Five Years Later
Counting the wad of cash in my hand, I grinned with satisfaction while standing at the bus stop. Another house tidied up, and now it was time to check my online listing for more job offers. I stuffed the cash in my jeans pocket as people started to crowd behind me in line.
I loved being here in the city of Houston.
It was ripe with opportunity, and no alpha would ever find me here. It had taken a while for my aunt and I to adjust to the new life, but we used everything we learned from our books to navigate amongst the humans. I hadn’t even seen cell phones before, but my aunt claimed they had all the technology back at Howl’s Edge Island. An island where, apparently, we had all come from. I was born at the Alpha Compound, so I had no idea. Life here was faster-paced, and I loved it.
The bus arrived, and I stood in line amongst the people. The woman in front of me shoved a cart into the bus, taking up the last sitting spaces on the bus. So, I held onto the handrail, waiting for the bus to move.
The worst part about starting a cleaning service was taking the bus. I hoped to save enough money to buy a car and a house eventually. But that was a far-off dream. Checking my phone, I opened up the advertisement that I had online, and there was nothing in my inbox yet.
A feeling of disappointment set in.
I needed to find a way to showcase my cleaning skills. It was the only thing I had been good at my entire life. I hadn’t gone to school here. School at the compound was always terrible since I was a beta, and everyone else would think they were superior to me. The only good thing that came out of it was that I learned how to read and escape into my fictional worlds when I wanted to.
When the bus dropped me off, I walked across the trailer park towards our modest home. Aunt Julie was sitting outside on a plastic chair, feet bare in the sand, and she was wearing an oversized black shirt as she smoked. Her hair was a mess after her shift as a cashier. She worked at the nearest gas station, making ends meet. She was constantly tired by the lines on her forehead, but she’d put on a bright smile when she saw me. Back at the compound, omegas were expected to look prim and neat at all times. But here, my aunt was free, and she couldn’t care less about what anyone thought about her.
“Hey, Auntie,” I said.
“How was work?” she asked, putting away the joint.
“It was good,” I said, hugging her. “Don’t you ever miss living with our people sometimes?”
“Don’t ever mention that horrible place again,” she said, and I laughed as I teased her about it. I knew the question would irk her. Even though we lived in a trailer, it was much better than being back at home with my parents.
My stomach growled.
“You must have cleaned that house really good today,” she said, smiling.
“Yes, I know I’m starving,” I said.
“It’s a good thing that I cooked something,” she said.
I made a beeline into the trailer and walked into the stuffy little kitchen. It was dark as always inside the trailer, and there was barely any furniture, just like how her house was back at the Alpha Compound.
I lifted the cover off the pot on the stove and saw a gloopy mess of overcooked penne pasta mixed in some green sauce. My aunt wasn’t the best cook, but I never had time to cook myself, so I poured a plate anyway and sat cross-legged in the tiny living room, watching the birds as I ate. It didn’t taste as bad as it looked, and I was way too hungry to care.
I wanted to do better and make my aunt proud. I craved to be successful like some of the humans I’ve worked for in their big houses. I just wasn’t sure how I’d grow my cleaning business one day.
But one day, it would happen.
That night, I lay in my bed reading a mermaid romance book I’d borrowed from the library. I’d never seen the ocean before, and now it was my new obsession for the week.
“Goodnight,” my aunt called from across the room as she removed her reading glasses and snuggled into the sleeping bag. We still slept in sleeping bags because all the money my aunt made would go towards food. I was saving up my money for a car, and I knew I needed at least two thousand for a small car I’d seen.
“Night,” I said as I wiggled my feet inside my sleeping bag, sitting up with my back against the wall. Every night, we would read together in the trailer to the sounds of our neighbors talking outside and dogs barking. And to me, it was the most peaceful thing instead of listening to my dad screaming all day. It was stressful listening to my parents argue, mainly because he blamed my mother for producing a beta like myself.
In this human world, I could blend in and be myself, which was nice.
My clients treated me like an average person, and I never felt out of place. Since my aunt was an omega, she still needed to put on her scent blocker lotion daily. She didn’t need to take a heat suppressant every day anymore since she was getting older, but I had no idea how heats happened with an omega. During school back at the compound, I’d listen in to the omegas being thirsty for alphas and making jokes about how big their potential knots might be but I had no idea the specifics of how it worked.
Closing the book, I laid it next to my pillow and turned off the floor lamp. Soon, I nodded off to sleep with daydreams of saving money and driving a brand-new car.
It had only felt like I slept for a couple of minutes before my aunt was shaking me awake. Confused, I blearily tried to open my eyes. I could hear wolves howling outside, and for a moment, I thought we were back at the Alpha Compound. My heart instantly started to race with fear.
“They fucking found us,” my aunt said with gritted teeth. “Or they’re in the area and don’t know we’re here.”
“Oh my god,” I said, my heart pounding hard. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her eyes wide in the dark above me. “We need to move again.”
“Wait, let’s talk about it in the morning,” I said, suddenly sitting up. This city was ripe for opportunities, and I wasn’t ready to move yet. For a few minutes, we quietly listened to the wolves howling at the moon surrounding our trailer park. But soon, the howling quieted down, and the werewolves had moved on to a new territory.
“Fine,” she said, looking worried as she paced to the window and back. “But you know I’m not dropping this subject.”
“I know, Auntie,” I said. “I just want to plan it better, that’s all.”
Relieved she wasn’t up and packing at that very moment, I tried to go back to sleep. But thoughts of the alphas finding us had made me uneasy and scared to be here anymore. Maybe my aunt was right, and staying here was actually a terrible idea.
