The moment the door closed behind my alleged parents, I sat there in silence, letting my brain buffer like a cheap laptop trying to open too many tabs at once.
Okay.
Deep breath.
Reincarnation? Sure.
Into a BL novel? Fine, why not.
But into an Omegaverse?
My soul shriveled.
I pressed a hand to my forehead and whispered the one prayer I'd never thought I'd utter in my life:
"…please don't let me be an omega."
Because in Omegaverse novels—especially trashy ones like Tears of a Tiger Lily—omegas were magnets for suffering. Kidnappings. Forced marriages. Heat cycles at the worst possible time. Male leads with questionable boundaries.
Not to mention pheromone nonsense I wanted absolutely no part of.
I scrambled upright, ignoring the way my body protested, and practically stumbled toward the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. The hospital tile was cold under my bare feet, grounding me just enough to keep from spiraling into full panic.
I reached the mirror and froze.
A stranger stared back at me.
A very pretty stranger, which was not reassuring in the slightest.
Long, shiny dark hair. Smooth, porcelain-pale skin. Violet eyes—yeah, okay, poetic, subtle naming scheme there, author. A soft jawline. Delicate features. She definitely wasn't the overworked, eye-bag-ridden woman who had fallen asleep in her cubicle and woken up dead.
I lifted a hand. The reflection copied me.
No mistakes. No illusions.
This was my face.
Violet Hawthorne.
My stomach twisted. "No. No, no, no—this can't be real."
Because Violet Hawthorne—the Violet Hawthorne—was infamous in the novel. A side character mentioned only in the background but known for being cold, sheltered, a little spoiled, and generally unpleasant at social events. The kind of person the fandom wrote snarky commentary about:
"Oh look, it's Violet Hawthorne again, judging everyone like she smelled something weird."
"How can someone with that money still have so few brain cells?"
Perfect. Amazing. Wonderful. I was now a meme character.
But that wasn't the part that terrified me.
The Hawthorne family was… complicated.
Image-obsessed. Unforgiving. Traditional to the point of emotional frostbite.
And my new biological classification? I swallowed hard.
Beta.
Which wasn't bad—actually, in an Omegaverse, betas had it easy. No heats, no aggressive pheromones, no weird biology-based plotlines chasing them through alleyways.
Betas were safe.
But this novel wasn't your ordinary omegaverse. It was melodramatic. Overwritten. The kind where even side characters got dragged kicking and screaming into unnecessary plot arcs for the sake of angst.
"Nope," I said immediately. "I refuse. Absolutely not. I am not dealing with pheromone politics. I barely survived normal-office politics."
My pulse spiked again.
I leaned closer to the mirror, gripping the edges as if the frame could give me answers.
"Okay, okay… calm down. Think." My breathing was quick. "I'm a beta. Betas don't get dragged into dramatic mating chases or whatever. I'm safe. I'm… totally safe."
And then a thought hit me so hard I smacked the mirror with my palm.
I'm in the Hawthorne family. THE Hawthornes. Filthy rich.
For a moment—just a moment—the fear drained out of me and was replaced by something sparkly and golden and deeply unflattering to my moral integrity.
Money.
So much money.
Stacks of money. Towers of money—diving-pool quantities of money.
My reflection blinked back as my expression twisted into something feral.
"…I'm rich."
A small, insane laugh escaped me. Then a bigger one. Then I was grinning like a villain in a soap opera.
"OH MY GOD, I'M RICH."
I slapped a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking.
The Hawthorne estate. The trust funds. The luxury vacations. The personal driver. The inheritance.
The endless, endless money.
And most importantly—
"No more overtime."
My voice cracked on the last word.
Because a wave of memories hit me like a punch to the chest.
My old life.
Endless nights in the cubicle, lit only by a desk lamp and my dying willpower. The same lukewarm cup of convenience-store coffee sitting beside me. My boss's emails timestamped at 3 a.m. My cramped apartment with the flickering kitchen light. The blanket I used instead of turning the heater on because bills were too expensive.
Coming home at 2 a.m., peeling off uncomfortable work clothes, staring at the ceiling and wondering if this was it. If this was what adulthood was supposed to be.
Heating instant noodles again because I'd forgotten to grocery shop. Falling asleep with my laptop still open beside me. Weekends spent lying on the couch with back pain because I'd spent forty hours hunched over a keyboard.
Dragging myself through each day with the energy level of a dying phone battery.
And the loneliness.
So much loneliness.
Nobody to call. Nobody waiting at home. Nobody to notice if I disappeared.
My throat tightened unexpectedly. I leaned my forehead against the mirror.
Goodbye, soul-crushing labor.
Goodbye, ramen diet.
Goodbye, being yelled at by senior partners for things that absolutely weren't my fault—like Sheila from accounting forgetting to attach a document and somehow it being MY issue.
Goodbye, clawing through life with nothing to show for it but dark circles and mediocre paycheck.
I wiped a tear with the sleeve of my hospital gown.
"I'm free," I whispered.
Then louder: "I'M FREE."
I didn't even care if someone heard me.
I'd died and reincarnated into a wealthy family. A fictional wealthy family. A BL-novel wealthy family, which meant the house probably had absurd architectural features and emotionally distant siblings poised for redemption arcs.
Sure, I might have to dodge plotlines. And pheromones. And Omegaverse nonsense. And the original narrative trying to drag me by the hair like a sacrificial extra.
But honestly?
Totally worth it.
I straightened, wiping the last of the moisture from my face.
"You know what? I can work with this," I told my reflection. "I'll stay out of the plot. Keep Mack and Logan together. Avoid all the pheromone drama. Become rich, live rich, die rich."
My reflection nodded as if agreeing.
I stepped back from the mirror with a brand-new sense of purpose and a shameless drool forming at the corner of my mouth.
"Goodbye poverty," I declared to the empty room. "Hello generational wealth."
And somewhere, in the fictional heavens above this fictional world, I hoped the original author felt my gratitude.
Because I had no idea how I ended up here.
But I was NOT wasting the opportunity.
Not now.
Not ever.
I had money to enjoy.