The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Five

"It's perfect."

Puck's arms spread wide, prophet of abandoned places, except his revelation was a building that architectural dignity had abandoned somewhere between Vietnam and disco.

"It's condemned."

Jules traced the notice with one finger, following the anatomically optimistic graffiti some artist had added in Sharpie.

"Nearly condemned. Completely different. Like being nearly pregnant—doesn't count until it's official."

The apartment building squatted on Queen Street, five stories of water stains and wishful thinking. Windows patched with cardboard and duct tape created a mosaic of urban surrender. But walking distance meant something when you worked minimum wage. Cash in hand meant more when the landlord's eyes went flat and lifeless at the sight of bills.

"Two bedrooms."

The super navigated stairs that sang threats with every step. Cigarette smoke had replaced his atmosphere years ago, followed him like a personal weather system. "Utilities included. First and last up front. No pets, no parties, no meth labs."

"What about regular labs? For science?"

Ash fell directly onto carpet that had surrendered to entropy. "Twelve hundred a month. You want it or not?"

We wanted it.

The apartment was an archaeological dig—layers of neglect you could carbon date. Linoleum peeled away from corners like flowers dying in reverse. Walls wore the nicotine stains of a thousand bad decisions. The kitchen cabinets opened onto a thriving roach democracy, complete with tiny infrastructure and what might have been organized government.

My backpack hit floor that might have harbored hardwood under the grime. Dust motes swirled in light struggling through windows clouded with decades of other people's breathing.

"Actual bedrooms. With doors."

Ami spun through empty space, mapping territory with her body the way foxes map forests—every corner catalogued, every escape route memorized in the movement.

Privacy tasted strange after six years of shared everything. Jules claimed one bedroom through the simple act of standing in its doorway. Hank and Puck took the other without discussion. The couch became mine by elimination—better angles on the door, clearer path to the window, all the paranoia a girl could want in synthetic leather.

"We'll need furniture."

Hank tested floorboards systematically. Each groan got catalogued in that bear-shifter way, building a mental map of structural weaknesses.

"I know a guy."

Puck's phone emerged, scrolling through contacts definitely not saved under government names. "Does estate sales. Midnight estate sales. Very exclusive."

Within a week, we'd built a nest from the city's castoffs. The couch reeked of whiskey and divorce proceedings. Our dining table bore scars that suggested either passionate cooking or attempted murder. Beds that had supported other dreams now supported ours—lumpy with history but horizontal, which was all that mattered.

Jules strung Christmas lights because overhead fixtures required faith we couldn't afford. Ami's crystals caught what light struggled through and threw rainbows across water stains, nature attempting renovation through pure optimism. Hank reinforced every lock with the patience of someone who understood that doors were really just suggestions with hinges. Puck manifested a television that received three channels—Korean game shows, Swedish news, and something that blurred the line between aerobics and soft-core porn.

"Almost like real people live here."

The Koreans screamed about something while Swedish subtitles provided context in a language none of us spoke.

"We are real people."

Ami's thrown cushion carried the scent of the laundromat two blocks down—the one that charged extra but didn't spontaneously combust. "Just the kind that know which bodega sells cigarettes to minors and where to source veterinary-grade hormone blockers."

The pills went down bitter as truth. Little chemical lies that kept my omega nature buried deeper than secrets in cement. Six years without a heat. The back-alley doctor had used words like "impossible" and "trauma response" and "medical mystery" while pocketing cash that could have bought groceries for a month.

Let it stay impossible. Let it stay buried with the girl I used to be, the one who'd believed in pack law and lunar blessings and the natural order of things.

Our neighbors composed Toronto's forgotten symphony. 3B dealt something that required a revolving door of clients with twitchy eyes and exact change. The woman across the hall juggled three kids with the exhaustion of someone who'd given up on dreams and settled for survival. The couple downstairs communicated exclusively through violent s*x or violent arguments, volume always set to eleven.

"Twenty says there's a grow op on the fourth floor."

Jules leaned in our doorway, cataloguing criminal enterprise with professional appreciation.

"That's definitely meth. Chemistry doesn't lie."

"You're both wrong."

Smoke and honey voice, Quebec accent thick enough to spread on bread. She materialized from 3A like bad decisions taking human form—platinum blonde with roots dark as buried secrets, makeup that promised your wallet would thank her for stealing it.

"Fourth floor's a puppy mill. That smell? Dog s**t and broken dreams, mon chou."

Coyote. The scent hit before the visual processed—canine but leaner than wolf, meaner than dog. Survivor species dressed in ripped denim and borrowed beauty.

"Chloe."

No handshake, just a smile sharp enough to shave with. "You're the new strays everyone's gossiping about."

"Everyone?"

Hank filled our doorway, protective instinct automatic as breathing.

"Building's got eyes, petit. Five pretty young things paying cash, keeping vampire hours? People notice. People talk."

"People should mind their own business."

Jules's hand had definitely found her switchblade, fingers probably already caressing the release.

"In this shithole? Business is all we got. That and making sure nobody's too crazy for our delicate ecosystem."

Those predator eyes took inventory, cataloguing us like items for sale. "Not cops—too smart and too pretty. Not dealers—too stable. So what's a pack doing in Toronto's finest architectural mistake?"

"We're not a pack."

The denial came automatic but fit worse each time, like clothes shrinking in the wash.

"Sure you're not."

She pushed off the wall, hip-sway practiced enough to be weaponized. "Word of advice? Building's got rules. Don't s**t where you eat. Don't bring cops. And if someone's door is open, don't look inside unless you want to become an accessory after the fact."

"Noted."

