I read. Then read again. Then sat back and stared at her, trying to find the trap, the hidden clause, the place where the contract transformed from protection into prison.
"This can't be right."
"Which bit?" Rowan's pencil spun between her fingers, a fidget that suggested she already knew which bits would throw me.
"All of it." I scrolled through clauses that shouldn't exist, provisions that read like someone had actually asked an Omega what they needed instead of just assuming. "Separate transit. Separate green room. Scent-neutral workspace. No wellness provisions. No caretaker access language. And this—" I pointed at a section that made my chest tight, made breathing feel complicated "—'Do-Nothing Protocol acknowledged as default response to Omega spikes.' What the hell is that?"
"Exactly what it sounds like." Rowan's pencil spun faster, a blur of yellow wood and pink eraser. "If you spike, we do nothing unless you specifically request intervention. No Alpha swooping in to fix you. No assumption that you need handling."
"No Alpha hands me this unless there's a catch." I kept scrolling, looking for the poison pill, the clause that would unravel everything. "What do you want?"
She tilted her head, studying me like I was a particularly interesting contract clause she was considering adding to her collection. "First clause kills, second clause cures. You get both."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to." Her smile was sharp and oddly kind at the same time. "Just know that we don't buy bodies. We buy mixes."
The door cracked. Gareth Blake's oily voice slithered through before he appeared, bergamot cologne announcing him like a warning siren. "Ah, excellent. We can add the wellness provision now, standard Omega support language, nothing invasive?—"
"No." Rowan's finger hovered over her tablet screen, deadly calm. "Actually, let me be clearer." She pulled up what looked like a conference call, Gareth's face appearing on screen along with several others I didn't recognize. Label executives, probably. Suits who'd never touched a mixing console in their lives but somehow thought they could dictate how artists worked. "Gareth is suggesting we add wellness provisions to our Omega engineer's contract."
"Industry standard," Gareth said, still smiling that slick smile that made my skin crawl. "For her protection?—"
Rowan deleted an entire section of text while everyone watched. The action was deliberate, surgical, brutal. A execution performed in real-time. "We don't do that."
From somewhere in the hallway, Alfie's voice rang out, bright and amused and absolutely delighted: "Copy that!"
Gareth's smile went rigid, bergamot scent souring in a way I could almost smell through the screen. "The label has concerns about liability?—"
"The label can stuff their concerns." Rowan's accent could've etched glass, gone from professional to weaponized in half a syllable. "We have an engineer. She has a contract. No biological provisions. No backdoor access. Clean technical engagement."
"The board will want to discuss?—"
"The board can discuss it with my resignation." She smiled sweetly, the expression somehow more threatening than her earlier sharpness. "Would they prefer that?"
Silence. Dead air that stretched long enough to become uncomfortable, then excruciating. Gareth's bergamot scent went sour, syrup curdling to vinegar. He left without another word, the screen blinking out like he'd been erased.
I stared at the contract, then at Rowan, then back at the contract. The words hadn't changed. The protection was still there. Real. Legally binding. "Why?"
"Because talent deserves protection, not exploitation." She tilted the tablet toward me, the gesture somehow both casual and ceremonial. "Also, we've added credit lock with timestamped stems. Your work can't be erased or attributed to someone else. Every mix you touch gets your watermark locked into the archive."
My throat felt tight, compressed like someone had run a limiter on my airways. "That's?—"
"Basic decency." She shrugged, the pencil finally going still. "Apparently that's revolutionary these days."
I signed before I could second-guess it. Before the protection could be yanked away like every other promise in this industry. Before someone realized they'd accidentally treated an Omega like a person instead of a liability, instead of a biological problem that needed managing. My signature looked shaky on the digital screen, but it was there. Binding.
"There's more," Rowan said, pulling up another screen, more clauses that shouldn't exist. "Cameras under your control only. Full veto on any recording during technical work. Heat leave if needed, no questions asked, full pay maintained. We've also built in a secure feedback channel. If you need anything adjusted, you come directly to me, not through the label."
"You're joking."
"I don't joke about contracts." She tilted her head toward the door, toward the muffled sounds of the venue beyond. "They're terrified, you know. The boys."
"Of what?" My voice came out harder than intended, defensive. "Omega contamination?"
Her laugh was sharp and sudden, genuine amusement cutting through the corporate precision. "Other way around, love. They're terrified of contaminating you."
Before I could process that, before I could ask what the hell that meant, she was standing, gathering her tablet, moving toward the door with predator efficiency. "Tour starts tomorrow. Bus call at eight. Your bunk's already set up, back corner, furthest from everyone else as requested."
