The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Four

"We need jobs."

Jules carved the decree into morning air thick with gas station coffee and the particular desperation that came from counting the same twenty dollars for the third time.

"Jobs?" Puck clutched his donut like she'd suggested voluntary organ donation. "What happened to our lucrative career in ATM liberation?"

"Toronto's different." Hank didn't look up from the newspaper he'd salvaged from the lobby—water-stained prophecy missing half its pages. "Three weeks here. Patterns form. The packs notice patterns."

Truth lived in his careful words. Toronto's supernatural underground wasn't the chaotic scramble of smaller cities where rogues could vanish into cracks between territories. This was a machine oiled with old blood and new money, every gear turning in careful synchronization.

"The Lakeshore pack owns half the waterfront." Ami traced invisible maps on the bedspread. "All those condos going up? Pack money. They run construction, shipping, anything that touches the lake. Their alpha—Ivan something—came up from Chicago fifteen years ago. Turned a dying fishing business into an empire."

"Highland controls the suburbs." Puck had done his homework between dispensary runs. "Old Toronto money. Been here since before the city had a name. They own the kinds of businesses that don't advertise—private schools, golf courses, the sort of old-boys network that still calls it 'the club.'"

"And Venture?" The name tasted like smoke in my mouth, though I couldn't say why.

"Downtown core. Financial district. Everything that gleams." Hank's massive fingers found the skyline through our grimy window. "Newest pack but moving fast. Their alpha built it from nothing in under a decade."

"Desmond Venture." Jules spoke the name like tasting poison for potency as she googled him on her phone. "Came from Quebec to escape his brother's shadow. Sebastian runs everything from Montreal to Quebec City—old bloodline, older money. Little brother got tired of being little."

"So he came here and built a kingdom from ambition and spite." Puck's grin held respect for that particular brand of determination. "Started with one office building. Now he owns twelve."

Three packs. Three different kinds of power. All of them would notice rogues who stayed too long without proper cover stories.

"Fine. Let's all get jobs." Puck launched his donut at the wall where it stuck like a sugar-glazed accusation before sliding down. "But I'm not wearing a hairnet."

I pulled my baseball cap lower, the Jays logo barely visible through years of wear. Between that and the Old Spice fog I maintained—apparently I'd chosen to smell like suburban disappointment—I'd crafted an identity somewhere between 'exhausted beta' and 'please don't notice me.' The men's deodorant burned my sinuses, but it buried the omega sweetness that no amount of suppressants could fully erase.

"You look like a boy band member who gave up on his dreams." Ami's fox eyes missed nothing. "Tragic but pretty."

"Perfect aesthetic for minimum wage."

Six years without a heat should have been medically impossible. The suppressants were black market veterinary grade, probably meant for horses, definitely not meant for long-term use. But they kept me functional, kept me from becoming what biology insisted I should be—soft, yielding, available.

"I've got leads." Hank spread classified ads across the bed like tarot cards for the desperate. "Bar near College needs a dishwasher. Cash only."

"Dibs." Dishwashing meant steam and solitude. Meant nobody looked twice at the help drowning in the back.

The rest distributed quickly—bouncer position for Hank at some neutral territory club, graveyard shifts for Jules, delivery driver for Puck, promotional work for Ami. Within days, we'd burrowed into Toronto's service industry like ticks into skin.

Murphy's Law squatted on a corner where three territories met but none quite claimed—neutral ground by virtue of being too small to matter. The neon sign flickered between MUR_HY'S LA_ and complete darkness, which felt like truth in advertising. Everything that could go wrong with a dive bar had, from the perpetually dying ice machine to the kitchen that violated health codes in languages that hadn't been invented yet.

The joke was the name itself. No big Irish proprietor holding court. Instead, Mo Chen moved through his domain like smoke through fingers—middle-aged, innocuous, there and gone before you could properly focus. Asian features that belonged to no particular country, movements that suggested something not quite human but not quite anything else.

