Page 1 of The Dragon's Omega
CHAPTER 1
Lianna
“So, what do you think?”
“Uh…” I blinked at the trio of tan, smug Synn alphas, then cleared my throat as today’s tension headache scratched behind my eyes. “It’s… a lot… to take in.”
Seriously, what the hell did they expect me to say? Dewey, Chad, and Thad, heirs to the powerful Pack Synn, social media darlings and tech giants, had just told me dragons were real. The three dumb meatheads courting me, the only alphas who had shown interest since I put my name in the local pool six months ago, had just shattered my whole worldview, and there they were, smirking, waiting for me to, what, drop to my knees and blow them?
Fuck’s sake.
Okay.
Dragons… existed.
Vampires too. Witches. Warlocks. Werewolves. Demons. Fairies. The whole nine yards were real, living alongside us ordinary folks in secret.
A secret I was now sworn to, apparently. Only a few mere mortals were brought into the fold. Something about the delicate balance, the fate of the world, whatever—it depended on mankind believing monsters lived in stories, fables, and myth.
Most monsters kept the secret too, and those that didn’t were, uh, executed? Exiled?
These idiots had sucked at explaining the rules, babbling, barking over each other like they always did. Their pack rhythm was a chaotic nightmare, but, like every other conversation we had in the last two months, I’d managed to flag the important bits and string them together in a way that made the most logical sense.
Kind of.
Dragons were real. The supernatural existed. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. I’d only been graced with this knowledge because these lugs assumed I was a sure thing, ever so desperate to accept their invitation to become their bonded omega. In a way, I was. But I was desperate for any alpha pack at this point, and these idiots were my only option.
Idiots who, apparently, had a dragon locked in the dingy, sketchy-as-fuck warehouse looming over us on the dusty outskirts of Cedar Cove.
On Monday, Dewey had told me to wear something extra fancy for our standing Friday date, to prepare for a night I would never forget. The trio even sent a luxury car service to fetch me from the apartment—but when the driver veered away from downtown, off the beaten track to the industrial parks, boxy buildings backlit by the setting sun, I briefly entertained the idea that this had all been some elaborate scheme to kill the spinster omega that the local alphas deemed beneath them.
You know, that maybe this was a long con, a secret hit, and the promise of paying my family’s medical debts, moving Louis to a better care facility, and finding Dad the treatment he deserved was a ruse to make me drop my guard.
I mean, it had happened to plenty of omegas before. We were supposedly precious treasure, the rarest designation, the most delicate, blah, blah, blah—unless we broke the rules in front of the growing population of traditionalists in this fucking country. Step out of line and it was all re-education academies and she got what she deserved rhetoric.
And I had stuck a toe over that line more often than not after the ol’ prefrontal cortex fully developed.
But then there they were, three Synn boys, waiting in front of a ramshackle warehouse covered in shitty graffiti, wearing their best suits.
It all went downhill from there.
Well, not downhill, per se. Just… a lot. I was no stranger to fantasy media. I designed paranormal, fantasy, and sci-fi romance book covers on the regular; they paid the bills, and I had two whole bookshelves full of my published artwork. As a teenager, before I awakened at eighteen, I too thought those TV and movie vampires were hot as hell.
But fuck me. Realizing all the monsters were out there, just, you know, vibing? Waiting in line behind me at the grocery store?
A lot. Trust these Synn douchebags to drop it on me with the grace and delicacy of three dumb bulls in a china shop.
“Do you want to see him?”
“Uh…” I wasn’t usually all stutters and blinks and stunned silence, but, you know—monsters. “Is that safe?”
“Vidar has been an associate of Pack Synn since, I dunno, the early twentieth century?” Dewey swept a hand over his slicked platinum blond hair, oozing old Hollywood from top to bottom. “He was hit by hunters, like, fifteen years ago? The injury he got from the attack keeps him pretty chill, honestly.”
Pretty. Chill?
What the hell did pretty chill mean for a dragon?
“Vidar?”