"We came here for the masquerade," Declan continues, ignoring this, "on behalf of a friend pack who couldn't make it. Government penalizes packs who skip the government-organized events—attendance logs, compliance flags, the usual administrative enthusiasm for controlling where Alphas are on St. Patrick's Day. Since it was a masquerade, the mask covered the obvious issue of nobody knowing we weren't the friends who should have been there."
"Did it not occur to you that you might meet someone?" I ask.
"It did not," Declan says. "And then it became a saving grace."
He says it with that specific quality he has—not proud of himself in the performative way, but satisfied with an outcome, the way a person is satisfied when a calculation resolves correctly. I have no idea what to do with being described as a saving grace by a man who found me on the staircase floor being carried out of a ransacked apartment.
"I'm a walking disaster," I say. "You know that, right? I'm not a lucky charm. I am genuinely, consistently, demonstrably the opposite of lucky. My car is deceased. My apartment is a rain puddle. My phone was already ancient, and now it's ancient and dead. You three are objectively attractive and appear to be functional adults with resources and a city life and you're calling me a lucky charm, which suggests your metric for luck needs recalibrating."
Finn looks at me with the expression of someone who has heard everything I just said and disagrees with the conclusion. "You must have an Omega already though," I add. "I mean. You're all—" I make a vague gesture that is meant to encompass the combined effect of three tall, reasonably structured men sharing a hotel suite on a Mondayafternoon. "You know."
They exchange a look.
"Far from it," Finn says.
"Why—"
"That," Declan says, "is connected to what we need to talk to you about."
I look at the donut in my hand.
Here it is.
The part where the help has a number attached to it. The repayment conversation, the obligation structure, the thing that was always underneath the generosity, and is now surfacing in a hotel living room with excellent pastries as context. I've been waiting for it since I woke up. I'm ready for it. I've been navigating this specific type of conversation for fourteen months, and I know how to keep my face neutral while the terms are established.
"Can I finish this first?" I hold up the donut. "Whatever you're about to say—I'd like to finish this. Because if there's any kind of punishment involved and you damage my hands, finishing this is going to become complicated."
Complete silence.
The kind that falls when a room has received information it wasn't expecting and needs a moment to sort itself out.
"What?" Finn says.
"Punishment," Declan says slowly. "You said punishment."
"Right, I just—" I look between them. "That's what happens? When an Omega owes a debt. That's the standard—I'm not saying it's ideal, but I've been through the process enough times that I know what the usual?—"
"What would happen to your hands?" Rowan says.
His voice is one note higher than its usual register. Not raised—one note. Which on Rowan, I'm already learning, communicates considerably more than shouting would on most people.
"I mean—" I look at the donut. Back at them. "My ex pack. When the collectors came—before the pack left officially—they would send me to meet the collectors directly. As the Omega on the debt. And the collectors would—" I stop. Try again. "It was a warning system. For the pack. Hit the Omega, the pack understands you're serious. They did it for about a year before they decided I was—" I pause. "Before they left."
Nobody says anything.
I realize I've been looking at the donut the whole time. I look up.
Finn is off the armchair.
He crosses the living room in four steps and goes down to one knee in front of me, which is—that's twice in less than twelve hours that this man has been on his knees voluntarily, which I'd find funny under different emotional circumstances. He takes both my hands in his—careful, the specific warmth of someone who understands what they're doing with their hands right now—and looks up at me.
"As much as I appreciate the proposal energy," I start, because I need to say something or the expression in his blue eyes is going to undo me, "it's a bit early in the?—"
"We would never," he says.
Direct. Quiet. The easy warmth that is Finn's baseline stripped down to something that doesn't have any performance in it at all.
"Not a single hand," he says. "Not ever. Not to you, not to any Omega, not for any reason. There is no reason. There is no context in which that is what a real man does, and I'm sorry—" He pauses, jaw tightening briefly before he releases it. "I'm genuinely sorry that you've been in a situation where that was something you expected. That it was something you planned around. The fact that you're sitting here asking us to let you finish a dessert before we hurt your hands—" He stops. Shakeshis head. "That's not going to happen. It is never going to happen."
