Page 12 of The Boss Omega
I volunteer as tribute! Dig deep right here, CoffeeGuy!
I mentally shove my omega back into a corner before scrolling through a few more messages.
BaseballFan33:Gemma Chan.
YeahBoyyyy!!:Sabrina Carpenter.
KnotMyFirstTime:Princess Peach from Super Mario Brothers.
They all blur together.
Well maybe not the Princess Peach one.
But not CoffeeGuy’s.My omega rolls on her back, dreamy.He was interesting.
He was interesting. And nice. But I don’t say that to her.
I lay my phone face down on my desk. Time to get back to business.
The numbers on the dashboard blink back at me. My tech team built something clean and idiot-proof. You don’t have to be a numbers person to understand this dashboard. It’s very modern.
Retro charm is underrated.
I scribble a giant smiley face on a sticky note and affix it to my screen before shuffling to the kitchen to pour another iced latte from the fridge. It’s not as good as what I get from Nayda’s Café, but I suddenly have a craving.
I don’t realize I’m smiling until my cheeks ache.
Saint
The station coffee is appalling. The beans are good. I know because I roasted them myself. A medium-dark Ethiopian I've been tweaking for three months, trying to nail the roast profile I've been building in my head since before everything went sideways. But the coffee maker is shit and the brew sat too long on the burner.
I drink it anyway.
Desk duty means paperwork, fluorescent lights, and trying to input incident reports with my one working hand. Watching the guys don their gear and roll out while I sit here in a sling, pecking at a computer so old it might have been used in my mother's typing class. It’s fucking brutal.
Torn rotator cuff. Six weeks minimum healing time, the doctor said. No lifting. No climbing.
No overtime.
It left me alone with my thoughts for weeks. With my memories.
I open my banking app before I can stop myself. I leave myself just enough to live on. The rest goes to replenish my savings. What's left of them, anyway. My mom's death. My injury. The time I couldn't even leave the house because grief and pain were pinning me under.
Graham would lose his mind if he saw how little money I spend on myself. Silas would do his best to bulldoze me into using the pack account to pay it off.
We have one. A Pack Caron account. And from what I've gathered in pack meetings, it's genuinely obscene. Major purchases. Shared expenses. House repairs. Life stuff. Graham's patent royalties alone would make most people's eyes water. Silas builds furniture that sells for more than most people's cars, and somewhere along the way he turned that money into more money. Investing in business and property, something Graham tried to explain once that I mostly tuned out. The point is, the account is not hurting.
Neither would blink an eye if I used pack funds. I don't. I paid off my mom's hospital bills. She was my mom. My responsibility.
Dreams can wait. Savings can grow again. Until then, I'll keep blending special roasts for the pack and the station.
My phone buzzes.
Riverside Elite: 1 new notification.
I hesitate for a second before unlocking it.
Omega219:So what’s your screening question?
