Chapter 2
Corruption
Acadia
This is absolutely ridiculous!
I’m so worked up that I have to stand up and pace. My heels click on the marble floor. Everything in this place echoes. Glass walls. Metal furniture. Open ceilings. All the outside walls are windows. All the workers wear white business suits. It’s creepy, but I’ve painted myself into a corner.
I’m 24, almost 25, and I’m ready for a pack.
You’d think omegas would be treated better at a place called the Alpha-Omega Placement Institute.
Until now, I tried to avoid registering with them.
I knew how corrupt and unfair their system is, but I thought I could still work the system and find a way to do this on a level playing field.
But this place is more complicated than I thought.
I opened myself up to be courted two years ago.
I thought I finally found my pack. The Whitehorse Pack.
An older couple who had been together most of their lives.
Both alphas. How fucking cool is that? And I was so intimidated by Bianca.
She’s beautiful and had this air of power.
Cornell was so openly kind to me. They talked about buying me a house.
I had a minor heat with them. They’d been courting me for over a year until I decided to go into a contract with them.
A contract to court. Which is very common, and expected, with omegas.
At the time, I was willing to look past some of our issues.
I didn’t want to judge them by their age or designation.
So I overlooked that I was still needy after nights together.
I needed to buy one of those fake alpha cocks with a knot to use after we hooked up.
I also kept it from them because I was worried they would think they weren’t good enough.
It didn’t even occur to me that my feelings on the matter were important as well. I was too busy being the caretaker of their feelings of inadequacy that may arise that I gave no credence to my feelings of being embarrassed my two alphas left me wanting.
It was embarrassing! For me and for them. We live in a society that is designed around omega satisfaction. It’s the whole reason alphas and omegas form packs—because omegas are needy little things.
Actually, thinking about it, it wasn’t embarrassing to buy the fake cock from the sex store.
It was not that at all. The blue-haired woman with a thick nose ring and tattoo stars across her nose that looked like rainbow freckles, described each cock to me with impressive detail.
She even pulled a smaller one out of the package that vibrated, and touched the tip with my nose, so I could feel the difference in settings.
And when I got home later, it was her that I imagined trying it on me in some fantasy where she was just trying to sell me more toys, and I was trying to pretend this was just good service.
It can’t be good when you have two full-grown alphas courting you, but you actually imagine a beta store clerk when you masturbate?
But that wasn’t the only red flag. When I met their daughter, that was too much for me to continue to justify.
I tried to overlook her age, just a year younger than me, and I tried to overlook the fact she wasn’t even told about me until I waltzed into that café. I tried to be ok with everything.
But I wasn’t.
I left the café where we met, in tears. I sat in the back of a city cab bawling, thinking about their little beta daughter being left all alone at 12 years old.
Their daughter had said things to them that didn’t match up to what they told me. They said she was a very independent girl and did so much better when she was at boarding school. But that wasn’t the truth.
They left their kid at their summer house and never really saw her again. I can’t think of Bianca or Cornell Whitehorse without thinking about that little beta girl, a suppressed omega, being rejected by her parents. Or her discovering she was an omega so late in life and having no one.
I couldn’t imagine doing that to your own child.
And then I thought, what if I had a beta daughter? What if my alphas didn’t want her? I bawled my eyes out for hours about that too. My nonexistent future child.
I dissolved my contract with them and registered with the Institute.
Now I have a whole new set of problems. I told them I wanted a pack with a beta.
Even now, my lip quivers thinking of my future beta daughter, and I want to make sure my pack would never reject her.
I need them to accept a child of any designation.
If they already had a bonded beta, then perhaps that means they wouldn’t be prejudiced against them.
It makes sense to me.
I mean, to be fair, omegas rarely give birth to betas. But they still do. And I would be damned if I bonded someone who would have a problem with that.
The problem is, at the Institute, I’ve only been presented with two options.
Two.
Thus the pacing.
Finally, my caseworker’s manager comes into the office.
“Acadia,” she says, and gives me her hand to shake. “I heard you have some feedback?”
She looks like she’s planning on pissing me off. She’s another beta, just like my caseworker. They look like the same person, just twenty years between them. They both look at me like they want to cajole me.
But I will not be cajoled!
“Feedback…right. Miss Angeline here has given me two packs. Two. I’ve been registered with the Institute for a month now. And just today all I’ve seen are two files. On two packs.”
“I believe that’s correct, yes. You want a pack with a bonded beta. We have two options here for your consideration.”
I smile tightly. “There’s no way, excuse me, on this green earth, there are only two packs available for me. That’s outrageous.”
“Have you looked through the files? Maybe before you reject them, we could go through them together and properly vet them.”
She isn’t listening to me at all. On purpose.
“Can you really stand there and admit there are only two packs that meet my criteria?”
She gives me some bullshit speech that lasts a really long time about how the process (does not) work. She says they take into account everyone’s preferences and lifestyle. They match the alphas and omegas with the highest level of discernment.
Bullshit.
“No, absolutely not. You and I both know these two packs have preferential treatment. I want all my options.”
She offers to go through them with me and sell me on them.
“No, I want all my options. I want all available options. Now. That’s possible. And I want it. I cannot believe I have to keep asking.”
She huffs before giving me her same speech all over again.
But this is bullshit and I will not stand for it.
What if I were like most omegas and was easily agreeable? I would be absolutely taken advantage of.
Both of these options are shit.
When her speech is ending, I say again, “This is not how this is going to work. You will give me all the options, and I will decide who I’d like to interview and possibly let court me.”
“No, you don’t know how this works.”
“Ma’am, let me propose an option,” Angeline says to try to calm the situation down. “You can attend the Quarterly All-Pack Soirée tonight. It’s for unassigned packs and omegas to meet organically. What if you do that while we take a second look at our algorithm?”
“Why was I not already invited?”
Miss Angeline and her manager look so guilty. It’s because I was being pigeonholed into these two options, that’s why.
I’m going to rip this place to shreds, I’ve decided.
But until then, maybe I’ll go to the soirée. I need a pack. My heat is coming up, and at this rate, I may have to book a room at a Heat Clinic.
I usually take heat suppressants. But they need several weeks to come into effect, and I stopped taking them when I thought I was bonding the Whitehorse pack.
They send me off with the information, and just for the drama of it, I push the two files I’d been given into the trash. The same files had been emailed to me, as well, so it’s only a symbolic gesture, like flipping the bird.
Which I do as well.