I sit with this for a moment.
A vetted pool.
No one who just shows up and decides they're owed something.
"So they're bringing people in from around the towns," I say. "Maybe the cities."
"Bigger playing field than anything Oakridge Hollow has run before." He tilts his head. "I'm not telling you to find a new pack, Mila. I'm not rushing you toward anything. But connections—those are worth something independent of all the rest. You walk into a room that's been curated, you might meet someone who's been where you've been. Another Omega who got out of a situation like yours and can tell you how." He pauses again, and when he speaks the next part it's quieter, more deliberate. "You never know who you're going to meet."
I look at the coin in my palm.
Connections.
That's a different word than romance. That's a practical word. That's a word I know how to work with.
The debt doesn't care about my feelings about mixers. The collection agency that calls Tuesday and Thursday mornings doesn't care that I've had enough of standing in rooms while my biology gets evaluated. Fifty thousand dollars is fifty thousand dollars, and if this event is what Danny says it is—private, selective, the kind of gathering where the people in the room actually have resources—then maybe the point isn't to find a pack.
Maybe the point is to find a way out.
Could be different. Could be exactly the same as every other time. You've thought it was going to be different before.
Dante seemed different. Kieran was charming for three full months. Seb could talk anyone into anything, including you.
But this one—hand-picked Alphas, private society, no walk-ins?—
"I'll look into it," I say.
Danny's face does something warm. "Good girl."
"Don't push it."
He grins. "You're going to make a brilliant bar owner someday."
"Debt-free first," I tell him. "Then maybe I can reach your grand level, oh senpai."
He stares at me. "I genuinely still don't know what that word means."
"Think of it like a professor. A master of the craft. The one who walks into the room and everyone knows."
He considers this with the gravity of a man being offered a title he's not sure he deserves. Then: "Marvelous. That's the most marvelous thing anyone has called me since my ex-wife said I was a magnificent pain in her ass."
I laugh before I mean to—a real one, the kind that escapes before you can make it smaller. "That's arguably better than senpai."
"Arguably." He pushes off the wall. "Alright. Back to it. If it stays this quiet I'll cut you in an hour—let you get some sleep before the café."
I straighten immediately. "I appreciate that, but I need the?—"
"Full shift pay," he says, and the wink he delivers alongside it is the specific wink of someone who anticipated the objection and already made the decision before I opened my mouth. "You're clocked in. That's that."
I open my mouth.
Close it.
"Danny—"
"Go check on table seven. The couple in the corner have been nursing the same two drinks for forty minutes and they look like they're either about to break up or get engaged and either way I want a tab open."
He heads back toward the bar floor without looking at me again, one hand raised behind him in a half-wave that closes the conversation before I can reopen it.
