Chapter 12 Never An Unproblematic Night
Never An Unproblematic Night
~MILA~
By this hour, seventy-five percent of the crowd has reached one of three states: aggressively celebratory, incoherently philosophical, or passed the threshold where decision-making is a theoretical concept.
The remaining twenty-five percent are the ones holding their liquor, still lucid, still loud, which is often the more dangerous category because they have enough coordination left to act on whatever is currently running through their heads.
The game ended an hour ago—a win, judging by the way the Alpha-heavy section in the back erupted when the final buzzer went, the sound of it cresting over every other noise in the building before settling into the satisfied roar of men who have the outcome they wanted and are now celebrating with the full conviction of people who personally contributed to it from their barstools.
Green and gold everywhere. That's the aesthetic tonight—some in the full formal of the masquerade event, suits and dress shirts that have loosened through the evening, ties pulled open, collars undone.
Others in the casual local interpretation: green jerseys, gold chains, the particular combination of patriotic sentiment and sporting occasion that Oakridge Hollow produces each March like clockwork.
Two distinct populations sharing the same bar, the wealthy out-of-towners and the regular locals, coexisting with the specific tension of groups who are both having the same holiday and having it completely differently.
I've been moving since I walked in and I'm going to keep moving until Danny calls it or the clock does.
"Specialty whisky. Neat."
The man at the end of the bar is mid-forties, well-dressed, the particular ease of someone accustomed to ordering in places where the selection is excellent and expecting that standard to be met.
He has the scent of a city Beta—clean, neutral, with that indefinable metropolitan quality that comes from living somewhere with enough ambient stimulation that the body stops broadcasting and starts conserving.
His eyes track me as I move to the whisky section of the back bar.
"What are you looking for?" I ask. "Peated, unpeated, age?"
"Something with age. Not the commercial stuff."
I look at what Clancy's actually has behind the rail—an exercise that takes a trained eye, because the interesting bottles are always at the back or on the lower shelf where the presentation doesn't prioritize them.
I find what I'm looking for third shelf up: a fifteen-year Highland single malt that has no business being at a St. Patrick's Day bar event and is here anyway, possibly forgotten, possibly deliberately stocked by someone who understood what they had.
I take it down.
The pour is a proper one—not a demonstration pour, but the correct volume for a neat whisky, which means room for the nose to open in the glass.
I set it on the bar mat without flourish.
Let it sit for a moment while I reach for a small water dropper, the kind that serious whisky bars keep for the ask, because if you're going to pour a fifteen-year Highland correctly you offer the water drop alongside.
He watches the whole thing.
"You always work in small towns?" he asks, not unkindly—with genuine curiosity, the tone of someone who is revising an assumption in real time.
"Last couple of years."
"Because from where I'm standing—"
"She used to work the high-end city circuit."
Elvin.
I do not look at Elvin. I keep my eyes on the bar and let him finish, because looking at him encourages him and not looking at him only slows the process without stopping it.
"Competition winner," Elvin continues, from his position at the service end of the bar where he is supposed to be managing the floor orders and is instead providing an unsolicited biographical overview.
"Regional, then citywide. She doesn't like to talk about it but the plaques are literally at Hannigan's on the back wall. "
Danny hung those plaques. I didn't ask him to. They've been there for eight months and I've accepted them as a feature of the building now, which is the only dignified option.
The man picks up the glass. Noses it properly—he has a palate, I can tell immediately, the way someone approaches whisky tells you everything about whether they're going to use or enjoy what you've given them.
His expression shifts to the particular quality of a drinker who has found something they weren't expecting.
"Last time I had something poured like this," he says slowly, "was in Chicago. There's a reservatory bar there—"
"On the Riverwalk?" I ask.
His eyebrows go up.
"Rosemarie," I say.
He stares at me. "That was her name. How did you—"
"She's a friend. She's actually in this town, has been for a while—she's on leave right now with her pack, but she came through the city bar scene the same way I did. Different route, same destination eventually."
He sets the glass down and looks at me with the expression of a man recalibrating a lot of assumptions simultaneously. "They really do hide the genuine talent in small towns."
"It's quiet here," I say. "Quiet has its advantages."
He reaches into his jacket and leaves a tip on the bar mat that makes Elvin emit a small sound from the service end. Generous isn't the word—it's the kind of tip that a person leaves when they've decided you gave them something worth more than a drink.
"St. Patrick's Day being what it is," he adds, settling back on his stool, "I'd usually be in the city for this. But half the good bars are either shuttered or the licensing situation has gotten complicated."
Elvin perks up. He cannot help himself when there's information incoming. "How so?"
The man shrugs, rotating his glass. "New regulations.
Government bill passed last autumn, been rolling out since the new year.
If you want to operate a licensed bar above a certain revenue threshold, the ownership structure now requires an Omega in the pack or the application gets denied.
Renewal applications, new licenses—all of it.
They've given existing operations an eighteen-month window to comply or close. "
"No." Elvin's voice has the specific register of a man experiencing genuine shock. "That can't be real."
I'm working on a pint at the other end of the bar, back partially turned, but my ears are entirely present in this conversation.
"It's real," the man confirms. "The Omega Movement's been lobbying the hospitality industry for three years.
The bar and restaurant sector was the third vertical they hit.
Tech was first—those were the headlines.
Healthcare was second, quieter but significant.
Hospitality was third and it's hitting the hardest because the margins in bars are so thin that any additional compliance overhead—finding an Omega partner, restructuring the ownership docs, reapplying—it's accelerating a lot of closures that were already marginal. "
"So the reason the city bars are thinning out—"
"Part of it. Some are just shutting rather than restructuring. Some are scrambling to find Omegas who want a piece of a hospitality business. The ones who planned ahead are fine. The ones who didn't are facing an eighteen-month clock."
