Chapter 3
Dearest Gentle Omega
~MILA~
My phone vibrates itself off the nightstand.
I catch it on instinct before it hits the floor, eyes still closed, operating entirely on the muscle memory of someone who has worked enough odd-hour shifts to develop reflexes independent of consciousness. I squint at the screen.
6:04 AM.
Not the alarm.
Of course, it's not the alarm.
The number is one I don't have saved because saving it would mean acknowledging it as a recurring feature of my life, which I refuse to do on principle.
But I know it. I know it the way you know the specific creak of a floorboard in a house you've lived in too long—not because you looked it up, but because it's repeated itself enough times to become part of the architecture, whether you wanted it to or not.
Collectors.
Six in the morning.
Six.
I decline the call with the flat press of a thumb and drop the phone face down on the mattress.
Two hours. I've had two hours of sleep that weren't even fully uninterrupted because the building's heating made its throat-clearing noise at 4:30 and I half-surfaced, and now this.
There are people at desks somewhere who wake up, drink their coffee, open their computers, and immediately begin calling people who are already aware of every cent they owe—who have not forgotten, who think about nothing else, who are in fact dreaming about it—just to make sure the reminder lands first thing.
I hope their coffee is always slightly too cold.
I hope it is never quite the right temperature for the entire duration of their employment.
I pull the pillow over my face.
My body is made of lead and poor decisions.
Every muscle below my shoulders is filing a formal complaint about the double shift, and the back of my skull has that particular weight that comes from not enough sleep after too many hours on my feet.
My scent is muted in the way it gets when I'm exhausted—the honey and vanilla still there but quieted, the lime zest absent entirely, my own body too tired to broadcast anything.
I close my eyes.
Sleep takes me fast, the way it does when you're desperate enough to stop fighting it.
I'm on my knees.
That's the first thing I know—the cold of the floor through the fabric, the specific ache of a hard surface against bone, my hands spread flat on the ground in front of me.
My knuckles are marked. The skin across the backs of my hands carries the fresh sting of something thin and precise, and I don't look at them because looking would make it more real and I'm doing a very focused job of not making this more real.
The room smells like money. That's the only way to describe it—old money, the kind that has had decades to develop a scent, mahogany and leather and the particular crispness of a space that is maintained rather than simply cleaned.
It's a smell I know from exactly twice in my life, from offices I entered as a supplicant rather than an equal, and it sits at the back of my throat now like something I can't swallow.
The man in the black suit stands over me.
He is not large—that's what I remember noticing the first time, how ordinary his physical dimensions are compared to the space he occupies.
Average height, average build, the kind of man you'd look past in a room if he wasn't currently holding a ruler and deciding what to do with it.
The suit is expensive. Everything about him is expensive in the way that has stopped needing to try.
"Where are they?"
"I don't know." My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to. I clear my throat. "I genuinely don't know where they are. They didn't tell me."
A sound that isn't quite a laugh. The floorboards are close to my face and I study the grain of them to avoid looking up, but then his hand is under my chin and the choice is removed—he tips my face toward his with two fingers, not rough, almost detached, the way you'd examine something that interested you without being certain it was worth the full investment of attention.
His eyes are pale. Sharp. And in them, before anything else, before the calculation or the deliberation or the professional patience of a man who is accustomed to waiting for what he's owed—pity.
Actual pity.
That's the worst part. Worse than the floor, worse than the ruler, worse than the knuckles.
"What a shame," he says, quietly. Almost to himself. "A pack with a pretty little Omega, and this is how they treat her." He studies my face for another moment, something shifting in his expression. "A scapegoat. That's all you are to them."
I swallow the thing in my throat that wants to be grief and isn't allowed to be, not here, not in front of him. I don't confirm it. I don't need to. He already knows it's true and so do I.
He releases my chin. Straightens. The ruler moves through his fingers in a slow rotation—not threatening, or not only threatening, more like a habit.
"I'm usually a gentleman," he says, conversationally, the tone of a man discussing something administrative. "But your men owe me a considerable sum, and someone—" the word lands with particular weight "—has to account for it. Don't take it personally."
