4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Mira
T he night air hits me as I step out of the building, and something's wrong. The slush coating the sidewalk soaks into the holes in my soles, flakes drifting down from a steel-gray sky as people bustle past in long, thick coats, but the usual bite of winter is muted. Like my skin is wrapped in cotton.
Not good.
Really not good.
Steam rises from street grates, carrying the stench of Canton City's underbelly… rot and waste and desperation. My desperation matches as I clutch my pathetic wad of bills, all that's left of last week's tips. It's not en ough, but Marcus might take pity on me. The thought makes me want to laugh. There's never pity in his eyes, only calculation.
My stomach cramps, but this time from hunger rather than heat. When was the last time I ate? Yesterday? The day before? The days blur together in a haze of work and fear and endless vigilance. If I hadn't had to run out of the diner today... but there's no point thinking about food I don't have.
I hurry through the shadows toward Marcus's alley, keeping my head down, trying to be invisible. My footsteps echo off brick walls as I move deeper into the darkness, waiting for that familiar shape to emerge from the shadows.
Nothing.
“Marcus?” I whisper, hating the tremor in my voice, hating how desperate I sound. The alley remains empty, silent except for the distant sound of traffic and my own panicked breathing. “Marcus, please.”
He has to be here. He's always here. What am I supposed to do if he's not here? The money in my pocket is burning a hole, useless without someone to buy from.
I hover in the alley for another minute, my gaze straining into the darkness, but Marcus's familiar silhouette doesn't materialize. The cold seeps through my thin coat, and for once I'm grateful for the numbness. At least it masks how wrong my body temperature is.
He's probably just late. Getting more supplies. Making deals.
Hopefully.
I’m so hot. Aching. Tender and nauseous.
Horny.
Something is wrong and I understand exactly what this is.
I press my forehead against the cold brick wall, trying to steady myself while I run through my limited options, but the most glaring of things going wrong surges up. The white pills. The ones Marcus sold me might not have been suppressants at all. For all I know, they could have been simple painkillers.
Which means I might have gone without suppressants for an entire week and I’m going into heat. No amount of painkillers will help that. The only things that will dim the pain are the things I refuse to accept .
Cocks.
Knots.
Alphas.
Days and days and days screaming for them. Demanding them. Begging for them.
My fist clenches over my twinging abdomen.
I’m going to be sick.
My phone screen glows harsh in the darkness: 10:15 p.m. Shit. The display shows Stacey's message again, reminding me of promises I can't afford to break. I need to move if I'm going to make it on time.
The thought of cleaning some rich person's office suite makes my empty stomach clench even more. But double pay... that could mean real suppressants. If Marcus ever shows up again. If I can trust him again . I’ll have to chance another visit here and see if he’s back. Or if not him, I’ll find someone else to buy from.
Somehow.
The buses take me from my familiar territory of crumbling buildings and desperate lives into the heart of wealth. Each transfer takes me farther from safety, deeper into a world I don't belong in. By the third bus, I'm the only passenger not wearing designer labels or carrying shopping bags from luxury stores.
The streets here are clean, the sidewalks heated to prevent ice formation. No steam rises from grates here, no garbage piled in corners. The buildings soar upward, all gleaming glass and polished steel, their windows glowing warm against the night sky. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, I see good-looking people dining in nice restaurants. Women in silk dresses, men in tailored suits, all of them laughing, drinking, enjoying their privileged lives, while people like me scramble for scraps.
A couple walks past me. They don't even see me. I'm invisible here, part of the servant class that keeps their world running smoothly. Just another beta cleaner in a cheap uniform, not worth noticing.
When I reach the address Stacey gave me, I stop short and look up. And up. “Fuck. My. Life. ”
The bright blue Pinnacle Therapeutics logo glows in a reflection on the wet pavement, highlighting forty stories of architectural brilliance. The office I have to clean is for the company that controls every aspect of omega medication. The company that works hand in hand with the government to keep us dependent, controlled, monitored.
Owned.
Pinnacle manufacture the very suppressants I buy on the black market at ten times their actual cost. The scent blockers only available with an alpha's prescription. Every pill, every patch, every chemical that omegas need to survive in this world… all of it flows through this building, through the hands of alphas who decide who gets to live freely and who doesn't.
And now I must clean their office.
The thought hits me as I stare up at the building—somewhere in there are stockpiles of real suppressants. Clean, pharmaceutical-grade pills, not the cut-rate garbage Marcus sells. For one wild moment, I imagine finding them, taking enough to buy myself months of freedom...
But reality slaps my face. I'm not that lucky, and I'm not that stupid. The labs would be locked down tight, protected by security systems worth more than my life. And even if I could get in, theft from Pinnacle would mean more than jail. It would mean discovery, registration, being handed over to Haven to be auctioned off to the winning alpha pack. A commodity. A hole to fuck. A body to use. That’s one big fucking sobering thought.