Hank's diplomat voice, the one that had prevented murders in parking lots across six years of bar work.

"Also—"

Key sliding into lock like a promise. "Laundry's in the basement but the machines eat quarters and occasionally catch fire. There's a place two blocks north that only overcharges a little and hardly ever explodes."

Her eyes found mine, held like a trap finding prey. "And honey? The Old Spice isn't hiding what you think it's hiding. You smell like my uncle Maurice, and he's been dead since the first Trudeau."

The door closed on whatever response I might have mustered.

"I like her. She's got style."

"She's a coyote."

The words came flat as roadkill. Coyotes were all edges and hunger, would gnaw through their own bones for freedom. Made wolves look like lapdogs.

"And she made us in two seconds flat."

"Everyone makes us. Subtle isn't exactly our strong suit."

Truth. Five shifters cramming into a two-bedroom wasn't stealth. We'd gotten comfortable, forgotten that comfort killed more shifters than silver bullets.

Chloe wove herself into the building's ecosystem over the following weeks. Worked nights—"dancing" with air quotes heavy enough to anchor ships—and spent days sleeping off whatever the darkness demanded. Men visited her apartment with the regularity of public transit. Sometimes she came home with bruises she wore like accessories, purple and yellow badges of survival s*x work.

"Used to work Montreal."

We sat on the fire escape sharing cigarettes neither of us wanted, props in the performance of normal. "Better clubs. Cleaner clients. But Montreal's got too many eyes when you're trying to disappear."

"What made you run?"

"Who says I'm running?"

Smoke curled between us, her smile sharp enough to gut fish. "Maybe I just prefer the scenic route, chère."

The scenic route through back alleys and bus terminals, through cities that didn't ask questions and apartments that didn't verify references. Below us, Toronto's supernatural underground pulsed like a second circulatory system—wolves and witches and things between, all pretending humanity while humanity pretended not to notice.

"Your boy."

She nodded toward our window where Puck practiced juggling kitchen knives, because boredom and sharp objects naturally went hand in hand. "He single?"

"They're all single."

Everyone except me, who wasn't anything—not available, not interested, not omega enough to register on anyone's radar.

"Even tall, dark, and furry?"

"Hank's complicated."

Bear shifters who'd fled their clans usually were. Something about matriarchal disappointment left specific scars.

"Aren't we all."

Ash flicked into darkness like tiny falling stars. "You know Venture's pack runs this neighborhood? Not officially, but his people have eyes everywhere. Fingers in every business that matters."

Venture. The name rolled through the city's supernatural substrate like tremors before an earthquake. Alpha who'd built an empire on intelligence over brutality, transplanted Quebec bloodline growing new power in Toronto soil.

"We're nobody. Just trying to make rent."

"Nobody's nobody in this city, ma pomme. "

The endearment came automatic, professional intimacy from someone who'd learned to manufacture it by the hour. "Especially not a pretty omega trying to drown herself in drugstore cologne."

My spine locked like a door slamming.

"I'm not—"

"Please."

Hand waving denial away like smoke. "Been in this game too long, mon coeur. Know an omega when I smell one, even under enough Old Spice to strip paint. But relax—your secret's safe. We've all got things we're not advertising in this building."

She vanished inside before I could construct a defense, leaving truth's aftertaste bitter as suppressants.

The building breathed around us—water pipes like veins, electrical systems sparking like synapses, all of us cells in something larger and sicker and necessary. Addicts and dealers and s*x workers and us, supernatural strays playing human badly in a city too exhausted to care about our performance.

"You good?"

Hank appeared in the doorway, concern written in the set of his shoulders.

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"Dangerous habit in this neighborhood."

Inside, our apartment had achieved its final form—comfortable chaos with a side of barely contained disaster. Puck's knife collection had colonized the coffee table like an occupying force. Jules's makeup had established a bathroom dictatorship. Ami's crystals caught light in every window, throwing rainbows across water damage in nature's attempt at interior design. My work clothes had achieved sentience beside the couch, dishwater and grease creating primordial soup.

"Family meeting."

Jules's announcement meant someone had scored beer and we'd pretend adulthood for twenty minutes. "Rent's due tomorrow."

Cash pooled on our suspicious table—wrinkled bills reeking of kitchen grease and dispensary weed and industrial floor cleaner. Tips from delivery runs and graveyard shifts, under-table payments in denominations the tax man would never see. Counted out, it was enough. More than enough, even.

"Holy s**t. We're doing it."

Ami sounded genuinely shocked. "Paying rent. Like actual functioning adults."

"Let's not get carried away."

Puck counted bills with the focus of someone who'd learned arithmetic through necessity. "Still got utilities, food, Jinx's suppressants. Those aren't getting any cheaper."

"Or any more legal."

"We're small-time. Background noise. Nobody's going to notice us."

But even as the words left my mouth, Chloe's warning echoed. Venture's pack had eyes everywhere, fingers in every business that mattered. In a building full of criminals and refugees, five shifters playing human wouldn't stay invisible forever. Eventually someone would come knocking. Someone would ask questions we couldn't answer without bleeding.

For now though—

Walls that wept when it rained and neighbors who dealt death in small doses and a coyote who saw too much, but still. Home. I fell asleep on my couch to the symphony of Hank's snoring through tissue-thin walls and sirens wailing lullabies through thinner windows, surrounded by the scent of pack-that-wasn't-pack and tomorrow's promise of waking here instead of running.

Temporary had become our permanent (for now, anyway). We'd gotten good at making fleeting things last, at building homes in spaces meant for passing through. The building creaked and groaned around us, alive with the desperation of its inhabitants, and somewhere in that desperate chorus, we'd found harmony.