"New guy!" Terry the cook existed in a permanent vodka sweat, his pure humanity the only honest thing about him. "Lunch rush destroyed us. Move that skinny ass."

The dish pit waited like an old friend. Years scrubbing the Cascade packhouse had prepared me for this—hot water and repetition, the meditation of spray and scrub while my mind wandered safer territories. The baseball cap stayed welded to my skull despite kitchen heat that could melt steel. Cologne mixed with grease and industrial soap until I'd created my own signature scent: Trying Too Hard, by Calvin Klein.

"Fast hands." Lisa materialized beside me, watching me demolish a mountain of pint glasses. Blonde hair piled high, server's apron stained with the archaeology of a double shift. "Last guy took three hours to do half that."

"Practice." Short answers. Downcast eyes. Keep moving.

"Mo likes efficient." She leaned against the steel counter, studying me with the casual assessment of someone who'd learned to read people like menus. "Doesn't like questions, doesn't like trouble. You planning on being either?"

"Just need work."

"Don't we all."

By week's end, I'd carved my niche in Murphy's Law's ecosystem. Four to midnight shifts, hands raw from industrial sanitizer, pockets heavy with cash that smelled like freedom. The staff treated me like furniture—necessary but unremarkable. Perfect.

The routine became ritual. Clock in to Terry's muttered complaints about suppliers. Sort the catastrophe of the lunch rush. Maintain the steady rhythm that kept the kitchen functional while servers wove between tables like dancers avoiding landmines. Mo would appear occasionally, never speaking, watching with eyes that tracked too much before vanishing into the office nobody entered.

"Strange bird, our boss." Terry confided one slow Tuesday, sneaking pulls from a flask that lived in his apron. "Been here six years, still don't know what he is. Not wolf, not bear. Something else."

"Does it matter?"

"Guess not. He pays cash, doesn't ask for papers. Could be a were-platypus for all I care."

The city's supernatural ecosystem revealed itself in fragments. Suits from Venture territory would claim the back booth on Thursdays, discussing numbers that had too many zeros while nursing single malts. Rough boys from Lakeshore favored the pool table, all flannel and fresh construction dust, paying in bills that smelled like lake water and ambition. Highland pack rarely showed—Murphy's was too down-market for old money—but when they did, they drank wine and looked uncomfortable, like anthropologists studying the working class.

"Pack politics." Lisa explained during a lull, rolling silverware with mechanical precision. "Venture's all new money flash. Lakeshore's working territory, union types who made good. Highland?" She snorted. "They still think it's 1950 and daddy's connections mean something."

"How do you know so much about it?"

Her smile went sharp at the edges. "Honey, servers hear everything. We're invisible until they need another round."

Truth. In the dish pit, I caught fragments of a city's supernatural nervous system. Venture pushing into Lakeshore's construction contracts. Highland trying to maintain traditions in a city that ate tradition for breakfast. Alliances forming and fracturing along bloodlines and bank accounts.

"Desmond Venture's the one to watch." Lisa continued, voice dropping to gossip-whisper. "Came from nothing. Well, not nothing—his brother runs Quebec like a medieval kingdom. But baby brother wanted his own empire."

"And got it."

"In spades. They say he started with one building and a grudge. Now?" She gestured vaguely downtown. "Half the financial district bows when he walks by. Not bad for a wolf who couldn't even inherit a coffee shop back home."

The story had the shape of myth, the kind of tale wolves told to make sense of power. Younger brother escapes older brother's shadow. Builds kingdom from spite and ambition. Proves blood doesn't determine destiny.

"What about the others?"

"Ivan Volkov runs Lakeshore like a corporation. Came up from Chicago with nothing but ambition and a talent for making money multiply. The Highland alpha?" She shrugged. "Richard Sterling. Old as dirt, rich as God. His family's been here since Toronto was just a trading post."

Three different philosophies. Three different kinds of power. All of them dangerous to rogues who stayed visible too long.

