. More than once. But there’s something about this voice, about the way he reads every line like he means it, like the words are being spoken directly into my skin instead of a microphone. Low. Rough. Dominant. A voice that doesn’t rush, doesn’t beg, doesn’t soften its edges for anyone.
I’ve never seen his face. God help me, I’ve tried. Joe Hamilton is a pseudonym, a ghost online, a name attached to nothing but sound. No photos. No interviews. No clues. Just thisvoice and the way it makes my Omega instincts stretch and wake like they’ve been waiting for him.
“You don’t get to hide from me,” he murmurs in my ear. “Not when you’re already mine.”
I suck in a sharp breath, fingers curling against the cold metal armrest of the ferry bench. The boat hums beneath my boots, cutting through choppy water toward Mistberry Cove. There aren’t many passengers. A few reading newspapers or staring vacantly at their phones. Some pressed against the windows, pointing at the rocky coastline like they didn’t realize how brutal winter could be out here. No one is looking at me, so they don’t know that my pulse is racing. That I can hear the filthy things being whispered directly into my skull.
I’ve been on this boat for nearly two and a half hours, spending most of that time either lost in this audiobook or staring out at the endless gray water, trying to convince myself I’m not making a massive mistake.
Two years ago, my pack rejected me, and after that, I decided I was done following the traditional path. Done letting other people dictate what my life should look like. Most people don’t agree with my choices. My family thinks I’m being reckless. Some friends have stopped calling because they don’t understand why I won’t just find another pack and settle down like I’m supposed to.
But this is my life. And I get to decide how I live it.
So, I built a career. Started a radio show that helps other Omegas who feel lost or trapped or invisible. I have my own apartment, my own income, my own purpose. And now I’m heading to Mistberry Cove, a coastal town, on an undercover investigation I’ve set for myself. Inspired by my radio followers, this mission could expose real harm being done to Omegas in the workplace. It’s not my first field mission, and the other two I completed went spectacularly.
That’s when the ferry suddenly shudders. A deep, metallic boom rolls through the deck, sharp enough to knock the breath from my lungs. The engine coughs. The floor vibrates harder than before. Somewhere behind me, someone swears loud enough for me to hear them through my earbuds.
I blink, heart pounding, turning around and not seeing anything worrying, so I adjust the loosening earbuds just in time to hear Joe finish the line.
“Good girl,” he whispers. “Now spread your legs wider. Let me see everything when I make you beg.”
A hard jolt runs through the boat, followed by a low, metallic clunk that sounds expensive and wrong.
My head jerks up. A few people glance around nervously. The boat shudders again, like it’s grinding against something deep below the surface. Then the engine cuts out.
Completely stops.What is going on?
For a second, it’s eerily quiet. Only the sound of waves slapping against the hull and the wind howling through the railings.
Then everyone starts talking at once.
One of the crew members is waving frantically at another near the control room at the front of the ferry. There’s smoke. Not much, but enough to make me slightly nervous.
I pull out both earbuds.
“Anita?” a male’s voice calls out from across the ferry, one I recognize.
My blood turns to ice.
That voice doesn’t belong in my present, here on this ferry, or in this new life I’m building.
I spin around slowly, already knowing who I’ll see.
Leon. My ex-packmate. The Beta who stood by and did nothing while I suffered.
He hasn’t changed much. Still stocky, built like a linebacker who never quite made the team but kept the physique anyway. His dark brown hair is shorter now, buzzed close to his skull. He’s wearing a reflective safety vest over his ferry uniform, navy blue with the company logo stitched on the chest, like he belongs here. Like he has any right to speak to me after what they did.
His brown eyes widen in what looks like genuine surprise. “I thought that was you. Wow. You, uh… you look good.”
