Lincoln shrugged him off.“I had no choice.You said to get here within twenty minutes.I was his chaperone to a doctor’s appointment.”
“Do you have any fucking idea what the boss would do to ya if he knew you brought acop’s sonto meet me?”Ford demanded, glad Lucky was distracted by his phone.Thank fuck he was wearing his dealer disguise of a fake beard, moustache and green contacts, or they could be in trouble.“Tell him to wait over there.”He pointed to a place that was a safe distance away to give them privacy, but where Lucky wouldn’t be far.
Ford grabbed the baseball cap from his car and tugged it on to cover his eyes and put his face in shadow.
Lucky appeared annoyed but stood where Lincoln told him to, then ignored him to focus on his phone.If he stayed that way, he wouldn’t see anything he shouldn’t.
Lincoln walked over and dug his hands into his baggy jeans pockets to extract two rolled-up wads of cash.
Ford took them, removing the rubber bands to fan out the notes.The Omhns were all in twenty or fifty denominations, adding up quickly to two-fifty.“You’re short a fifty.”He wondered if Lincoln was cheating him or so desperate not to get his legs broken that he brought whatever he could afford.
“I’m meeting a mate who’ll gimme the last fifty this afternoon.”
Ford stepped closer and grabbed Lincoln’s chin to tilt his head up.“You think I wanted you back in twenty minutes to shortchange me?That I wouldn’t have waited if it meant you could pay in full?”What gave this little shit the confidence to be this arrogant towards a drug dealer?“Un-fucking-believable.”Ford released him, rolling the notes up.He tossed them at Lincoln, who scrambled to catch them.“Gimme the name of the last asshole you dealt with, because I’mma break his fucking legs for letting you pull this shit.”
Lincoln looked terrified.“His name was Alec or…m-maybe Alette.”
Ford grabbed his phone from his back pocket, texted Sykes the name and asked him to run a check.He had a vague recollection of an Alette being arrested recently, just before he was given this shitty job, which could explain why he was dealing with Lincoln instead of sitting with his feet up, enjoying a smoke.“Tomorrow, be here at nine in the morning and you better have the full three or I tell my boss you can’t fucking count.You hear me?”
Lincoln nodded frantically, looking at the rolled-up money in his hands.
“You pretend I didn’t see that cash or we’re both in the shit.”He opened the car door and got in, watching through the side mirror as Lincoln stuffed the money into his trousers.
Now Lincoln couldgetthe money, that made things more sketchy.Ford wasn’t ready to take the cash, in case one of the real dealers came around.He wouldn’t be responsible for Lincoln getting his legs broken unless he was the one doing it, and he wasn’t at that stage.He still had to find the top dog, which meant digging further.
* * * *
Lucky
Lucky set aside a cup of takeaway hot chocolate and slid into the chair at the campus library desk.He instinctively swept his long plait over his shoulder, preventing it from being trapped.
Flexing his fingers, he re-read the first paragraph of his essay and shook his head.He’d rushed to get his thoughts on paper, but it was a mess.He deleted everything to start again, hoping to improve upon his quick exploration of Omha’s Tears from class.
Omha’s Tears was a natural phenomenon that struck close to one hundred and fifty years ago.This gift from Omha began as a resolution to the mass deaths of omegas from over-breeding, not only correcting that problem, but opening many more doors for the omegas of the future.
When their first heat presented at fifteen, omegas were rushed into their first pregnancy, then bred again within weeks of bearing a child.The toll it took on their bodies was immense, and omegas suffered multiple miscarriages or died during an unsuccessful childbirth.
Decades later, when scientists investigated the human story behind this devastating statistic, they uncovered omegas’ accounts and journals of the period.Revealing not a biological response to this tragedy but a community determined to fight injustice.Unhappy omegas?who felt more like breeding machines than cherished mates?had formed a secret support network.
It is unknown how many lives their selfless bravery saved, but the statistics of the ten-year period compared to the previous ten suggests the number could be in its thousands.
These brave betas, omegas and eventually even alpha relatives and compassionate doctors came together to form what became known as the Omega Freedom Movement.Together, they helped omegas hide their first heat, recommended them to health resorts, hospitals and clinics run by these understanding medics, for illnesses that never existed.The wise medics chose historical diseases that only ever struck omegas and claimed a new resurgence of the disease to explain its widespread rate of infection.
This way, they could help these omegas hide their heats and supply birth control medication to buy years of freedom and safety.
In time, nature provided a helping hand.Maturity rates ebbed and flowed throughout the following generations, eventually settling at the current rate of twenty-one.This drastic biological change caused a ripple effect that has lasted to this day, affecting how many alpha children are born, leading to a gross inequality between the number of alpha and omega children.
Alphas became aware of their own mortality, the harm they were causing the omegas they loved, and they fought for more stringent medical care, more laws and regulations surrounding omegas safety.
For omegas, the fight had been successful, but it was only the first victorious battle in a lifelong war.
Lucky ran a finger over the notes he’d made during class and absently toyed with the ends of his braid.He ignored the silly doodles at the margins and huffed a strand of loose hair from his eyes.
“Lucky?”
He dropped his pen, stunned to find Chase behind him.Lucky slammed his notebook shut with a feigned smile, hoping that Omha was kind enough to make sure Chase hadn’t seen his doodles.
Chase