I set the pint on the bar mat without turning around.
The Lucky Clover Lounge.
Five years from now, post-debt, hypothetical, the plan I keep in a separate file. A licensed bar above the revenue threshold, which it would need to be to be worth doing properly.
Pack required.
Which is—I have no reaction to that. That's a future-Mila problem. Present-Mila has a pint to deliver and a broom waiting for her in the back.
I turn around.
The pint recipient is a man two seats down from the city visitor, and his scent is immediately distinct—sharp and sour, the acidic edge that certain Alphas produce when they've been drinking aggressively for too long and the alcohol is souring in their system, their natural dominance signature turning rank underneath it.
He's been at the bar for the last hour and a half and each hour has made him louder and more specific about his opinions.
I set his pint down without comment.
"You know, if I ever opened a bar," the city visitor says, resuming conversationally, "I'd want someone exactly like you running the drink side of it. You know your spirits."
"Opening a bar takes money first," I say.
"More than most people factor in. The license, the fit-out, the inventory float, the staffing to get you through the first year before you're turning a reliable profit—" I wipe the bar mat from the previous pour.
"Being in a small town doesn't help with access to capital.
And you'd need the pack structure now, on top of everything else. "
He tilts his head. "The new regulations cut both ways, then."
"Right. Alphas get penalized for not having an Omega in the structure.
Omegas are in the same position from the other direction—you need men alongside you to look credible to the licensing board.
The optics of the industry haven't caught up to the legislation yet.
" I lean one arm on the bar, because this is a real conversation and it deserves the engagement.
"It's good policy with a structural flaw.
The intention is sound. The execution requires infrastructure that most independent Omega operators don't have starting out. "
"You'd also want someone who knows the underground side," Elvin says, jumping back in because of course he does. "The legit surface stuff is only part of it. Distribution relationships, the right suppliers, knowing who's worth doing business with below the headline—she knows that too."
The city visitor looks at me with genuine amusement. "You have a publicist."
"I have a coworker who has never once been asked to do this and continues anyway."
Elvin is unbothered. He is constitutionally incapable of being bothered by this specific kind of thing, which is both his strength and the reason I can't be properly annoyed with him.
"Well," the city visitor says, reaching into his jacket again and producing a card, which he sets on the bar with the ease of someone who does this regularly and means it.
"If you're ever looking to expand your situation—I'm in real estate and hospitality investment.
Small-town bars with the right operator are actually a reasonable proposition right now with the city closures pushing foot traffic outward. " He taps the card once. "Keep it."
I look at the card.
I pick it up.
I put it in my apron pocket.
Which is the most dramatic thing I've done all evening and I do it completely without expression because showing enthusiasm about a business card at 3 AM behind a bar is not a thing I'm doing.
"Appreciate it," I say.
The pint man grumbles something.
The city visitor glances his way and then back at me with the brief, communicative look of someone who has clocked the situation and is not getting involved but is acknowledging it. He takes his whisky and relocates down the bar.
"If I find an Omega and open a bar," the pint man says, to nobody specific, in the tone of a man who is generating arguments rather than making points, "I'd want one that actually does what she's told."
Nobody responds. Priya at the far end of the bar finds something to arrange. Jamie has retreated to the floor.
"Could even be worth it to this one," he continues, in the direction of my back because I'm at the service end now checking the stock. "The city one said he'd take you as his Omega—" he makes a sound that is not really a laugh. "What, you think you'd actually last?"
I keep working.
Bars at 3 AM. The rule is simple: they want a reaction and the best response is none at all. Let them run out of material. This man is going to run out of material.
Elvin, however, has principles and considerably less patience than me.
"You've been drinking her pints for the last ninety minutes," Elvin says, with the exact level of calm that makes the observation land worse than any actual confrontation would. "Without complaint, until just now. So I'm not sure what that argument is actually based on."
The man at the corner of the bar—the one who'd been having the quieter conversation about bar regulations—adds, "If you're going to start something, take it outside. Nobody here is interested and the bar doesn't need to close early because of one person's decision-making."
I hear the stool scrape.
"You calling me a problem?" The pint man's voice has gone from loud to specific, which is the register that means the ambient aggression has found a target. "Skinny little—what are you even going to do?"
"I'm going to finish my drink," the other man says, with the unhurried composure of someone who has assessed the situation and found the other party insufficient. "And I'd suggest you do the same."
"I'll do what I want." The pint man's scent has crossed fully into the sour-dominant territory now—that rank, acidic Alpha aggression that fills a room faster than most scents, cutting through the collective bar smell of hops and spirits and bodies and landing in my receptors as a clear signal. Danger-adjacent. Unregulated.
"All you two have been doing," he announces to the general bar, "is flirting with the Omega because you think—"
I'm at the back of the bar by then, broom in one hand, dustpan in the other, clearing the spilled glass from forty minutes ago that's been waiting for a lull.
The glass had come off a table in the general rowdiness of the game's final minutes—nothing dramatic, just someone's elbow and a pint that didn't survive the encounter—and I'd put it aside with the intention of coming back, and now I'm back, crouched, doing the sweep.
The noise level means I'm catching about half the conversation from this position, which is fine. I've heard variations of this argument more times than I can count. It runs out of steam eventually.
The specific timbre of the pint man's voice escalates.
Not the words—just the pitch. The way certain sounds cut through ambient noise by virtue of frequency rather than volume.
"Mila—" Elvin, sharp, two syllables, the register of someone who has run out of diplomatic options.
"Move!"
I lift my head.
The fist is already coming straight to my face..