He raises the ruler.
I flinch—
Up.
I'm sitting upright in my own bed, both hands gripping the duvet, heart at a pace that belongs to someone being chased rather than someone who was horizontal four seconds ago.
The ceiling is familiar. The heating makes its noise.
Through the window the quality of light says morning has opinions about itself and I've been asleep for longer than I thought.
I look at the clock.
7:52.
I'm supposed to be at the café at eight.
"Oh, absolutely—"
I'm out of bed before the sentence finishes.
Bathroom. Face—cold water, both hands, the shock of it doing the job that sleep was supposed to do and didn't quite complete.
Teeth. I do them while simultaneously locating my shoes with one foot, which is a skill I developed in my first year of bar work and have never lost. The face in the mirror is not the face of a woman who has had adequate rest. The face in the mirror is the face of a woman who has had two hours of sleep bookended by a collector's call and a dream that I am not unpacking right now because there is no time and also I simply refuse.
Don't.
It was a dream. A memory wearing dream-clothes. You've had it before and you'll have it again and it means nothing new.
His face when he said scapegoat—
Leave it.
Protein shake from the refrigerator, the vanilla one that tastes like a promise someone made and only technically kept.
I shake it, open it, drink half of it standing at the counter and grimace at the temperature because I forgot to take it out last night and cold protein shakes at 7:53 AM are one of life's more reliable disappointments.
I grab my jacket.
I'm at the door.
I stop.
The kitchen island is directly in my sightline from the door.
The coin is there, gold and patient, right where I left it.
And beside it, the envelope, still sealed, beige and official, waiting with the specific energy of something that has been waiting all night and is prepared to continue waiting indefinitely, but would prefer not to.
You said you'd open it when you were less exhausted.
You are still exhausted.
You have six minutes.
I go back to the kitchen island.
I pick up the envelope.
The first thing I notice is the seal—pressed into dark green wax on the back flap, a four-leaf clover design that is not the standard government adhesive but something deliberate.
Embossed. The kind of seal that belongs on correspondence that knows it's important and wants you to know it too before you've even opened it.
The wax is cool under my thumb, perfectly intact, and the clover in it is detailed in a way that a stamp produces rather than a label. Someone made a choice about this.
Okay.
That's different.
I break the seal carefully—not tearing, sliding my thumb underneath the edge and lifting clean.
Inside is a single card of heavy cream paper, the kind that has weight and intention, and when I unfold it the print is in a deep forest green ink that I've never seen on government correspondence before. Ever.
I read the first line.
Then I read it again.
Dearest Gentle Omega—
My mouth opens.
No.
It did not just start with Dearest Gentle Omega.
Like Bridgerton. Like the actual show. Like whoever wrote this sat down, turned on Netflix, took notes, and committed.
I press my lips together. I want to cringe.
The cringe is fully formed and ready to deploy, a whole-body reaction to formal correspondence that opens like a period drama, and I hold it at bay through sheer curiosity because despite everything my eyes are already on the second line and the second line is—
Different.
I read the whole thing standing at the kitchen island with my jacket half-on and my protein shake going warm in my other hand and six minutes until I'm supposed to be somewhere.
Then I read it again.
The Lucky Clover Society cordially invites you to attend its first annual St. Patrick's Masquerade—a private, curated evening hosted in honor of the Omega community of Oakridge Hollows and the surrounding regions.
Venue and precise address enclosed separately upon confirmation of attendance.
Dress code: formal, emerald encouraged. All attendees will be provided a masquerade mask upon arrival.
I lower the card slightly.
A masquerade.
Everyone masked.
I think about what that means for a moment.
No faces, or at least—not the whole face.
The kind of anonymity that makes a room feel different.
Where you're not walking in as yourself-with-history, as Mila-with-the-debt and Mila-with-the-failed-pack, but as a person in a mask at a candlelit ball, which is either deeply appealing or completely absurd, and I'm not sure which yet.
I keep reading.