The Alpha’s Forbidden Omega

Vera’s POV

A loud bang on my door woke me from what little sleep I’d managed to get.

It wasn’t anything new. My landlord had a habit of pounding on that door, demanding rent I didn’t have, rent that was now three months overdue. I usually just stayed quiet and let her bang until she gave up and left.

“Come out now,” she snapped through the door. “Or I’ll break it down myself and drag your *ss and everything you own out onto the street.”

I lay still, mouthing her words back to myself. I’d heard them so many times by now that they’d started to stick in my head like song lyrics I never asked to learn.

“I regret the day I ever rented this apartment to you,” she added, and I could’ve said it right along with her.

I kept quiet, waiting her out the way I always did. Then my phone buzzed under the pillow. I almost let it go, certain it was another message from someone I owed money to, but I forced myself to check it. I couldn’t afford to ignore anything that might be about my sister.

It wasn’t about Nova.

It was from Kade Group, the company I’d applied to for an internship months ago and all but given up on. Hundreds of people had applied. I’d assumed I was long forgotten.

My eyes blinked over the words twice before they made sense. I’d been accepted. I was expected to start the next morning. The message had come in yesterday, and I was only seeing it now.

I checked the time. Nine a.m. I was already late before I’d even started.

I showered in under five minutes and dug through my closet for the one suit I still owned, a little tight now but wearable. That internship stipend was the first real money I’d been offered in months, enough to actually put a dent in Nova’s bills. I couldn’t lose it before I’d even begun.

The only problem was my landlord, still standing between me and the only door out of my apartment.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I climbed out the window and dropped over the back fence.

I was halfway across the yard when she spotted me.

“Get back here and pack your things out properly!” she yelled, but I was already gone, sprinting down the street in shoes that weren’t made for running.

Getting to Kade Group turned out to be harder than the escape itself. I didn’t have enough cash for a cab, but I flagged one down anyway and prayed for a miracle. Traffic gave me one, a jam thick enough to buy me time to think.

“I need to stop at the pharmacy before the light changes,” I told the driver, keeping my voice casual. “Morning after pill situation. Can’t afford a baby right now.”

He laughed, sympathetic, and waved me on. “Don’t take long, ma’am. The light’s already counting down.”

If only he knew I had no intention of coming back to pay him at all.

I slipped out into the crowd and walked the rest of the way. By the time Kade Group’s glass tower came into view, my legs were shaking, my suit was damp with sweat, and I looked nothing like someone about to start a corporate internship.

Security almost didn’t let me through the door. It took giving my name three times before they reluctantly waved me in.

At the reception desk, I smiled as brightly as I could manage. The receptionist did not smile back.

“Did you lose your way in here?” she asked, looking me over like something that had wandered in off the street, which, fairly, I had.

“No, ma’am. Good morning. I’m here for the internship.”

She laughed like I’d said the funniest thing she’d heard all week. “Security, please escort this woman out.”

“Stop.” A man’s voice cut through, sharp with authority. The receptionist straightened immediately, smoothing her blouse in a way that told me exactly how she felt about him.

“She’s claiming she’s here to intern,” she said quickly. “I was just having her removed.”

The manager looked at me properly for the first time. “What’s your name?”

“Vera.”

“Follow me.”

He walked off without another word, leaving the receptionist and security staring after us. I followed him through the office floor, past rows of people who all seemed to decide, in the space of one glance, that they didn’t like me either.

“Selena, this is your new intern,” the manager said, handing me off before disappearing back into his office.

Selena’s expression started warm and curdled the instant I stepped closer, her hand rising to cover her nose.

“Step back,” she said, her voice tight with distaste.

I checked my own clothes, wondering if the sweat was that obvious.

“How did you even get in here today?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. “I doubt you’ll last a single day.”

“I’ll work hard, ma’am,” I said.

“We’ll see how much strength that promise has.” She pointed at a filing cabinet. “Bring me every report from the last five years.”

By the time I’d hauled the stack to her desk, my arms were shaking.

“Check every typo, sum every total per report,” she said, already chewing her gum and looking past me like I’d stopped existing.

“This is my first day,” I said carefully. “I don’t know your system yet.”

“Then learn it.”

I got to work, ignoring the hollow ache in my stomach from a breakfast I hadn’t eaten. I was halfway through the stack when Selena returned from wherever she’d disappeared to and told me to drop it all.

For a second, I thought I was being fired before I’d even finished my first day. Instead, she smiled at me for the first time, small and calculating.

“I hear you’re good with numbers. Help me with this instead,” she said, sliding a report across the desk.

I helped. And that, of course, only earned me more of her work, piled on top of the first stack, which I did without a single complaint, because complaining wasn’t a luxury I had.

By the time I left that night, my back ached in ways I didn’t know a body could ache, and I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. When I got home, my things were already outside, soaked through in the rain, the door locked against me. I begged. My landlord didn’t answer.

I gathered what I could carry, my sister’s favorite plush toy, a few clothes, the one photo frame we still had of our parents, and set out on foot toward Nova’s ward. I didn’t have enough left for a cab.

I was waiting to cross the street when a car slowed beside me. The window came down, and a man leaned toward it, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, eyes doing something to my chest I didn’t have time to examine.

“What’s a pretty lady like you doing out here in the rain?”

I couldn’t answer. I just stood there, soaked and starstruck, until he opened the door and I got in without a second thought, because who says no to a ride from a man who looks like that?

He dropped me at the hospital entrance, and I waved goodbye with a smile I couldn’t quite wipe off my face.

That smile didn’t survive the walk to Nova’s ward.

Her bed was empty.

I found a nurse, then a doctor, my heart slamming harder with every second no one gave me a straight answer. She’d been rushed to emergency hours ago, they said. They’d tried calling. My phone hadn’t been reachable.

“Is she going to be alright?” I asked.

“That depends on how quickly you can raise the money for her surgery,” the doctor said, calm in a way that made me want to scream.

“How much?”

“Five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Where exactly do you expect me to find that kind of money?” My voice cracked. “Our parents are dead. It’s just me. I can barely make her weekly bills as it is.”

“I’m sorry, Vera. I’ve already stretched what I can, moving her into the emergency ward without payment. But you have until Wednesday. After that, we can’t hold her place.”

Two days.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

And absolutely no idea where either one was going to come from.

Vera’s POV

I didn’t sleep a single hour that night. My mind wouldn’t stop cycling through options, each one worse than the last.

Surrogacy could get me the money, but only after weeks of testing I didn’t have time for. Selling a kidney on the black market meant the same problem, tests, waiting, patience I couldn’t afford. Borrowing from a loan shark again wasn’t really an option either, not when I still owed the last one everything I’d borrowed the first time Nova was admitted. He hadn’t come looking for it yet, but I knew he would the second my due date passed.

I even thought, for one delirious second, about robbing a bank. I didn’t have the nerve for that either.

I spent the whole night in a hospital reception chair, eyes open, body aching, unable to close them even for a minute.

By seven a.m., I was walking to work, gnawing on a piece of hard bread the hospital had handed out, telling myself it would at least hold my stomach together until I figured