Does a Disabled Omega Have to Be Forcibly Loved Too? (NPH) - Chapter 8: Conglomerate

Chapter 8: Conglomerate

Most Alphas eligible for the Omega matching list were polite and courteous before smelling an Omega’s pheromones.

The colleague didn’t think what Dinah said was much of a virtue, but still asked, “So, what do you think of him?”

Dinah sat down at her desk. “I think he’s pretty nice. But whether it works out probably depends on what he thinks.”

The colleague had heard about Dinah’s previous failed blind dates and knew Dinah only had a few months left before being sent to the front lines.

“Hope it works out for you.”

Dinah smiled and said, “Thanks for the good wishes.”

Oliver didn’t contact her that morning, and Dinah didn’t slack off either. She focused on her work.

The Omega Association had plenty of work, but few people actually did it.

Eighty percent of Dinah’s colleagues were Omegas. Of that eighty percent, eighty percent were Omegas of high-ranking officials who only needed a respectable job to show off their status.

Only twenty percent were Betas, and sixteen percent were Omegas in a situation like Dinah’s, who genuinely needed the job to support themselves.

In the empire, whether it was a conglomerate or a small private workshop, most positions weren’t open to Omegas.

But most Omegas married before the minimum working age of eighteen. After marriage, they focused on family. Only a small fraction worked, like Omegas who were permanently marked and then widowed.

According to the rules set by the Alpha Association, most Alphas who earned enough contribution points to join the Omega matching list before the set age were soldiers.

Though regulations tried to avoid assigning Alphas with Omegas to high-risk missions, the insectoids had grown more rampant in recent years, and the death rate in frontline combat remained high.

If an Alpha died, a permanently marked Omega who didn’t erase the mark would suffer severe pheromone disruption within six months without their partner’s pheromones, eventually forcing gland removal.

Compared to that outcome, erasing the mark had a twenty-five percent chance of avoiding serious side effects.

But the seventy-five percent of Omegas who suffered side effects from erasing the mark weren’t much better off than Dinah with her congenital defect.

Though both were defective, there was still a difference between congenital and acquired.

For example, Dinah had a few months before being sent to the front lines, but Omegas who erased their marks wouldn’t face consequences even if they stayed single and childless for life.

The similarity was that the stipend they received from the Omega Association was equally meager—too little to cover the dorm fees without a job.

Of course, they didn’t move out because single Omegas could only live in Omega Association-provided dorms.

Once an Omega married an Alpha, they received a stipend jointly funded by the Omega Association and the Alpha Association.

This stipend doubled with each child the Omega bore.

These interlocking rules were, of course, carefully crafted by the associations to boost Alpha-Omega bonding.

Dinah’s current job was to promote and implement these rules.

It sounded a bit like a dark joke.

Dinah finished her morning work and checked her schedule. That afternoon, she had to attend a business lecture, take photos, write a draft, and post it on the Omega Association’s public account.

Time was tight. Dinah ate lunch in the cafeteria, skipped her nap, and hurried to the venue.

In the office, everyone but her belonged to the sixty-four percent of Omegas who didn’t work, so these tiring tasks always fell to her. When the article was published, her byline still came last.

But this office culture was nothing compared to what Dinah experienced before穿越. At least her colleagues were genuinely laid-back.

Plus, after an Omega was permanently marked by an Alpha, the Alpha developed a rejection to other Omegas’ pheromones. Even if an Alpha cheated, it’d likely be with a Beta.

So Omegas generally didn’t hold much hostility toward other Omegas, since there was little competition.

For someone like Dinah with a congenital gland defect, there was even less reason for inexplicable animosity.

Dinah was fairly satisfied with her current job and life.

If not for the bizarre military prostitution rule, she felt she could contribute to the Omega Association for a lifetime.

This business lecture was large-scale, sponsored by the famous conglomerate Eden Pharmaceuticals. The venue was a high-end hotel.

Dinah stepped into the hotel lobby. The first thing she saw wasn’t the speaker’s poster, but one of Eden Pharmaceuticals’ current CEO, Joshua Ashburn.

Ashburn was a legendary figure, perhaps only slightly less so than Lieutenant General August. But his ranking on the most popular Alpha list was definitely higher than August’s.

After all, he was a middle-class man who became a conglomerate CEO at thirty-two, a genius at seizing opportunities.