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 beendrinking 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.
