"It's due diligence," I snapped, the defensive reflex instant. "We are adapting her life's work into a multimillion-dollar interactive experience. The studio has seven figures in escrowwaiting for a script she hasn't delivered. I need to know she isn't dead in a ditch."
"Or she just wants privacy," Daniel said gently, placing the milk in the fridge. "Technically, you work for her."
"I made her," I corrected, though the words tasted like ash and bile on my tongue. "With me, she is an empire."
I sat on the high metal stool, smoothing the front of my charcoal suit. I needed the armor. Even here, miles from civilization with my two oldest friends, I couldn't relax. The suit held me together. It kept the Alpha contained, packaged in wool and silk.
I logged into the secure server. The folder forThe Alpha's Oath - Game Adaptationwas still empty. A blinking cursor in a void.
"She's late," I murmured, staring at the screen.
Simon turned from the window, his dark eyes intense, shadowed by sleeplessness. "Maybe she's stuck. The scene she's writing… It's the crash, isn't it? The preamble to the uprising?"
"It is," I said.
"That's a hard headspace to live in," Simon said, looking back down at his sketch. I couldn't see the paper, but I knew what it was. He’d been drawing the same girl for a decade. Different angles, different lighting, but always the same haunted eyes. "Having thousands of people watch you break? Having everyone expect you to be perfect, and then your body betrays you?"
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
A wave of phantom heat washed over me, smelling of stale gymnasium air, rubber soles, and floor wax.
I had been sitting right behind the podium. I was the Class President. The golden boy. My tie was perfectly knotted, my speech about integrity and the future folded neatly in my breast pocket. I had spent four years following every rule, checkingevery box, ensuring that I was the perfect specimen of Alpha leadership. I was the Salutatorian, second only to her.
And then Tessa Kane had started to shake.
I remembered the smell first. Before the crowd realized what was happening, the scent had hit me, wild blackberries and sea salt, but soured by absolute, primal terror. It was the smell of a prey animal caught in a trap, knowing the teeth were about to close. I saw the tremor start in her shoulders, the way her knuckles turned white on the microphone stand as she tried to hold herself upright against the biological tidal wave hitting her.
I knew the protocol. The student handbook, which I had practically memorized, stated that in the event of a medical emergency, the nearest authority figure should secure the scene. I was the authority figure. I was right there. I could have stood up. I could have taken off my jacket, wrapped it around her to mask the pheromones, and walked her off the stage before the cameras zoomed in.
But I sat there.
I sat there frozen, my hands gripping my knees so hard my fingernails bit into the fabric of my trousers. I was terrified that if I moved, I would ruin the ceremony. Terrified that if I touched her, the smell would drown me, pull me into a primitive state I had spent my life suppressing. I watched the security guards, Beta males with no concept of care, looking at her like she was a nuisance, drag her off like a sack of laundry.
I failed her. I failed the basic biological imperative of my designation.Protect.
"Anders?"
I snapped back to the present, the gym fading into the sleek grey kitchen. Daniel was leaning against the counter, watching me with concern. The scent of bread, spice, and sandalwood radiated from him, grounding the room.
"I'm fine," I said, the lie coming out automatic and crisp. "I'm just annoyed by the delay."
"You've got that look," Simon said, not turning around, his charcoal stick moving faster now. "The one you get when you're thinking about the writing."
"Her prose is… efficient," I said, focusing on the screen, opening a previous file just to see text.
"Bullshit," Simon laughed, a dry, humorless bark that echoed off the concrete. "You're obsessed with it. You've readThe Alpha's Oathseries six times. You quoted the internal monologue of the love interest to the investors from memory."
I felt heat crawl up my neck, burning beneath my collar. "I know the product."
"It's not the product," Daniel said softly, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "It's the voice. You told me once… you said she writes like someone who's screaming underwater."
I looked away, staring at the rain lashing the glass. They were right, of course. T.L. Rose wasn't just a client. She was a ghost that haunted my inbox. Her writing was visceral, filled with a longing so sharp it felt like a physical wound. She wrote about Alphas who failed, Omegas who had to save themselves, and the crushing weight of societal expectation.
It reminded me of Tessa.
It was irrational, Tessa Kane had vanished off the face of the earth after 'Graduation Girl' went viral. But sometimes, reading Rose's drafts, I felt a sense of familiarity so strong it made my chest ache. It was a penance. Reading her work was the only way I could touch the guilt I’d buried under billable hours and contract negotiations.
I had spent a decade becoming the most ruthless agent in the industry to compensate. I destroyed bad deals. I protected my authors with legal firewalls and aggressive NDAs. I controlledeverything because, for one agonizing minute ten years ago, I had controlled nothing.
