Page 25 of For the First Time
I didn’t care that I was sitting on my couch in my outside clothes.Didn’t care that I needed to go to bed so I could get up early.I wouldn’t be doing anything until I came up with a plan.I didn’t even waste time squeezing my good luck keychain.It felt like I needed a solution as quickly as possible ...or else.
I grabbed a fresh notebook, one of my new ones the pack had given me, and started writing down all my questions.
Was this investigation legal?
What information would the OC be allowed to provide?
Would I be able to give my side?
Who started the investigation?
What were the potential consequences?
Would I have to go to court?
Did I need a lawyer?
My hand was cramping as I tried to write as quickly as the thoughts came.It felt impossible.For every question I wrote down, another came.
Would this be public information?What specifically did they think I’d done?What did misconduct mean legally?What OC rule did I supposedly break?Was this even legal if the OC claimed the reason that I was let go was because the compound was downsizing?Was that a lie?Could they lie about the reason for termination?
When my hand physically cramped, my fingers twitching from the pain, I was forced to stop.I would take a quick break to shower and then come back.I had more questions I needed to write down.I also needed to decide who I was going to ask for help.
Not pack Wilder.Not at first.
Maybe Hannah and her alphas?They weren’t lawyers, but Sebastian was a scientist, and he came from a renowned family.Surely, he had connections.Although I doubted I could afford a lawyer that expensive.Of course, there was also the fact that bringing this up would definitely upset Hannah.
She wasn’t so fragile that I thought she would fall into a puddle of despair.No, not Hannah.She’d be furious.She’d want to help—maybe too much—simply out of spite toward Representative Adam.I could also admit that I was worried this was exactly whathewanted.Knowing my relationship with Hannah, he could simply be using me to draw her back out into the attention of the public to sling mud at her.I wouldn’t allow that.Even this so-called investigation reeked of what I’d done to protect Hannah.If I had to be punished for it—so be it.
I had broken the rules.I’d deleted the account that had already been made on her.That was against the rules, even if the reason the account had been made was wrong to start with.
The best I could do was to keep coming up with questions.Keep jotting down everything I thought of.Oh, I also needed to write out in my own words exactly what happened.And look into lawyers.
I started my shower, hurrying to write down my last few plan ideas while the water heated up.Anxiety bubbled in my stomach, making me bite the inside of my cheeks as more and more plans came to me.I tried to write faster, not wanting to forget a single thing while the sound of the pounding water against the tile acted as a soundtrack of my impending doom.I worried I’d miss the best possible solution if I didn’t write down all of them.
Long minutes passed and sweat started to drip down my forehead and down my spine as I realized I was still writing, my shower still running.
I shut it off.Once I wrote down everything, then I could shower and go to bed.If I tried to stop, I would just keep thinking about it over and over.I would probably even rush out of the shower or get out of bed to write down more of what I was thinking.
The longer it took to jot down everything, the worse my handwriting became.I was scribbling to try and get all my questions and thoughts down before I forgot them.
Even worse, the adrenaline didn’t help keep me awake.The later it became, the more often I yawned.My eyes were heavy, and I struggled to keep them open, but my brain wouldn’t turn off.I couldn’t get a moment to stop worrying.Minutes turned to hours before I ran out of words to string together.
I still had to do all my nighttime routine to get to bed.
Needless to say, I got maybe four hours of sleep that night.Being generous.
When I woke the next morning, it was with dread.I didn’t feel rested at all.In fact, I felt worse, as if sleeping had made me more tired, which I knew wasn’t true.It was the exact advice I gave to alphas in a heat—sleep when you could.Even an hour or two was better than no sleep at all.
Still, my arms felt heavy, making it impossible and slow to get ready.I had to take a break when I was doing my hair because I couldn’t stand lifting my hands over my head for so long while also keeping the intense concentration on the mirror to ensure I was doing it right.My fingers shook as I tried to do my makeup, the ability to do minute, detail work feeling impossible.I was constantly yawning, my eyelids desperate to close for even a moment of relief.And that momentwasrelief.I could have fallen asleep standing up and it would’ve been the best sleep of my life.I was sure of it.
I didn’t have coffee, and I was pretty sure nothing would be open this early, so I filled a water bottle with as much ice as I could before turning on the tap.With any luck, if I sipped on the cold drink, it would wake me up.
My slow movements had wasted away my breakfast time.And a few minutes of my driving time.
I grabbed a quick to-go breakfast, which was just a little smoothie drink, and pretended like it didn’t take all my energy to uncap and drink it all the way to my car.Frankly, it did help a little, but waking up more meant my brain started to function, and that was when the reminder came.
I was being investigated by Representative Adam and the Omega Compound.