No, I'm just here to clean offices. The top floor offices. Where the alphas who control my fate sit in leather chairs and decide about omega “welfare” without ever having to look us in the eye. The ones who decide how much our freedom should cost and dole it out as though we should be grateful.
I follow Stacey’s instructions to get into the building and force myself toward the service entrance. Each step takes more courage than the last. The door is industrial, utilitarian, a stark contrast to the gleaming main entrance. This is where the invisible people enter .
My hands shake as I punch in the code. The lock clicks with a sound too loud in the quiet night. I find and step into the service elevator, my reflection fractured on the worn metal walls. I follow Stacey’s instructions and type the passcode that will take me to the top floor.
The service corridor is stark and functional, fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, and bare concrete walls. Nothing like the luxury I glimpsed through the main entrance. I find the maintenance closet exactly where Stacey said it would be, stocked with industrial cleaners and supplies that smell sharp and chemical.
As I load supplies onto the cart, a cramp twists through me. I grip the metal sides of the cart, breathing through clenched teeth, and force my cursed biology back the fuck down. Going into our first heat was the reason we’d escaped Haven.
Emma, Leah and I were about to turn twenty-three. The age when omegas experience their first heat. Instead of being held by a pack of caring alphas, our first heats were to be auctioned off to the highest alpha pack bidder, something Hugo told us about in great detail. He didn’t give a fuck that it was immoral. All he was doing was counting the cash we’d make him.
If our parents had been alive, we would have been upstairs in the common area. Uncomfortable and trained into submission, but blissfully unaware of Haven’s underbelly and how Sylvia Mercer and her cronies profit off our misfortune.
Although it’s mandatory to attend an omega facility, something that wasn’t always the case, it’s also mandatory to pay for it. My beta parents weren’t wealthy. They earned average wages at average jobs. No one thought I’d be an omega, having no alphas or omegas in our family line. I was a freak of nature. A state-run facility run by a psychopath, and a bill for my parents: that's what being an omega got me. And when a car accident killed them both and no one could pay for my education, then I had to ‘work’ for it myself.
Just like Leah and Emma had to.
Rather than face a heat being fucked by a pack of alphaholes and bonded for life for a profit we’d never see, the three of us ran. I’d made it just in time. When my heat came on days later, I found a warehouse by blind luck, abandoned and forgotten by everyone except rats. I barricaded myself in an office on the second floor, pushing a metal desk against the door and stuffing my jacket into the broken window to mask my scent.
It was five days of hell. My skin was on fire, every nerve ending raw and screaming. I clawed at myself until I bled, trying to escape my own body. The need to fuck was unbearable, a hollow, gnawing ache nothing could satisfy. I bit through my lip trying to stay quiet, tasted blood and kept biting anyway.
Fever dreams and hallucinations blurred together. I heard voices sometimes, alphas calling, searching. Each sound sent me scrambling further into my corner, pressing against the cold concrete, praying they wouldn't find me. The hunger and thirst were almost welcome, physical pains to focus on instead of the biological imperative overriding my mind.
When the heat finally ended, I could barely walk. My clothes were shredded, my body covered in self-inflicted scratches. I was dehydrated, starving, barely conscious.
But I was free.
And more importantly—unbonded.
I shake off the memory, my hands trembling as I head into the staff kitchen. As painful as it was, enduring the heat unclaimed was still a better alternative than being used by any alpha. Those bastards rule the world. I wish I was one of them. Even being a beta is preferable to my omega designation. Then I wouldn't have to worry about heats and being owned and ruled by biology. No overwhelming pheromones, nothing trying to tear me apart from the inside out. No government tracking, no mandatory registration, no Haven Institute waiting to “train” me.
Betas can walk down the street without fear. They can go to university, build careers, choose their own partners. They don't have to spend every cent they earn on black market suppressants. Don't have to change jobs constantly to avoid detection. Don't have to live in constant fear of their own biology betraying them.
A beta wouldn't be here right now, fighting back heat symptoms while cleaning the offices of the very company that helps keep omegas enslaved. A beta wouldn't wake up every morning wondering if this is the day they get caught and claimed; the day their life stops being their own .
Sometimes I watch the beta women at the diner—Cindy with her sharp tongue, Sarah with her community college textbooks. They complain about their lives, about low wages and bad boyfriends and broken dreams. They don't understand how lucky they are to have those ordinary problems. To have the freedom to have problems at all.
I'd give anything to be ordinary. To be invisible not because I'm hiding, but because I'm just another face in the crowd. To live without this constant fear, this endless vigilance, this desperate struggle to deny what I am.
My reflection in the window catches my eye again. Pale, drawn, obviously unwell. No matter how much I wish otherwise, I can't change what I am. I can only keep running, hiding, surviving. Until I can't anymore.
And then permanent decisions will have to be made.