Knot Your Problem: Pack Origins Book 2, page 1
Knot Your Problem
Pack Origins - Book 2
L.A. Clyne
Copyright © 2023 L.A. Clyne
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by copyright law.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-6456117-3-1 (digital)
Cover art: L.A. Clyne
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My son couldn’t pronounce great grandma when he was little, so my grandma became GG to us all.
GG gave me a box of her old Harlequin / Mills & Boon books for my thirteenth birthday. I’ve been a voracious romance reader ever since. In all its forms, from classic literature and sweet contemporary, to paranormal fantasy with an occasional side visit to erotic taboo (I mean, who hasn’t taken that trip, right?).
So, this one’s for you, GG. See what you did. I blame you for this book.
xxx
This is a sweet, reverse harem, omegaverse romance written with multiple points of view. It features growly, protective alphas, a silver fox beta, and a feisty omega.
Each book in the Pack Origins series will focus on new packs, and has a happily ever after, while continuing the apocalyptic background story of the Crash. They can be read as standalones, but it is recommended to read in order to get the most out of the series. If you are reading as a standalone, check out the catch-up chapter.
The story contains MFMMM steamy scenes, with some light MM interactions, and the heroine doesn’t have to choose between her men.
While this is not a dark romance, there are references to past institutional abuse and domestic violence, including historic deaths. There is no abuse within the packs or the community they have built.
If any of the above makes you uncomfortable, this may not be the book for you, and that’s okay. Take care of yourself and enjoy your day. Otherwise, happy reading.
Are you jumping into the Pack Origins series with this book, or has it been a while since you read Knot Your Princess?
If so, here’s a quick explanation of how this omegaverse world works and a recap of the Crash, the Omega Palace, and what went down with Maia and her pack (they pop up a lot in this book, more than I intended, like those pushy relatives who get all up in your business but you can’t turn away because you love them so much).
If not, go ahead and skip this part. You’re good. I won’t tell anyone.
If you’re still with me, here goes. We’ll start with the basics. In the Pack Origins omegaverse world, everyone has a designation as either a beta, omega or alpha. Betas are the most common designation and have no unique traits. The world considers betas to be ordinary.
The first sign someone is an alpha or omega usually presents in their early teen years, alongside puberty, when a distinctive scent forms that is unique to each alpha or omega.
Omegas are generally shorter than betas, curvy and incredibly attractive. They are usually female, male omegas being incredibly rare. Omegas crave touch and naturally give off pheromones that enthrall alphas. Even betas aren’t immune to their charms.
Omegas were prized once upon a time, but are now treated as chattel to breed. They cannot own property or live independently. Traditionally, omegas were highly fertile, but fertility rates for female omegas have been dropping for decades, along with the numbers of newly presented omegas and alphas. A female omega almost always has an omega or alpha child. Betas can as well, but it is much rarer.
Alphas are incredibly strong, highly dominant and display animalistic traits. They have a tendency to growl and have a dominance bark that can make a beta, omega and even a weaker alpha submit to them. Alphas can express their bark through a growl, a word, or a sound. Beta society frowns upon alphas using their dominance bark, so an alpha will usually be stealthy or discrete about doing it. It mostly happens in dark spaces, during dark deeds.
Regardless, betas revere alphas, and they usually end up in the military or as leaders in the upper echelons of society. While omegas are taken from their families as soon as they present, sometimes forcefully, and sent to the Omega Palace, where they are trained on how to please an alpha.
The Omega Palace promotes themselves publicly as an elite finishing school, but in reality, it’s more of a mandatory boot camp that brainwashes omegas into believing they are submissive. Secret, forced submission is common for any omegas who don’t comply with their teachings.
After an omega turns twenty-one, the Palace presents them to society at a series of glamorous balls and parties, originally designed to let an omega find her mate. Now, it’s a barbaric free for all, where alphas pick their favorite scented omega and bark their chosen into submission, usually after money has changed hands.
To the outside world, omegas appear to live like princes and princesses at the Palace, but they have no freedom or choice. Forced omega matings rarely result in pregnancy. Despite that, the Palace persists. Once forcefully mated, an omega’s scent changes and they are no longer recognizable to their true mate.
Alphas and omegas who are true mates recognize each other by scent, but true mates have become little more than a legend in modern times. Once upon a time, groups of alphas also often lived together as a pack with an omega, until it became considered dangerous, as they were too powerful. Packs are now outlawed by the government, with the backing of the Palace.
Prime alphas, highly dominant alphas who could dominate more than one person at a time, and kept other lone alphas in check, also existed in the past, but they died out or were hunted into extinction, so the world has lost them to little-known history.
In Knot Your Princess, Maia is an omega who hid at her gramps’ rural farm until he died when she was twenty-one and her younger brother betrayed her to the Palace. Her older brother mysteriously disappeared as a teenager and wasn’t there to protect her anymore.
