Omega On Contract

Chapter Two -The Blonde

There was no more time to visit the butterfly parks, hang out with Ricky, read, or listen to music. I was up before five to beat the Bisari morning traffic and I’d leave work at six only to arrive home at nine. Most days, I slept in my work clothes, too exhausted to change let alone eat dinner. The work culture in Bisari was overwhelming and I was drowning in stress, incapable of slowing down, it felt like I was wilting.

More than ever, I missed the green mountains. I missed quiet rides to the market. I missed cooking my own meals instead of eating whatever I could get from the vending machine. I missed making the bed for my Alpha, watching him spread his body with a satisfying groan. I missed his alcohol-breath cuddles as he squeezed me against his large frame. I missed slow mornings after he had gone to work and the pleasure of caring for his cats. He was not without his faults but he was there, present, by my side. He was mine, and I was his, and now, I was no one’s, and belonged nowhere.

It was in the thick of this sickening loneliness that I first met them.

First, it was her, Annabelle Vantrope Carmichael, the daughter of Evanelle and Luiza Vantrope Carmichael, founders of Vantrope Industries, who had just stepped into her role as the C. E. O of the company a few years prior. It was impossible to live in the capital city of Bisari and not know who she was.

I had only been living in the capital for six months but was already well acquainted with her person, from her political views to her general investment portfolio, even before Ricky landed me the job at her company. She was in the news almost every other day, either being criticized for attempting to monopolize Hazalu’s free market or using her power and influence in the palace to sway policies. Every night, when I tuned into the 9 pm news, her freakishly pale skin, platinum blonde hair, and dazzling green eyes were plastered across the screen as news anchors debated over whatever was the issue that day.

Growing up on a farm, and being taught by my religious leaders about the dangers of greed and the importance of community left me with a bias against billionaires. No one got that wealthy without exploiting the vulnerabilities of the masses, and in her case, she came from a long line of billionaires who had spent generations upon generations exploiting the masses.

Annabelle was the epitome of privilege, an Alpha whose entire life had been handed to her. I had no business agreeing with most of her policies and opinions on society, but I found more and more I hardly ever disagreed with these said opinions, if anything, I was enamored by how well-spoken and collected she was even in the face of constant critique, even when it was me critiquing her in my mind.

She was a distant distraction, an idea I knew would never manifest in front of me because Alphas of that caliber never ever crossed worlds with Omegas like me. Her husband was the son of the royal secretary, an accomplished author, regarded very highly in society. It came as a surprise to me when I found out she was married to an omega, seeing as Werewolf Bisarians abhorred omegas, but I supposed for an omega like him, successful in his own right, the rules were not the same. Omegas like him could have Alpha’s like her, that was how things were supposed to be.

The first day I met Annabelle Vantrope Carmichael, the wind was blowing. A winter storm was brewing in and in Bisari and I had been sent to clear a new load of mail from the delivery team. I had only been working at Vantrope for three months and was still getting a hang of things, trying hard to appear stronger than I was.

I splurged on a new row of suits and heels, ditching my usual coquettish style because it made me look too much like an omega, soft and dainty. I wanted to be taken seriously, but more importantly, I didn’t want to lose the highest-paying job I had ever had because of my s*x.

I struggled against the wind to receive the large delivery, approving each box one by one before they were stamped as protocol demanded. Ten boxes of mail, ten stamps, ten signatures, now all I had to do was push the heavy metal crate back to the elevator, a task I knew would have been easy for anyone else, even another omega who wasn’t steadily being depleted of vitamins.

The wind was fighting me from every corner. The weather in Bisari was unlike anything I ever withstood. A cold, snowy city designed to favor vampires, but that day was a particular kind of difficult because of the raging storm.

As I struggled to push, two cars pulled up to the front of the building and a band of security personnel alighted from the second before the doors to the first car were opened, and from it alighted the striking tall blonde seraphic figure whose skin was the palest thing I had ever seen and in a single breath, before her face was revealed to me, I knew who she was.

I blinked, halted, and gawked in both disbelief and wonder.

Three months I had been working at Vantrope and not once had I ever since the woman herself. No one ever saw the woman herself. As I have said, she was an idea, something people aspired to, the news couldn’t stop talking about her, and neither could the blogs, fashion magazines, gossip channels. You don’t meet people like that. You talk about them, hear about them, but you don’t meet them. But there she was, all six foot four of her, walking away from her car, as though that was normal.

There was a tug in my chest that slithered quickly to my abdomen and I swallowed to wet my throat. Her platinum blonde curls were in the wind, unleashing her pheromones violently into the air, a sweet, flowery, woodish scent overpowered my senses and for the first time in the five years since fleeing home, I felt the knot throb between my legs as if my body was preparing itself to receive an Alpha.

The strength in my limbs drained and my knees buckled. I gasped, shoved the cart, and went tumbling to the ground.

A security guard hurried to me, eager to help with the boxes as panic and a trembling sensation quickly consumed me. It was as though I had instantly been overcome with a fever unlike anything I had ever felt before and my heart was violently palpating. I could feel my insides burning as I struggled to lift myself off the ground.

“Everything okay?” her voice came with the clicking of her heels and I became so still that it took me more than a few seconds to breathe again. “I’ll get that.” With a single hand, she lifted the steel crate I had been struggling with to a stand and the guards rushed to her, urging her to relinquish the responsibility to them.

