Nadia sits beside me on the small couch and says nothing. She puts one hand on my back and keeps it there, and she lets me go until I’ve tired myself out.
It takes a while.
“It was so kind,” I finally manage, my voice wrecked and strange to my own ears. “That’s what I keep coming back to. He was being so genuinely kind about it, and it didn’t matter at all because the result was the same. Now everyone on that set is going to treat me like I’m made of something fragile and breakable, and I could see it already starting to happen. Someone asked me if I should really be logging fourteen-hour days like I haven’t been logging fourteen-hour days on every production for three years, and it’s going to follow me, Nadia. This is going to follow me into every job, and I solved the prop continuity issue before eight in the morning. I caught a scheduling overlap that would have cost them four hours—”
“I know,” she says.
“I keep trying to separate it,” I say, and the words are tumbling out now. “The omega thing from me. Like there’s Maya, and then there’s the omega, and they’re two different problems, and if I can just manage the second one correctly, then the first one gets to stay intact. But it’s not working. It stopped working, and I don’t know how to—“
I stop and wipe my face with the back of my hand.
“I don’t know how to be both things at the same time,” I admit.
Nadia is quiet for a moment. Then she shifts on the couch so she’s facing me more directly, and I recognize her expression. She’s done being patient.
“Maya,” she says. “You are the omega. The omega is you.”
I start to say something and she doesn’t let me.
“I know,” she says. “I know you keep trying to put them in separate boxes because it feels safer that way. If the designation is a separate thing from you, then you can keep the you that you built intact while the designation gets managed. But that’s not actually how this works and I think part of you already knows that.”
I look at the floor.
“Your designation changed,” she says. “Your intelligence didn’t. Your ambition didn’t. Your instincts didn’t. The way you connect with people didn’t disappear overnight. The omega didn’t take those things from you. If anything, it’s probably amplifying parts of them.”
She leans slightly forward, elbows on her knees.
“You had instincts before you presented,” she says. “I watched you. You knew which days were going to go wrong before they went wrong. You noticed moods and patterns in people before they showed them. You were always paying attention to things everyone else walked past.” She pauses for a beat. “And you were watching those three men on set long before your body gave you a reason to. You think I didn’t see that? You knew where Elias was in every room before this started. You tracked Adrian’s posture when he was off, you covered for Bash’s scheduling conflicts before he even knew he had them. Maya.” She holds my gaze. “That wasn’t new. The biology just made it impossible to deny.”
The words land deeper than I want them to. I can feel them settling into places I’ve been trying not to examine.
“What you’re doing when you call it ‘the omega thing,’” she says, “is trying to keep yourself from having to own what you actually want. Because if it’s only instinct, it’s not a choice. It’s just happening to you and you’re coping with it. But if you admit that you already cared about them — the way you clearly already do — then you have to sit with that. And that’s much more frightening.”
My throat is tight in a way that has nothing to do with the tears I just shed.
“I built a career in this industry,” Nadia says. She says it plainly, not like a victory speech. Just fact. “I navigate contracts and press and alpha producers and award season politics and public scrutiny. I do all of that while openly presenting as an omega, unbonded, and as someone men in this industry regularly underestimate. I built a life and a career and a sense of myself that doesn’t fall apart because of my designation. It’s hardersometimes. I’m not pretending otherwise. But it is possible. And it’s possible for you too.”
“Those three men out there,” she says. “You know what they’re doing right now? They’re not sitting in that room waiting for the omega they’ve become responsible for. They’re waiting foryou. The same woman who ran their production for months and kept everything running, and never once asked for recognition. They knew you before any of this happened. The designation didn’t manufacture what’s between you.” She holds my gaze until I can’t look away. “And I think if you’re honest with yourself, it didn’t manufacture it for you either.”
Something loosens in my chest that has been pulled tight for days. Not completely. But enough that the next breath comes easier than the one before it.
I sit with that for a long moment.
“I don’t know how to stop being scared,” I say finally.
“That’s okay,” she says. “Scared and moving forward aren’t mutually exclusive.” She tilts her head. “But you do need to see a doctor. A real one. A specialist. This week, Maya. Late presentations can become genuinely dangerous if they’re not managed properly, and you have been white-knuckling this on blockers and sheer stubbornness for long enough.”
I almost laugh but don’t quite manage it. “Okay,” I say.
“Not maybe?” She questions.
“Okay,” I say again. “I hear you.”
She studies my face for another moment, then nods, accepting what she finds there.
We sit in silence for a bit. The house makes small sounds around us — the faint movement of the heating system, something shifting in the other room. I feel wrung out in a way that’s almost physical, like I’ve been carrying a weight that was slightly too heavy for me for so long that setting it down hurts too.
When we come back into the main room, Adrian is on his feet before we’re fully through the door. Bash stands from the couch a beat later. Elias doesn’t move from his seat, but the set of his shoulders changes. The tension in his posture eases the moment his eyes find mine.