Maia lived at the Palace for three years, but refused to submit to any alpha’s bark. The fact she had hidden for so long, by subduing her scent, and could resist an alpha’s bark, made her an anomaly. The Palace studied her to learn her secrets, often torturing her with food and sleep deprivation, sometimes even beatings, to force her compliance. It never worked.
It became a challenge for alphas to take turns trying to bark Maia into submission. Until a well-connected alpha, Ronan, became fixated with her to the point of obsession. She knew she was living on borrowed time as his attempts to dominate her became unhinged and the Palace’s research tests on her became more extreme. Yet she couldn’t find a means to escape.
While she was in isolation, the electricity went out around the country and she emerged into a world in chaos. The government and military had all but disappeared, and anarchy descended. People called it the Crash.
As Ronan returned, accompanied by a rogue military unit, she took her opportunity to escape. Her only two friends at the Palace, Ava and Cary, urged her to flee, intending to follow when they could.
Maia stole an old rusty bike and fled blindly, with only rough directions to Ava’s uncle’s farm, a few snacks and an old book she had been reading just before she fled. After days on the run, exhausted and alone, she came across a gate that led to a tranquil farm. In the dawning light, she became transfixed by the sound of laughter coming from the fields and scents of home.
After being discovered, Maia reluctantly agreed to come inside the gates where she met three alphas, who all reacted to her scent instantly. When she touched one of them, her omega burst from her confines and she could no longer hide. Despite them all being true, scent matched mates, the alphas held themselves back from mating her, wanting her to accept a mate bond willingly.
The three alphas, Damon, Hunter and Leif, were ex-military who had no interest in forcefully mating an omega. They had turned their backs on society and ran the farm together with their best friend, and Leif’s boyfriend, a beta named Max. They took Maia into their protection and pursued her, in their own ways, driven by an instinctive need to become a pack together. With the world gone to hell around them, they no longer felt bound by society’s rules.
The farm was fully sustainable, designed that way before the Crash. The people living inside still had access to food, water, and electricity. Everyday things that were now in high demand outside their gates. It also had high fences and security, as Leif’s sister Lexie ran a secret women’s refuge at the farm. It was a utopia nestled discreetly into the surrounding forest, in the midst of a crumbling world.
However, trouble followed Maia. Sirena, an ex-girlfriend of Damon’s, caused trouble within the farm, while Ronan stalked her from outside the gates, causing security issues. Maia decided to leave, worried for the safety of her friends still at the Palace and her new family within the farm. But Damon, Hunter, Leif and Max convinced her to stay and rescued Ava and Cary from the Palace for her.
Maia eventually stood up to Sirena and gave her an opportunity to be a better person. Maia’s relationships with Hunter, Leif and Max steadily developed and strengthened into something more as she mated each of them.
Damon, however, fought the pull, held back by his fears. As one of the most dominant alphas in generations, he kept himself tightly controlled.
Maia’s old, very illegal book helped them discover Damon was a prime alpha. The book, and Ava’s knowledge of it as well, also helped to reveal that Maia had gone into heat. A hormone fueled sexual rut that lasts for days and makes the omega and alphas highly fertile, something only an omega with a true mate will experience.
Knot Your Problem begins at the same point as Chapter 35 in Knot Your Princess, before the final climactic scenes and the end of the book. It’s set just after Sam, Maia’s long-lost brother, and his best friend Claudio show up outside the farm’s fences to rescue Maia and end up staying to help when alphas from the Palace attack the farm.
However, Lexie isn’t around for Sam and Claudio’s arrival and doesn’t know them when they are all thrown together a short time later with life-changing consequences. This book shows the ending from Lexie’s alternate perspective and experience, then continues her story as she navigates the new world she’s thrust into.
If you haven’t read Knot Your Princess, you can always check it out after you finish Lexie’s story, and read Maia’s version of events.
Enjoy!
one
I was standing in the study of my brother’s cabin as I felt a sense of danger heighten all my senses. The tension in the room was so thick I could feel it pushing on my skin like the air held weight.
The family I’d chosen surrounded me, alongside a few new friends, and I wondered, briefly, just how far I would go to protect these people from the mounting threats outside our gates.
My brother Leif and his best friends Damon, Hunter, and Max had spread out in front of the sliding glass door, scanning the edge of our farm and the forest beyond. I could see the tension in all their bodies. The dogs guarding our cattle out in the forest beyond our fences were barking like crazy and the animal handlers had just reported spotting two unknown men in the trees.
“Lexie.” Damon’s terse voice lightly barking my name had me tensing up and readying for action when I met his gaze. “I need you to take Cary and Ava back to their cabin and stay with them until we know more. They don’t know our protocols or emergency procedures, so you’re responsible for them. Got it?”
I nodded quickly, and for once, I didn’t argue. Biting back my snarky retort. We had potential intruders, and our peaceful life at the farm had become precarious since the Crash. I didn’t want to distract anyone from what they needed to do right now.
I took a quick, deep breath to settle myself. Then I grabbed Ava’s hand and motioned Cary towards the door, but Cary turned towards Damon instead.
