Page 1 of Omega's Fire

Leo

My muscles burn with the weight of the cardboard box as I climb the final flight of stairs. It’s my eleventh trip today and hopefully the last one.

I should have spread the weight of the textbooks between the boxes instead of putting them all into one big one. I won’t make that mistake the next time that I move.

And there will be a next time because this place isn’t exactly home sweet home.

My new home is an abandoned office building three blocks up from campus. According to my research, it’s been empty for almost six years, owned by some shell corporation with iffy legal status. It seems to have been forgotten about. Or at least, there’s little chance of it being freshly tenanted by the time I finish my law degree. That’s all the time I need.

I’m not the only omega moving in. There are another twenty-three of us, all stubborn holdouts against the requirement to register with the Omega Match Bureau if we want to access student housing.

It’s a ridiculous requirement. In order to be allowed to stay in the student dorms, I have to register myself as available to mate on some government database. No thanks. I have better things to do with my life than get married to some primitive alpha who thinks he owns me.

I seem to be almost permanently furious these days andnow, yet another spike of fury races through me. It propels me through the last steps and onto the landing. I’ll haul a thousand boxes of law books upstairs before I voluntarily register with the Bureau.

The glass door to the set of offices on the fifth floor has been propped open with one of my boxes. I take the last steps through and drop the box of books with a satisfying thud that echoes in the empty space.

This used to be a travel agents in another life. The space still has peeling posters of sun swept beaches on the walls and I’ve had to stack old desks and swivel chairs to the left of the space in order to have enough space for my mattress.

Late afternoon sunlight filters through the windows. I’m going to have to cover them over with newspaper to stop light from seeping out and advertising that we have moved in.

I stand and stretch, hearing my back pop.

This is it—the last of my possessions transferred from university housing to whatever you call an abandoned office building converted into an omega squat.

My mattress sits on the floor in the corner. I’ve got a hot plate plugged onto the top of a desk where an old printer once sat and I’ve shoved a mini-fridge underneath. It’ll do for a kitchen. It’s not much, but it’s mine without conditions, without registration requirements, without Bureau oversight.

I collapse onto the mattress, bones aching in that specific way that comes from moving your entire life in cardboard boxes.

The eviction notice had given us three days. I’d used one of them filing emergency appeals and arguing with administrators who smiled sympathetically while explaining that university housing policies were non-negotiable.

No Bureau registration, no campus housing. Simple as that. Assholes.

No one should have to trade their freedom for an education.

My phone buzzes against the worn carpet where I’d left it on my first trip up the stairs.

A text from Meg lights up the screen:Blood drive desperate for omega donors. They’re down by half. You still coming?

I close my eyes and grimace.Oh hell, that’s today.With everything else happening, I’d completely forgotten.

I’d signed up to the blood drive at the university gym weeks ago, back when I still lived in civilized accommodation with reliable plumbing. I’ve just moved everything I own. I’ve barely slept in the last week. There’s nothing wrong with skipping this one.

But the omega community depends on donated blood from other omegas. Transfusion compatibility isn’t just about blood type—designation markers are essential too. Omegas need omega blood. Life is difficult enough for us without us supporting each other.

It won’t take long. And I’ll get a cookie.

I’ll be there, I text back, already forcing myself upright.

We’ve jury-rigged a shower on the ground floor—a showerhead connected to the janitor’s closet sink. The water pressure that varies between trickle and flood but it’s functional, and after packing and moving and days of arguing with bureaucrats, I need to wash the fury off my skin along with the grime.

The walk to campus takes longer than it used to, my new address adding an extra mile to the route. Students pass me on the sidewalk. I try not to resent them, but they take so much for granted. Life is hard right now. I can’t take anything for granted. I left home at fifteen after I presented as an omega. The moment it happened my father told me I had to leave school and stay home away from ‘temptations’ so I could learn how to run a household like my mother. Screw that.

It’s taken me years to build up enough savings to make it tolaw school on my own. My dad’s long gone: a heart attack in his office three years ago, but there’s no going home for me. My mother let her fifteen year old end up on the streets because she couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up to my father. I’m not going to forget that.

Sometimes I get a parcel from her with cash. I always donate it.

I haven’t closed the connection entirely. She’s still family, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her.

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