I kept my eyes on the floor, too afraid to look in her direction, because now she was closer, her pheromones were like a wicked punch to the gut weighing me down. It wrapped around me, causing my skin to burn with an intensity I had never experienced before, not even with my alpha, and I was battling to keep myself together, to keep my knot from completely loosening.

“Hello there, need help standing?” Annabelle asked, stretching a slender pale hand and I sprang to my feet, fisting my hand to help tame the shiver coursing through me.

I stretched my neck upward to meet the glowing emerald orbs of her gaze and my heart seized again. Up close, she was unbelievably striking, tall enough to make me feel like I was drowning in her presence, her shoulders broad and sharp, and so very daring, yet the lines of her face were almost too delicate for an alpha.

“Thank you,” I stuttered and her lips curved up into a little smirk.

“You’re welcome…” Her eyes trailed down to the ID card hanging around my neck and she leaned in, almost completely bending over to get a better view of it, the nearness doubling the intensity of her pheromones expanding my lungs. “Wonderful,” she read my name out loud and I bit down on my lower lip as she straightened. “Keep up the good work.”

“Y-yes, ma’am.” I blinked at her broad shoulders as she walked away, her hair swaying roughly behind her back. I was transfixed, finding it difficult to move until she was beyond my sight.

The guards arranged the boxes back on the crate and walked me back to the elevator before parting ways and I stood there, still in a daze counting the seconds as the fever scorched through me.

The elevator door opened, I wheeled the cart in and made my way back to the post department. There was still so much work to do in sorting them, and then distributing them according to departments, but I needed a break to collect myself, a fever was coming.

I had already taken suppressants that morning and thought there would be no further need for them, my flash heat circle was still weeks away, and it was only then I needed milk. But my body was burning and the fever was growing more intense by the minute. I worked in a building filled with alpha’s and sometimes their pheromones made my body react, it was one of those things I had grown used to dealing with over the years. However this was different, I couldn’t quite determine what was happening because even when I was marked, nothing felt this draining.

Once I checked in the boxes of mail, I decided on a break in the nesting room, a cozy blue space designated for omegas to allow us take rest during their heat cycle. Before Vantrope Industries, I had never before seen anything like it at the previous companies I worked in and I figured the C.E.O was more empathetic towards Omega’s because her husband was one. Nonetheless, I avoided it like a plague. Openly nesting in the room was the same as screaming to everyone that my s*x was a lie.

But I needed it that day. My mind and body were everywhere. I was jittery and nauseous with a migraine that seemed to worsen with every second.

The nesting room had suppressants stocked for Omega’s who needed them, all of the bottles were filled to the brim since no one ever took them. After popping a few pills, I crawled into one of the ten nesting pods and tried to calm my mind by listening to the sound of waves, it always helped when I was in heat, though I was certain this was not a heat cycle, but rather stress and exhaustion. Sometimes I got a fever from exhaustion, one of the many downsides of being an unmarked omega, I was tired all the time.

Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and tried to relax my body and mind, reaching for a point of calm. I had always been good at that, it was what kept me going when I had nothing else, the ability to give my mind a clean slate. But there, surrounded by the sound of trickling water and blue light, her face reappeared in my mind's eyes, and the strong scent of her pheromones I thought I had escaped returned in harsher waves and I dug my fingers into my thick curls, gripping my head as though it was about to explode.

Her pheromones were commanding and overpowering. In a city filled with Alpha’s, I had experienced my fair share of pheromones, it was just another thing to deal with, but this was different. There was no dealing with it, no subduing it, no managing it. Was it really possible for an alpha’s pheromones to command my body so easily? Or was my body finally completely crashing, succumbing to the absence of an owner?

Shivering, I fought to keep my body still, holding my head as hard breaths made their way through my lungs. The nausea hit me like a tidal wave, then the ringing in my ears, the stinging in my eyes. My throat became too dry, making it difficult to swallow. I struggled to push myself off from pod, and by the time I reemerged in the hallways, the world spinning, and everywhere had become too quiet, the workstations empty, the lights dim, the night sky dark.

“Oh heavens…” I muttered, shocked, realizing I had spent the rest of day in the nesting pod, abandoning all of my work.

My shoulders deflated with a sigh, but the pain, nausea, and extreme thirst would not let me feel the impending doom of getting questioned by my superiors about my absence from work.

Moving my body through the hallway as I sprinted to the bathroom felt like pushing a thousand bricks. I hurled myself across the door, the vomit already filling my mouth before I was at the sink, painting the procelain white with the pale green hues of vomit, my hands gripping the sink for support.

Once I felt empty enough, I turned on the tap, letting the water wash everything away as I straightened, the reflection of my disheveled appearance finding me almost instantly and we stared at one another long and hard before I lowered my lips to the tap and rinsed off whatever vomit residue lingered in my mouth, not that it helped much, the bitterness remained.

I traveled to the kitchen with light footsteps, the aches and shivering making me hunch and squeeze my stomach. The kitchen was always stocked with everything employees needed to get through the day and electrolytes were one’s best friend when they had completely spewed their guts in the bathroom. Moving slowly, I traveled into the storage room in search of the pack, my vision blurring and dimming even though there was enough light in the store to light up my entire apartment ten times over.

It began with the fluttering of my heart, gradual and then suddenly so overwhelming I was forced to the ground again. My knot loosened, bringing with it an awful ache between my legs and in my lower abdomen as if being wrung by very indelicate hands. Panic set in when my head began to buzz, as though an alarm had gone off, and before I could scream for help, the world around me went black.