At Eight AM Sharp

"What happened?" She laughed, sharp and mean. "You mean besides my father dying and getting branded a traitor? Besides my mother being in a coma? Besides being demoted to omega and losing everything?" She held up her bleeding hands. "This is what happened. This is what omega life looks like."

"I didn’t know it was this bad...."

"You didn’t ask." Her voice was flat. "You decided to leave when i needed you the most. Don’t pretend you care now."

"That’s not fair....."

"Fair?" The word came out loud enough that a few people turned to look. She lowered her voice. "You want to talk about fair? You spent three years telling me you loved me" She stepped closer to him. "And then the second my family got demoted you vanished, I became nothing. So don’t you dare stand there and talk to me about fair."

Miles’s jaw tightened. "My father...."

"Oh i know what your father would have told you to do." She was so tired. Too tired for this conversation. "I know you couldn’t fight him even if you wanted to. But you could have been kinder about it. You could have at least pretended to give a damn when my entire life fell apart."

He said nothing.

Because there was nothing to say.

They both knew she was right.

"I have to go," she said quietly. "I have work at six AM."

"Gwen..."

"Goodbye, Miles."

She walked away and didn’t look back.

When she got back to her room, there was a notice pinned to her door.

RENT OVERDUE Amount Due: $400 Payment Required By: End of Week Failure to Pay Will Result in Eviction

She stared at the notice.

Rent was four hundred a month. Her omega wages barely covered three hundred. She’d been scraping by for two months by eating less, walking everywhere instead of taking pack transport, doing without things she needed.

But she’d known this was coming.

The math had never worked.

She took the notice down and went inside.

The room was dark and cold. The lamp with the broken shade cast uneven shadows across the walls. The mattress on the floor looked even more depressing than usual.

This was her life.

Eight by ten feet of misery. Twelve-hour shifts hauling garbage. A mother who might never wake up. Medical bills she couldn’t pay. Rent she couldn’t afford.

No way out.

No options.

Nothing.

She sat on the mattress and pulled out the photo she kept hidden in her bag. Her, her mother, and her father. All of them smiling. All of them whole.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then she lay back and closed her eyes and tried not to think about how much longer she could keep doing this before something broke.

The knock on her door came at seven PM.

She almost didn’t answer it.

But it was insistent. Loud enough that the people in the units around hers would complain if she ignored it.

She opened the door to find a pack messenger...a young man she vaguely recognized....standing in the hallway with an official-looking envelope.

"Gwen Thorne?" he said.

"Yes."

He handed her the envelope. "Alpha Duncan requires your presence in his office tomorrow morning. Eight AM. Don’t be late."

He left before she could ask any questions.

Gwen stood in the doorway and stared at the envelope in her hands.

Summons to the Alpha’s office were never good.

Especially not for omegas.

Especially not for traitors’ daughters.

She opened it with shaking hands.

OFFICIAL SUMMONS

Gwen Thorne

You are required to appear before Alpha Duncan tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM sharp in the Alpha’s administrative office. Failure to appear will result in disciplinary action.

This meeting is mandatory and non-negotiable.

That was it. No explanation. No context. Just a summons.

She read it three more times, looking for clues about what this could be about.

Nothing.

She went back inside and sat on her mattress and tried not to panic.

Alpha Duncan wanted to see her.

The last time she’d been summoned to his office, her entire life had been destroyed.

What was left for him to take now?

She didn’t sleep that night.

Just lay on the lumpy mattress and stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what could possibly be waiting for her tomorrow.

Nothing good.

She knew that much.

Because nothing had been good in two months.

Nothing had been good since the day her father’s body came home in pieces.

And she had a terrible feeling that tomorrow was going to make everything infinitely worse.