Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Zia
The London venue was different from the grungy charm of the Barrowlands. It was slick, corporate, modern. The kind of place that smelled like antiseptic and money.
The dressing room was vast, filled with mirrors that multiplied us into infinity.
I stood in front of the glass. I was wearing black cargo pants and a high-collared black turtleneck. It was sleek, professional, and it completely hid the trio of marks on my neck.
"Hiding the evidence?" Alfie asked, coming up behind me. He was dressed for the stage, mesh shirt, leather pants, eyeliner smudged artfully around his eyes. He rested his chin on my covered shoulder, looking at our reflection.
"Managing the release," I corrected. "High-value assets stay encrypted until launch."
"You're the asset," Kit said from the sofa, where he was taping his hands.
"I'm the producer," I said, smoothing the fabric of the turtleneck. "Tonight, the story isn't about who bit who. It's about the Rider."
"Rowan is ready to drop it," Euan said, checking his watch. "File release is timed for twenty minutes after doors."
There was a knock at the door.
"Five minutes to press line," a runner called out.
The air in the room shifted. It went from domestic to tactical. We were a unit again. A phalanx.
"Formation?" Kit asked, standing up.
"Work formation," I said. "But tighter. Proximity is... allowed."
We walked out.
The hallway was lined with reporters. It wasn't the ambush of Manchester; this was a scheduled, controlled press event. But the hunger in the air was the same. They smelled scandal. They smelled romance.
We stepped into the lights.
This time, I didn't walk beside them. I walked center.
Alfie flanked my left. Kit flanked my right. Euan took the rear, counting the exits.
"Alfie! Alfie!" The shouting started instantly. "Is it true? Are you bonded? Who’s the Omega?"
"We're not discussing biology," he said, his voice projecting effortlessly. "We're here to discuss the new touring safety standards."
He stepped back, yielding the floor.
Rowan stepped forward. She looked like a guillotine in lipstick, sharp, beautiful, lethal. She held up a heavy document binder.
"The Omega-Safe Rider," Rowan announced. "Version 1.0. Available for public download on the Riot Theory website as of now."
"Is this an admission that there's an Omega in the band?" a reporter from a tabloid shouted.
"It's an admission that the industry is broken," I said.
The cameras snapped to me. The mystery voice. FoxTail.
"My name is Zia Vale," I said. "I produced the track you're all streaming. And this Rider? It’s the reason I’m standing here instead of running away."
"Are you bonded?" another reporter pressed, leaning in. "Who's responsible for your heat care? Which Alpha got you?"
It was the question they all wanted. The sordid detail. Whose property are you?
I felt Kit stiffen beside me. I felt Alfie’s hand twitch toward the mic.
I stepped forward. I looked directly at the camera.
"My heat isn't content," I said evenly. "And my care isn't a transaction. It's a partnership."
"But the bond—"
"Boundaries are punk," Alfie interrupted, leaning into my mic, his shoulder pressing solid against mine. "Talk policy or jog on."
"We have strict guidelines for this press line," Euan added, his voice cold and flat. "Question three violated Clause 4 regarding invasive biological queries. You are done."
Tammy Rook materialized out of the ether. "You heard him. Out."
The reporter was escorted away. The message was clear, We are a closed system.
We did ten minutes of questions. We talked about credit. We talked about scent-neutral workspaces. We talked about the "Exit Card" concept. We changed the conversation from who is she fucking? to how do we keep them safe?
When we finally piled into the SUV to head to the stage door, a redundant, purely tactical drive to avoid the crush, the privacy screen slid up with a solid thunk.
The lights of London blurred past the tinted windows.
I let out a long breath, sagging back against the leather seat.
"Okay," I said. "That went well."
"You were terrifying," Kit said admiringly, taking my hand. "Proper sovereign."
"I learned from the best," I said, nudging Rowan, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, looking triumphant.
Alfie was next to me. He was vibrating again, the post-press energy mixing with the pre-show jitters.
I turned to him.
"Come here," I whispered.
He shifted instantly, sliding across the seat until he was practically in my lap. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just checking the work."
I reached for the collar of his mesh shirt. I pulled it aside.
There, on the junction of his neck and shoulder, was a bruise. My bruise. A matching set to the one I was hiding.
I leaned in. I didn't kiss it. I dragged my tongue over the mark, slow and deliberate, tasting the salt and the burnt sugar.
Alfie made a broken, strangled noise in his throat. His hands grabbed my waist, digging in.
"Fox," he gasped, his head falling back against the headrest. "You're gonna kill me. Right here in the car."
"Copy that," I murmured against his skin.
Euan, sitting on the jump seat facing us, watched with dark, hooded eyes. He typed something into his phone, flicking it to me so I could see what he wrote.
