I’ve spent days acting like my omega wants things I’m being forced to tolerate. Like her instincts are separate from my choices. But the truth sitting in my chest this morning is that I want this. I want the comfort they give me. I want the way Adrian’s eyes find mine across crowded rooms. I want Bash’s teasing and Elias’s grounding presence and the contentment I feel when all three of them are near.
Maybe that’s the way through. Not fighting what’s happening, but accepting that it is happening. That the omega reaching for them is reaching with my hands, my heart, the same person who’s been watching them since the first week of filming.
Maybe I can have both. The alphas and the career.
The thought sits uncertain in my chest as Elias turns into the studio lot.
The parking garage is the same as always—concrete, exhaust fumes, the particular chill of underground spaces that never quite warms up no matter what time of year it is. Elias parks in his usual spot near the elevator. Cuts the engine. For a moment, neither of us moves.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod. “Ready.”
But the moment we step out of the car, the air changes.
Not the temperature. The quality of it. The studio in the morning carries its own particular scent—coffee from craft services, equipment dust, the faint industrial smell of concrete and metal that’s been here since the building was poured. But beneath it all, threading through the familiar scents of the studio, I catch Adrian's and Bash's scents. My omega responds before my brain fully registers they’re here, awareness sharpening from background to foreground in the space of a single breath.
We take the elevator up together. Elias stands beside me, close enough that the stone-and-musk of him cuts through the stale elevator air. My shoulder brushes his arm. I don’t move away.
The doors open to the main floor, and the sound hits first—equipment carts rolling across concrete, distant voices calling check numbers, the particular hum of a set coming alive for the day. Then the smells layer in—coffee, yes, but also the cedar scent of Adrian somewhere to the left and the bergamot of Bash somewhere ahead, both of them already here, already moving through the space the way they do every morning.
My body turns toward the sound of Adrian’s voice before I consciously decide to look for him.
He’s by the craft services table, coffee in hand, deep in conversation with the DP. But his attention finds mine the moment I step into the room, his eyes lifting from the conversation like he felt me enter the space before he saw me.
His smile is so wide it reaches his eyes. Then he's crossing the room toward me, already reaching for the second coffee cup beside him on the table.
"Here," he says, handing it to me. Cream, no sugar. Exactly the way I take it.
A week ago, I would have convinced myself it didn't mean anything. That he was being friendly. Attentive. The kind of person who remembered details about everyone.
Now I know better.
He noticed. He remembered. And he cared enough to act on it.
"Thanks," I say.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Better.”
He nods, studying my face for half a second longer than the conversation requires. Then he’s headed back to the DP, his body angled slightly toward mine even as his attention returns to work.
Bash appears from behind a lighting rig five minutes later, a script tucked under one arm. He spots me across the room. Grins. Starts toward me, then stops abruptly when a group of PAs clusters between us, their voices rising as they debate something about the next setup.
I feel it before I'm consciously aware of it—the first curl of overstimulation, the tension that starts behind my temples when too many conversations compete for space at once. My shoulders tighten.
Bash notices.
He changes direction mid-step, cutting between two of the PAs with casual ease. A question here, a comment there, and somehow the conversation shifts toward the far side of the room without anyone realizing they've been redirected. The space around me clears.
The tension eases before it can fully take hold.
Bash catches my eye from across the room, nods once, then returns to whatever he was doing before.
Like taking care of me is second nature.
Elias has already positioned himself near the security checkpoint, his posture relaxed, his attention occasionallydrifting across the set in the particular pattern I’ve come to recognize—not scanning for threats, but tracking. Keeping a mental note of where I am, where Adrian is, and where Bash is. The three of them move through the same space with a synchronization that feels less practiced and more instinctive with each passing day.
