Chapter 2 #2
"Done," Rowan said immediately, already typing furiously on her tablet, probably drawing up a contract before the words finished leaving her mouth.
A new voice slithered in from the doorway, oily and smooth. "We can draft a wellness rider. Standard Alpha-Omega provisions, very generous, all the usual care clauses—"
Gareth Blake stood there in his expensive suit, bespoke tailoring that probably cost more than our entire merch table, smiling like oil slicked across water.
His bergamot and syrup scent made my teeth ache, made my stomach turn.
The label rep who thought biology was something you could monetize, package, sell to the highest bidder like any other commodity.
Rowan didn't even look up from her tablet, didn't dignify him with eye contact. "We don't buy bodies, Gareth. We buy mixes. We pay for skill, not designation. Get out."
The words hit like a mission statement. Like a battle cry. Like everything I'd been trying to build since I'd watched the industry chew up and spit out too many people who deserved better, who deserved to be seen as humans first.
"Copy that." I grinned, wide and bright and probably manic, but I didn't care. My face hurt from how hard I was smiling. "Proper copy that."
The engineer, our engineer, my brain insisted, already possessive, stood there in her oversized hoodie with her competent hands and her electric scent and her absolute ignorance of what she'd just done to us, how she'd rearranged our entire existence in thirty seconds.
She pulled her hood up, hiding that purple-black hair, making herself smaller.
"I'll need a full technical breakdown." Her voice was all business, professional and distant. "Every piece of gear, signal path documentation, and whoever's been managing your board needs to be kept at minimum ten feet away because they're clearly cursed."
"Confirmed," Euan said, his voice steady despite the way his hands were shaking, despite the way he'd pressed them flat against his thighs to hide the tremor. "Full documentation provided. Complete specs, no omissions."
"Separate workspace. I don't work well with people breathing down my neck, watching over my shoulder."
"Consider it done." Rowan's fingers flew across her tablet like she was conducting an orchestra. "Dedicated green room, neutral zone, whatever you need. Privacy guaranteed."
Kit stepped aside from the doorway, making himself smaller despite being built like a brick wall, despite taking up space being part of his entire presence. "Whatever makes you comfortable. We'll stay clear."
She stared at us like we were speaking a foreign language she'd never encountered before. Like accommodation was suspicious. Like respect was a trap, something with teeth waiting to snap shut.
"Fine." She grabbed her go-bag, canvas worn soft with use, and something rattled inside, pills, maybe, supplements or suppressants or both. "Show me the full rig. We've got—" she checked her phone, screen lighting her face in cold blue "—four hours until doors?"
"Three and a half," Cal said mildly, offering her one of the mugs of tea he'd somehow already poured. "I'm Cal, by the way. Bass. I can show you the setup while they panic productively elsewhere, let you work without an audience."
My hands twitched at my sides. I wanted to reach out, to touch, to confirm she was real and solid and actually standing in our venue. To breathe her in properly, to taste that citrus on my tongue until I could identify every note, to—
"Right then." My voice came out too bright, too loud, classic Alfie-can't-handle-emotions volume that probably echoed off the ceiling. "We'll just... let you work. Yeah. We'll be... somewhere else. Being productive. Productively panicking. Not here. Definitely not hovering. We don't hover."
I fled. Properly fled, like a coward, like someone who'd never faced down a hostile crowd or a predatory journalist. Kit and Euan followed, and I heard Kit muttering, "Breathe, lads, just breathe," as we stumbled into the maze of backstage hallways, putting distance between us and that devastating scent.
We made it around two corners before Euan put his back against the wall and slid down to sitting, legs giving out. His hands went to his buzzcut, pressing hard like he could squeeze his brain back into working order, force the circuits to reconnect.
"Statistically impossible," he said, voice tight with the effort of staying rational. "Triple match. Same moment. Same person. The probability is... It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen."
"Fuck the probability." Kit leaned against the opposite wall, forearms crossed over his chest, ink shifting with each ragged breath. "Did you smell her? Proper smell her? That wasn't just scent, that was—"
"Citrus and lightning." My voice came out wrecked, shredded like I'd been screaming into a microphone for hours. "Like someone weaponized breakfast and aimed it directly at my soul. Like fruit and electricity and everything good I've ever wanted."
"She doesn't know." Euan looked up, eyes too bright, too wide, pupils blown. "She didn't react. At all. Not even a flicker."
The implications of that sat heavy in the narrow hallway, pressed down on our shoulders like physical weight. Either she had the best suppressants money could buy, the kind that cost more than our tour budget, or—
"Scent-blind," Kit said quietly, certainty settling into his voice. "Has to be. Medical-grade blockers, probably since presentation."
"She can't feel it." I pressed my palms against the wall, needing something solid to keep me upright. "We're drowning and she's just... fixing our board. Like it's Tuesday. Like she walks into her perfect match every other week."
"We follow her lead," Kit said, firm like it was already decided, like he'd made the choice and the rest of us would fall in line. "Every step. No pushing, no pressuring, no Alpha bullshit."
"No pushing," Euan agreed, though his accent had gone thick enough to need subtitles, all the Glasgow he usually smoothed out flooding back.
"No pushing," I echoed, even though every instinct screamed to run back there and drop to my knees and beg her to notice us, claim us, keep us, see us.
Cal appeared around the corner with three mugs of tea, because of course he did, because Cal solved problems with hot beverages and quiet competence. "You look like death," he said pleasantly, like it was an observation about the weather. "Drink. You'll need the sugar."
We drank. The tea tasted like nothing compared to the ghost of citrus still coating my throat, still singing in my blood.
"She's brilliant," Euan said after a long moment of silence broken only by careful sips. "The synesthesia, the way she approaches frequency as color, as something tangible—"
"She called compressors lungs," I added, helpless, still caught on that detail. "She teaches them to breathe. Like they're alive."
"We're fucked," Kit concluded, but he was smiling, that dangerous Manchester grin that meant trouble and chaos and plans forming. "Properly, comprehensively, absolutely fucked."
"Yeah," I agreed, already pulling the Sharpie from my pocket, rewriting ASK > ASSUME darker on my thumb, pressing hard enough to make the ink bite. "But we're doing it right this time. Boundaries. Consent. The whole package. Everything we've been building, we use it now."
"Copy that," they said in unison, a promise and a pact.
The venue lights came back on with a harsh electrical buzz, flooding the hallway with fluorescent reality that made us all squint.
Somewhere in the building, our engineer, Zia, Rowan had called her Zia, and now I had a name to attach to that devastating scent, was fixing everything we'd broken.
She had no idea she was fixing us too, rewiring three Alphas who'd just discovered what home smelled like, what belonging tasted like on the air.
Citrus and ozone and possibility.
We sat there in the hallway, three grown men destroyed by one woman who didn't even know our names yet, and started planning how to earn hers. How to be worthy of the chance she didn't know she'd given us.