It's been a night.
I look at her again.
Mila.
Rowan told me the name in the car on the way here, delivered alongside the summary of her situation with the sameeven precision he uses when he's briefing me on something he wants me to have full context for. The pack. The debt. The collectors escalating to the apartment. The dead phone and the dead car and the eighteen months of trying to hold everything together alone in a town where nobody knows her history and she was counting on that anonymity to buy her enough time to find a way out.
And I knew the name.
Not from Rowan's briefing—from a dance floor. From a rose-covered courtyard and the specific gravity of forty-five minutes that had rearranged my understanding of what an evening could be. From a train platform at midnight and a gold coin in my palm and Finn asking why I was smiling when I didn't know her name.
I know it now.
The phone vibrates in my pocket and I've already missed the first call by standing here thinking, which is not a habit I normally indulge. I answer.
"You're awake," Marcus says, which is his version of a greeting at irregular hours. He doesn't waste time on pleasantries when he has information to deliver, which is why I pay him what I pay him.
"Tell me what you found."
"The pack." A sound of papers—or the digital equivalent, the scroll of a file. "Three men. Dante Reeves, Kieran Walsh, Seb Moretti. Currently residing in Cambridge. Reeves is in property development. Walsh is consultancy, financial services adjacent. Moretti operates in event management—high-end private events, the kind that require connections rather than just capital."
"Current situation?"
"They completed a bond with a new Omega three months ago. Family money, clean financial profile, no outstandingliabilities." A pause. "Which is partly why the collectors are accelerating on your Omega. The ex-pack's new arrangement is built on a clean slate. Any outstanding association with previous liabilities is a pressure point on that arrangement. If the debt is tied to your Omega's name and the collectors can demonstrate she's unable to service it, there's a path for the ex-pack's new family to absorb the resolution and close it—for a price."
"They're using the collectors to push her toward a forced settlement."
"That's my read. The apartment tonight wasn't random. That's an escalation designed to reduce her options until she has no choice but to engage on their terms."
The torn clothes.
I move to the window. The storm is still running at full expression outside—the kind of March weather that has no justification, the sky doing something specifically designed for inconvenience. The hotel sits at the quieter end of Oakridge Hollow’s main stretch, and from this height I can see a few lights still on in buildings further down the road, the last stubborn participants of a holiday evening that the weather eventually ended for everyone.
"The footage I sent," I say. "The building cameras."
"I reviewed it." Marcus's voice drops half a register. "I can get identifications. The methodology matches a crew that's been operating on collector contracts in the eastern region for about eighteen months. They're efficient, they leave specific signatures, and they don't stop until the job is resolved or the contract is terminated."
"What terminates a contract with them?"
"Payment of the outstanding amount. Or—" He stops.
"Or?"
"The target acquiring a pack. They're on contract from whoever's running the debt recovery operation, and thatoperation is predicated on her being a packless Omega with no one to intervene on her behalf. If that status changes, the risk calculus for continuing the contract changes significantly. Especially if the pack she acquires is—" Another pause, the specific kind that means he's deciding how to phrase something. "—the kind that makes the people running the contract reconsider their exposure."
I look at the sleeping figure in the bed across the room.
The blanket rises and falls with the even rhythm of genuine deep sleep.
"Walk me through the temporary pack registration," I say.
Marcus takes a beat. "You'd need all three of you to sign. I can do the filing electronically—it's a provisional bond registration, not a full claim, which means it's legally recognized for all service and protection purposes without triggering the full bonding protocols. It's designed for exactly this kind of situation: an Omega in an unstable circumstance who needs immediate structural protection."
"Timeline?"
"I can have it processed in a few hours. Backdated to this morning, which covers the hotel and any services sought tonight." He clears his throat. "There is a complication with the current legislation. The St. Patrick's Day window."
"Explain."