The motel room transformed each dawn when we reconvened. Jules would stumble in from her graveyard shift, reeking of convenience store coffee and the particular exhaustion of dealing with drunk humans. Puck counted dispensary tips while reciting the medicinal properties of various strains like poetry. Hank iced new bruises earned keeping peace at Howl, the neutral territory club where packs played nice or bled trying. Ami sorted flyers and gossip with equal precision, mapping the city through overheard conversations.

"Something's shifting." She announced one morning, arranging sugar packets she'd liberated from various cafes into pack territories. "Venture's pushing boundaries. Little things—a business here, a contract there. But it's adding up."

"Ambitious baby brother wants to prove something." Jules cleaned her knives with meditative focus. "Tale as old as time."

"Different when the baby brother has teeth." Hank's voice carried weight. "Two Venture wolves showed up at Howl last night. Young, hungry, looking for trouble. Took three of us to convince them to find it elsewhere."

The name made my skin prickle, though I couldn't say why. That phantom scent from weeks ago—whiskey and smoke and authority that cut through suppressants like paper. I'd been careful to avoid downtown since then, keeping to Murphy's Law and the safe neutrality of unclaimed corners.

"We stay invisible." My voice came out steadier than my pulse. "No pack politics. No taking sides."

"Since when are we Switzerland?" Puck's grin didn't hide the sharp look he threw my way. "Wait. You smell different tonight. Under all that toxic masculinity spray."

"Same as always."

"Nah. Something's..." He inhaled deeper, wolf senses parsing chemicals. "You're worried. Why are you worried about some rich boy alpha you've never met?"

Because his scent had resurrected something in me that six years of suppressants should have killed. Because my omega instincts—dormant so long I'd thought them dead—had stirred like something waking from hibernation. Because Toronto was supposed to be sanctuary, not another city where biology betrayed me.

"I'm not worried. I'm careful."

"Careful's good." Hank interrupted before Puck could probe deeper. "Careful keeps us alive."

Days bled into weeks. Murphy's Law became a second home, the dish pit my kingdom of steam and solitude. Mo Chen remained a mystery, appearing and disappearing with no pattern I could track. Sometimes I'd catch him watching from the office doorway, dark eyes holding knowledge he never shared.

"You wash dishes like penance." He said one slow Wednesday, materializing beside the dish machine while I attacked the dinner rush damage.

"Just need the job."

"Of course." He dried a single glass with deliberate care, movements too precise for pure human. "We all need something. Safety. Silence. The ability to disappear when required."

Allurus. The knowledge came sudden as instinct—not were-anything, but something older. Shapeshifters who weren't tied to moon or beast but to something more fluid. Rare enough that most wolves considered them myth.

"I don't want trouble."

"Neither do I." He set the glass down with a crystalline note. "That's why I built Murphy's Law on borders. Neutral ground. Nobody's territory means everybody's welcome, within reason."

"Smart."

"Necessary. This city has too many kings. Someone needs to maintain the spaces between kingdoms."

Then he was gone, leaving only the lingering scent of something ancient and adaptable. Mo Chen had survived forty years in Toronto by being overlooked, by providing what everyone needed—neutral ground, cheap drinks, and a place where the city's supernatural citizens could pretend they were just people.

I understood the value of being overlooked. Six years of practice had made me expert at dissolving into backgrounds, at being so unremarkable that eyes slid past without stopping. The baseball cap and toxic cologne were just props in a performance that had kept me alive, kept me free, kept me from becoming what the Cascade pack had intended—a breeder, a possession, a thing to be claimed and traded.

But Toronto was testing that performance. Every mention of Venture pack made my skin tight. Every whiff of alpha pheromones that drifted through Murphy's Law made my omega instincts stir like sediment in disturbed water. The suppressants still worked—no heat, no obvious markers—but something was changing.

"Good night?" Lisa counted tips while I finished the last of the glasses. The bar had finally quieted, just regulars nursing beers and old grievances.

"Good enough."

"Here." She slid bills across steel. "Your share. And maybe ease up on the cologne? You're starting to smell like a chemical spill."