Page 103 of Rut Bar

Fuck. Here we go.

My feet hit the floor, and I’m strangely resolved. I should be nervous as hell. A sweaty mess. But my stomach is hollow and somehow I’m calm. My morning routine passes in a blur of muscle memory. I don’t remember the drive in until I blink and I’m there.

I greet everyone like normal, set my briefcase in my office without unpacking it except for my mug. Chatter around the break room stops as I walk in and pour myself coffee. I blow on it to cool it and take my first sip. “Morning.” They offer weak, polite conversation, and when I make excuses and bow out, they let me.

My manager’s office door is open, and she’s working on her computer. I knock two knuckles against her open door and wait. “Morning. You wanted to talk?”

“Brendan, good morning. Please shut the door and have a seat.”

Well, fuck.

A closed door is never a good thing. I do as she says, and sit. “Good morning, Barbara.”

Barbara gives me a tight-lipped, polite smile. “Brendan, I wanted to talk to you about an allegation of misconduct that’s been made, but first, I’d like to hear what you have to say. What happened?”

That’s a trap if I’ve ever heard one, but what can I do? Lie and deny what happened? Even if I thought it would save my hide, I don’t want to. I want the entire world to know that I found my pack—as unconventional as we might be—and we have the brightest, fiercest omega anyone’s ever seen.

“I found my scent matched pack,” I tell her, my voice calm as I sip my cooled coffee.

“I see.” She doesn’t look pleased. But then again, she’s a beta. Scent stuff and heats and ruts are an annoying hindrance to her as a manager. Nobody says the quiet part out loud, but if corporations could get away with not hiring alphas or omegas, they probably would. “So I take it the allegations are…”

“They’re true.”

She leans back in her office chair and it squeaks. “When did you discover this connection? Was there a sudden, unplannedheat, perhaps?”

She whispers the word heat, like it’s dirty. To a beta who’s never experienced one, maybe it seems like it is. For the rest of us, it’s beautiful. Natural. The stuff of dreams when you find your scent matches.

“I saw the signs from the beginning,” I admit.

She gives me an annoyed look, as if she’s throwing me lifelines and I’m batting them away. And then she sighs and sits up straight, pulling a disciplinary form from a manilla folder.

“The Omegas and Alphas Protection in the Workforce Act requires that you fill out a declaration within twenty-four hours of discovering a scent match or recovering from a triggered heat or rut that interrupts your professional duties. The OAPWA won’t protect you from disciplinary action if you fail to file or notify management in a timely manner.

“Personal involvement brings your entire audit into question,” she says. “We’ll need to disrupt everyone’s assignments and start the audit over from scratch, wasting taxpayer dollars.”

I nod. “I understand.”

She slides the paper forward, then takes a pen from her cup. “So I want to clarify. Was there an unplanned heat or rut that puts you within twenty-four hours of the law’s obligations?”

I could lie and say yes. But I’ll have to listen to the office talk about it for months until bigger, juicier gossip-worthy news happens. They’ll pull all of my recent audits and question the integrity of my work. There could be an entire investigation. They might want to transfer my desk to another office. One that’s farther from Rut.

And I can’t bring myself to care. There’s no panic. Inside, I’m hollow. This career has become a slow death by a thousand paper cuts.

I fucking hate my job.

I hate scouring through people’s lives and livelihoods to find a mistake and fine the shit out of them. It’s not the big corporations that get shafted. Not with their fancy ivy-league educated legal teams and accountants. It’s the doctors. Tradesmen. Small businesses and family restaurants. The ones who are just trying to make a decent living.

Good people like Veronica, who bring happiness to the world. Yes, the happiness she provides is covered in glitter and body oil, but it’s real. I think about her work with her underground omega rescue network.It’s meaningful.

I don’t want to be here in this office. I don’t want to do twenty more years of this. The commute. Mind numbing office gossip and small talk. Annoying cubicle mates. Being gone from town for days or weeks. Missed heats and cuddles. I work sixty hours a week during tax season.

She wiggles the pen in the air, as if I need prompting. I lean forward and read the top of the OAPWA declaration form, then shake my head and sit up straight. “I had over twenty-four hours of notice. Do what you have to do.”

Barbara sighs and drops the pen with a clatter onto her desk. “I’m sorry to see you go like this. You’re one of my best agents.”

Where was that attitude when I asked her to not dump Amy’s assignments all on me? To let me move desks so I didn’t have to sit next to Sharon? I keep these comments to myself. It’s pointless to voice them. Management doesn’t actually care.

“I’ll have security escort you so you can gather your things.”

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