Instead, what comes out is: “They built me a room.”
Elias stills. His hands pause on the blanket he’s smoothing over the foot of the bed, and his gaze lifts to mine.
“They did,” he says.
“Why would they do that?”
He considers the question carefully. His dark green eyes hold mine.
“Because they care about you.” He pauses. “They’ve been paying attention to you longer than you think.”
The simplicity of it breaks something open in my chest. A slow crack spreading through a wall I’ve been leaning against for weeks.
I’m tired of being brave. I’m tired of holding myself together. I’m tired of separating Maya from the omega like they’re two different people occupying the same skin.
I’m just tired.
Elias sees it. Of course, he sees it. He’s been seeing me since the first week of filming, watching from the edges of rooms, paying attention to things everyone else missed. He sits on the edge of the bed beside me, close enough that the warmth of him reaches me through the space between us, but he doesn’t touch me. He’s just there if I need him.
“Talk or don’t talk,” he says. “I’m here either way.”
I look at my hands. At the blankets. At the soft, expensive evidence of being wanted spread across every surface of this room.
“I’ve spent my entire life being the person nobody notices,” I say. The words come out uneven. “The reliable one. The beta whoexists in the background because that’s where betas belong. And then I present, and suddenly I’m hyper-visible in exactly the way I never wanted to be. Everyone is treating me differently and my career has become conditional. The one thing that was supposed to be mine gets taken away because my body decided to change.” I press the heel of my hand against my eye. “And then I come here, and they’ve built me a room, and I don’t—I don’t know how to hold all of that at once.”
Elias listens without interrupting or rushing to reassure me. He simply sits beside me and lets the words exist in the space between us.
After a long moment, he speaks.
“You’re still you,” he says quietly. “The production didn’t change that. Your designation didn’t change that. The woman who ran that set for months is sitting right here.” He turns his head slightly, his eyes finding mine in the dim light. “She didn’t go anywhere.”
Something inside me eases at his words.
I am still me.
The realization doesn’t fix anything. But it makes the weight slightly easier to carry.
Elias reaches for the blanket beside him and pulls it across our laps. The movement is casual and domestic. The kind of gesture that exists between people who have shared space long enough to stop calculating every touch.
His hand brushes mine as he adjusts the fabric, and I don’t pull away.
I curl toward him instead.
The movement is unconscious. I turn toward him, my shoulder settling against his arm as my head finds the space between his shoulder and chest. I let it rest there, my cheek against the soft cotton of his Henley, while the stone-and-musk scent of him fills my lungs with each breath.
His arm slowly lifts. His hand settles on my upper back, the weight of it grounding through the fabric of my sweater, and he holds me there with a gentleness that makes something in my chest ache.
There is no resistance, internal argument, or voice in my head insisting this is the omega and not me.
There is just the feeling of safety. The soft weight of blankets, the steady weight of Elias's arm around me, and the relief of a body that has finally, finally stopped fighting itself.
I close my eyes. His heartbeat presses against my ear, slow and even, and I match my breathing to the rhythm without thinking about it. His thumb brushes once across my shoulder blade, and warmth spreads outward from the point of contact.
“We’ve got you,” he murmurs. His voice is so low I feel it more than hear it, the vibration moving through his chest into mine. “However you need. However long it takes. You’re not alone in this.”
I believe him.
Not just because he said it. Because he's been showing me since the first night he slept on my couch, since the first morning he brought muffins, since the first time he positioned himselfbetween me and a crowded hallway without being asked. Elias Stone doesn't make promises he doesn't intend to keep.
