Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings novel Chapter 82

Chapter 82: Welcome Back

The alarm on Lilith’s phone went off at 5 AM.

She wasn’t asleep. Had been lying on the lumpy mattress in the darkness for hours, staring at nothing, her mind running through numbers that didn’t add up.

Four thousand.

That was the number that mattered now. Four thousand dollars a month for her mother’s care. Her omega wages came to approximately six hundred a month if she worked every available shift. Which meant she was short by thirty-seven hundred dollars.

Every. Single. Month.

She’d done the math a dozen times since leaving Garrett’s office yesterday. Had approached it from different angles, looking for a solution that didn’t exist. Calculated what would happen if she picked up extra shifts, there weren’t enough hours in a week to cover it. Thought about asking for a promotion to a higher-paying position but Alpha Garrett had made clear that wasn’t happening.

She was trapped in a box with no exit.

Lilith silenced the alarm and forced herself to sit up.

The omega apartment was cold. The heating system in the building was barely functional, and the pack didn’t consider omega comfort a priority. She pulled on the clothes she’d worn yesterday....black pants, grey shirt, both of which smelled faintly of sweat and garbage from her last shift before the Blackwood contract.

Three months. Felt like a lifetime.

She didn’t look at herself in the small mirror as she passed it. Didn’t need to see whatever was written on her face this morning. Instead, she grabbed her work badge, the cheap plastic ID that marked her as omega, as lesser, as property of Shadowmere pack, and headed for the door.

The walk to the waste management facility took twenty minutes.

The sun wasn’t up yet. The pack territory was still grey and cold, the streets mostly empty except for other omegas heading to their various assignments. Lilith kept her eyes forward, didn’t acknowledge anyone, didn’t invite conversation.

The facility itself was a sprawling operation on the eastern edge of pack land....collection trucks, sorting stations, industrial-sized dumpsters, the smell of decay and decomposition that never quite washed out of clothes.

It was 5:47 AM when she arrived.

Dora was already there.

The overseer stood near the main sorting station, clipboard in hand, assigning work to the omegas who’d arrived early. She was a woman in her fifties, with grey threading through her dark hair, a lean build, and the particular bearing of someone who’d been through the system and come out the other side hardened.

She looked up as Lilith approached.

For a moment, she just stared.

"Lilith," Dora said finally. Her voice carried across the noise of the facility, other omegas moving crates, the beep of trucks backing up, the general chaos of early morning waste management. "Welcome back."

"Thank you," Lilith said.

Dora studied her for a moment longer. Then: "You’re on sorting detail with the morning crew. Station three. Details are on the board."

Lilith nodded and moved toward station three without waiting to be dismissed.

The morning crew consisted of five omegas, two she didn’t recognize, one she vaguely remembered from before the Blackwood contract, and two others who glanced up as she approached.

One of them....a woman in her mid-twenties with kind eyes and dark hair pulled back in a braid...smiled at her.

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