“I can help,” Cary said, as he planted his feet firmly in place.
Damon looked him up and down. Cary was a big guy, darkly menacing and aloof, but he was a rare male omega, and we didn’t know him. We had only met Cary and Ava last night when the guys rescued them from the Omega Palace.
Cary and Ava had barely gotten a night’s sleep and a meal in their bellies, and now we had danger at the fence. It impressed me that Cary would offer to jump in and help when he didn’t know us, either.
“I appreciate the offer, Cary,” Damon said, “but I don’t know your training or skills, and we don’t have time to figure it out right now. Next time, I’ll use you. I promise. But right now, we’ve got this covered, and I need you with Lexie. If things go south, she’ll need your help.”
I didn’t need the help, but Damon’s decision made sense. I figured he didn’t want the distraction of an unknown male omega, who smelled tantalisingly like vanilla ice cream, hanging around when they needed to focus on the imminent threat.
Cary lowered his head slightly and swallowed hard before turning away slowly, as though the decision disappointed him, but he understood. He squared his shoulders and took a defensive position behind Ava, a spot he seemed to take instinctively.
Maia glanced at me, and I nodded again before turning for the door. I knew the guys would keep Maia safe. What she wanted, though, was written all over her face. She was silently asking me to keep her friends safe, too. It meant a lot that she had confidence in my ability to protect them after only knowing me for a short time. I wouldn’t let her down.
I patted my leg for Bear to follow, out of habit, but he was already in front of me, ready to lead the way. He gave me a long look over his shoulder, the equivalent of a teenager rolling his eyes.
Bear was part of the pack that was supposed to watch the livestock. Only Bear had adopted us, mainly me, instead of our herd. Nothing I did could shake him. I didn’t really mind; he was good company.
I took off behind Bear, and Ava pulled into step next to me, giving Bear a nervous glance. She was wary of him. I got it. He was a giant Anatolian Shepherd and looked intimidating. I had watched grown men shake when he growled at them, but he was a big blonde goofball when he wanted to play.
“So you read Maia’s banned book about packs, huh?” I asked Ava, trying to make conversation and distract her as we hustled up the path to the guest cabins, noticing the worried frown on her face.
“Yeah, I noticed Maia was always reading it in the little nook in the library she would hide in. So I started doing the same whenever she would disappear. It made me feel like there was hope for her, and for us all.”
I snuck a look behind us toward Cary, and he seemed to have stiffened up at Ava’s mention of hope. Maybe he didn’t hold any for himself? He watched our surroundings warily while pretending he wasn’t listening to us.
I hadn’t seen Ava and Cary talk directly to each other much, but they seemed to gravitate naturally to each other, and he was incredibly protective of her. Maia had told me everyone else at the Palace treated Cary like a circus freak.
“Hey, Cary,” I said, wanting to put him at ease, too. “Our fences are electric, and we’re one of the few people still to have electricity. People will take a poke at us, but it’s only one of our defenses. The guys have got it covered. Nobody has made it through yet.”
He glanced at Ava, then looked at me and gave me a quick nod before returning to watching our surroundings. I didn’t think he intended to trust Ava’s protection to anyone but himself.
Ava took no notice of our exchange, which seemed strange to me. Her eyes always seemed to be sliding away from him. With all that delicious dark skin, gorgeous high cheekbones, and full, pouty lips, Cary was almost too beautiful to look at. He looked like he worked out, too. Throw in his inherent omega allure, and I kind of got it. It was like looking at an exotic flower that you knew was deadly, but you felt drawn to touch it, anyway. Sometimes it was safer not to look.
Still, if a man looked at me with half the intensity Cary directed at Ava, I’d seriously have to rethink my casual sex only rule. I had never met an omega before Maia arrived at our farm, though, so I didn’t know how they normally interacted. I’d heard Omegas could get jealous around each other, which was why the Palace kept them apart and isolated a lot. Yet Maia and Ava seemed tight.
I switched my focus back to Ava. Ava was an omega too, and when her dark cherry scent mixed with Cary’s vanilla ice cream, it was a potent mix. She was shorter than me and seemed fragile, but had curves for days, long dark hair, a smattering of light freckles across her pale skin, and enormous green eyes. She looked like a delicate princess, making you want to pick her up and stash her somewhere safe to protect her. I was a beta and didn’t swing that way, but even I wasn’t immune.
I shook my head and tried to get my focus off the two intriguing omegas, and back on our surroundings. I took a deep breath again, now that I was outside. The scents of the farm that always seemed to float up the hill on the breeze, a sweet mix of fruit and fresh growing things, always centered me. The scent changed subtly with the seasons, but always fed my soul.
I caught the faint sound of people yelling hello to each other in the fields, laughter drifting down from the women in the dining hall kitchen, and animals calling in the distance. The sounds of a busy farm usually brought a quiet joy to my heart, yet right now, they seemed at odds with the tension in the room we had just left.
