Chapter 3 Omega

She packed it all into two bags.

Twenty-two years of life fit into two bags.

The thought should have been depressing. Instead it just felt empty.

She was sitting on her bed....her former bed, staring at the packed bags when someone knocked on the front door.

For a moment, she considered not answering.

But the knock came again. Insistent.

She went downstairs and opened the door to find Dr. Reeves standing on the porch, her medical bag in hand, her expression professionally neutral.

"Lilith," she said. "I'm here to update you on your mother's condition."

Lilith's heart stuttered. "Is she awake?"

"No." Dr. Reeves's expression didn't change. "May I come in?"

Lilith stepped aside.

The doctor entered and looked around the space, the half-packed boxes, the bare walls where family photos used to hang, the systematic dismantling of everything this house used to be.

"You're moving," she observed.

"Omega housing. I have until Friday."

Dr. Reeves said nothing to that. Just set her medical bag on the kitchen counter and pulled out a folder.

"Your mother's condition is stable but unchanged," she said, opening the folder to reveal medical charts and reports Lilith couldn't fully understand. "The mate bond severance caused significant trauma to her system. Combined with the emotional shock of witnessing..." She paused delicately. "....witnessing your father's remains, her body essentially shut down."

"When will she wake up?"

"I don't know." Dr. Reeves met her eyes directly. "The human mind is remarkably complex. Sometimes people wake from this kind of trauma in days. Sometimes weeks. Sometimes...." She stopped.

"Sometimes they don't wake up at all," Lilith finished quietly.

"Sometimes they don't wake up at all," the doctor confirmed.

Lilith looked at the medical charts. At the numbers and terminology that meant her mother might never open her eyes again.

"The pack is covering her care for now," Dr. Reeves continued. "But I need you to understand something. Pack resources aren't infinite. If she remains comatose beyond a certain point, the council will have to make decisions about continued care."

"What kind of decisions."

Dr. Reeves held her gaze. "The kind where they transfer her to county care to free up the hospital bed for someone who might actually recover."

County care. Where people went to die slowly and alone because no one could afford to keep them anywhere better.

"How long," Lilith asked. "How long before they make that decision."

"I don't know. Weeks, maybe. A month or two if you're lucky." Dr. Reeves closed the folder. "I'm sorry. I wish I had better news."

She picked up her medical bag and moved toward the door.

"Dr. Reeves," Lilith said.

The doctor paused.

"Do you believe my father was a traitor?"

Dr. Reeves looked at her for a long moment. Her expression gave nothing away.

"What I believe doesn't matter," she said finally. "What matters is what the pack believes. What the Blackwoods believe." She paused. "And right now, they believe Victor betrayed everyone. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant to your current situation."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Dr. Reeves agreed. "It's not."

Then she left.

Lilith stood in the kitchen of her childhood home and tried to process what she'd just been told.

Her mother might never wake up.

And even if she did, she might wake up to find herself in county care because the pack had decided she wasn't worth the resources anymore.

Weeks. Maybe a month or two.

That's how long Lilith had to figure out how to save her.

How to pay medical bills she couldn't afford.

How to survive as an omega with no status and no protection.

How to do the impossible with nothing.

She looked around the kitchen one last time.

Then she went back upstairs to finish packing.

---

Friday morning came too quickly.

Lilith stood on the front porch of the Beta residence with her two bags and watched a family she barely knew start moving their belongings inside.

The new Beta...a man named Carson from one of the northern packs who'd recently transferred to Shadowmere, nodded at her politely as he carried a box past.

His mate, a blonde woman with kind eyes, paused. "I'm sorry about your father," she said quietly.

Lilith nodded. Didn't trust herself to speak.

"And I'm sorry about...." The woman gestured vaguely at the house. "All of this. It doesn't seem fair."

"It's not," Lilith said. Her voice came out flat. "But thank you."

The woman looked like she wanted to say more, but her mate called for her and she went inside.

Lilith picked up her bags and walked away from the house where she'd grown up.

She didn't look back.

---

The omega housing complex was on the eastern edge of pack territory.

As far from the main residential area as possible while still technically being pack land. A series of rundown buildings that looked like they'd been condemned everywhere except here, where omegas didn't get a choice about living conditions.

Lilith found her unit on the second floor.

The housing coordinator had called it an apartment.

He'd lied.

It was a room. Eight feet by ten feet. A single narrow window that overlooked the dumpsters behind the building. A mattress on the floor that looked like it had seen better days.....probably several decades ago. A lamp with a broken shade. No bathroom in the unit itself; she'd have to use the communal one down the hall.

This was what omega status looked like.

She set her bags down and looked around at what her life had become.

From a spacious bedroom in the Beta residence to this.

From respected daughter to omega.

From everything to nothing.

She sat on the mattress, it was lumpy and smelled faintly of mildew, and pulled out the one photo she'd managed to take from the house.

Her, her mother, and her father. Taken two years ago at the pack's summer festival. All three of them laughing, her father's arm around both of them, pulling them close.

They looked so happy.

So whole.

So completely unaware that in two years everything would be destroyed.

She stared at the photo until her vision blurred.

Then she carefully wrapped it in a shirt and tucked it at the bottom of her bag where it would be safe.

A knock on her door made her look up.

She opened it to find a woman in her thirties standing there....thin, tired-looking, with the particular wariness of someone who'd been omega long enough to know how the system worked.

"You're the new girl," the woman said. "The one who used to be Beta."

"Yes."

"I'm Dora." She held out a piece of paper. "This is your work assignment. You start Monday."

Lilith took the paper and read it.

• PACK WORK ASSIGNMENT Name: Lilith

• Status: Omega

• Assignment: Sanitation Services - Waste Management.

• Start Date: Monday, 6 AM

• Report to: Owen Briggs, Pack Services Coordinator

Waste management.

Garbage duty.