She nods.
Small. Real.
I look at the three of them on a cobblestone street in afternoon light—this woman who has been carrying things alone for too long in a white-and-yellow dress with a teal phone box under her arm, and the two men who are as close to family as I have, who found her by different roads and ended up in the same hotel room and have apparently, unanimously, made a collective determination about what happens next.
Twenty days.
That's what's registered. That's what's legal. That's what the paperwork says until Easter.
And surely, we can convince her that this can be forever with a bit of luck on our side.
CHAPTER 23
Six Feet Under
~MILA~
"Wait."
I look at the papers the councilman has been stamping without once making eye contact with any of us. "We have to log dates? As in—documented proof of dates—to void the provisional bond after the twenty days?"
"Nineteen now," he says, to the papers.
The registry office is a municipal room that has never committed to any particular decade. The furniture is the institutional variety—wood-laminate desk, rolling chair with one armrest that doesn't quite sit level, filing cabinets along the far wall that are so overfull their drawers don't fully close. A poster on the wall explains Omega Rights and Registration in a font that was modern approximately fifteen years ago. The overhead light is the fluorescent kind, which doesn't discriminate between good and bad situations and applies its flat assessment equally to everything in the room.
I'm sitting between Finn and Declan on a bench that seats three if all three are on terms with personal space,which we are at this point. Finn's hand is in mine—easy and warm, the bourbon-and-orange of his scent right there, and the specific comfort of hand-holding that I've now catalogued as a Finn default when he decides someone needs anchoring. Declan's knee is an inch from mine. His cedarwood-and-whiskey registers even over the municipal smell of the room, which is copy paper and old coffee and the particular dry warmth of government heating.
Rowan is in the single chair to the left.
Leg crossed, arms folded, the expression of a man who arrived in this room fully prepared to be the most knowledgeable person in it and is confirming the assessment.
The councilman—mid-fifties, the specific grey of someone who has worked under fluorescents for decades—has not looked up from his desk since we arrived. He processes paperwork the way certain people process everything: as a sequence of tasks to be completed rather than a situation to be engaged with. Our presence registers to him as forms to be stamped, not people to be addressed.
"New protocol," he says, still to the papers. "Packs must demonstrate active participation. Photos, activity records, proof of shared residence. Government doesn't care if it's staged or genuine—that's not the point. The point is evidence."
"So the point is paperwork," Finn says.
"The point," the man says, "is that Omegas have been using the provisional bond system as a short-term convenience for long enough that the government decided to install friction. Most Omegas only rush into pack arrangements when they need out of a situation. The government is tired of processing the fallout."
That lands.
I don't move, don't change my expression, but the words settle somewhere in my chest with the specific weight ofsomething that is both about everyone and specifically about me simultaneously. I have, in fact, entered a provisional pack arrangement to get out of a situation. He's not wrong about the pattern. He's just saying it the way people say things when they've decided the category is more relevant than the individual case, and the individual case is sitting right in front of them not being seen.
"You could say the same of Alphas," Declan says. His voice carries the even, deliberate quality of someone who has made the decision to engage and is choosing his words with precision. "Using Omegas for domestic stability, for social positioning, for the designation-related benefits that accrue to bonded packs under the current tax code. The convenience argument runs in both directions."
The councilman shrugs, still not looking up. "Alphas have the standing to make those choices. We're the functioning members of the economic structure here. The government's recent enthusiasm for penalizing Alphas for not bonding is frankly—" He waves a hand. "Bombastic. Most Omegas don't bring enough to the arrangement to justify the commitment, and the ones who do are already taken. You're asking us to bond with Omegas who want the lifestyle and the security without bringing corresponding value. That's not partnership. That's subsidy."
I press my lips together.
I have thoughts. Several of them, fully formed and entirely ready for deployment. The thought about what value looks like when you've been working three bars, two café shifts, and a holiday-weekend double shift while carrying fifty thousand dollars of someone else's debt. The thought about what it costs to be the Omega who brings nothing when you've been the Omega who gave everything and still ended up in a registry office listening to a municipal employee explain your market position.
I close my mouth.
Nothing I say in this room is going to be heard. I can feel it—the specific quality of a person who has already organized the world into categories and placed me firmly in one of them before I sat down. Saying the right things to someone who has already decided what you are is just a performance for an audience of one who isn't watching.
I squeeze Finn's hand.
He squeezes back, once, the pressure of someone who has noticed and is acknowledging it without making it a thing.