Update to Schedule: Post-show cooldown requires soundproof room. Immediate priority.
We pulled up to the venue. The crowd outside was screaming.
But this time, they weren't screaming for a scandal.
Through the glass, I saw a sign held up by a girl in the front row. It wasn't a shipping name. It wasn't a marriage proposal for Alfie.
It was a piece of cardboard with black marker that read: Boundaries are PUNK!
And next to it, another one: #FoxTailSupremacy
I smiled.
The scream of the crowd outside wasn’t just noise; it was a physical sphere of compression, white noise clipping the red on a mental meter. Before, that sound would have made me look for the nearest exit sign. Now, it just sounded like input.
Tammy Rook tapped the glass. "Doors. Three seconds. Keep the diamond formation."
"Copy," Kit said, his tone dropping into that security-fixer register that made my hindbrain go quiet and obedient.
The door slid open. The roar trebled in volume, cutting through the filtered air of the SUV. A wall of flashbulbs went off, freezing the rain in stuttering pulses of white light.
Usually, I walked in the shadow. I used to be the ghost in the machine, the smudge in the background of their candid photos. But as my boots hit the wet pavement, I didn't tuck my chin.
Alfie led, a chaos vector in mesh and leather, grabbing the attention like a lightning rod.
Kit stayed on my right flank, a solid wall of heat and inked muscle, scanning the perimeter.
Euan was the ghost now, trailing six feet back, his eyes moving faster than the cameras could track, calculating vectors, threats, and lines of sight.
I walked center.
"FoxTail! Zia!"
The names mixed in the air. Someone threw a bouquet of neon-orange flowers—my brand colors. Kit caught it mid-air without breaking stride, checked it for weight and hidden tech, and handed it to me in one fluid motion.
"Clear," he murmured, his breath misting in the London chill.
I held the flowers against my chest, right over the spot where my heart hammered against my ribs. The stems were cold; the scent was masked by the ozone of the city and the heavy, spiced gravity of the three Alphas surrounding me.
We hit the stage door. Tammy swiped a keycard, and the heavy steel slab clanged shut behind us, cutting the screaming chaos into sudden, ringing silence.
The venue smelled like every gig I’d ever worked—stale beer, floor cleaner, old dust burning on hot par cans. It smelled like work.
"Load-in is finished," Euan said, seemingly talking to the empty corridor, though I knew he was visually checking the cable runs along the wall. "House engineer has the updated patch list."
"Good," I said. My voice sounded steady, professional. The Producer. "I want to check the vocal compression on Alfie’s in-ears. He was shouting in the car."
Alfie spun around, walking backward down the hallway, a grin splitting his face. The adrenaline of the press line had dilated his pupils until his eyes were almost black. "I wasn't shouting, Fox. I was projecting."
"You were peaking," I corrected. "And if you blow out your voice before the third track, I’m not fixing it in post."
He stopped, letting me close the distance. He radiated heat like a furnace. "Fix me now, then."
"Not here," Kit warned, though there was no bite in it. He steered us past a group of venue staff who were trying very hard not to stare.
A guy in a faded hoodie, the house monitor tech, if the lanyard was right, stepped out of a side room. He froze as the phalanx bore down on him, his eyes darting to the heavy binder Euan was carrying under one arm.
"Uh, excuse me," the tech said.
Kit shifted, ready to intercept, but I held up a hand. "Yeah?"
The guy swallowed, looking at me. Not at Alfie. Not at the famous faces. At me.
"The Rider," he said, gesturing vaguely to a tablet in his hand. "The download link went live ten minutes ago. We... the local crew, I mean. We just read the 'Scent-Neutral Workspace' clause."
I braced myself. I expected pushback. I expected the usual industry eyeroll about divas and demands.
"We've got the localized HEPA units set up at FOH for you," the guy said, rushing the words. "And we cleared the designated quiet zone in the green room. Just... wanted to say thanks. My sister is an Omega audio tech. She quit touring last year because nobody would do this."
The hallway went dead silent.
Alfie’s grin softened into something sharper, prouder. Euan adjusted the binder, nodding once, a king acknowledging a tribute.
"Proper," Kit said, clapping the guy on the shoulder hard enough to make him wince. "We like the HEPA units running at sixty percent until showtime. Keep the airflow positive."
"Right. On it." The tech scrambled away.
I stood there for a second, the neon flowers crinkling in my grip. The marks on my neck warmed under the high collar of my shirt, throbbing in time with my pulse. We hadn't just claimed each other in a private room with a lawyer present. We were rewriting the code of the entire machine.
"Asset secure?" Euan asked softly, stepping up beside me. His scent, toasted tea and sesame, curled around me, grounding the floaty feeling in my head.
"System stable," I replied, looking up at them. "Let’s go make some noise."
Alfie whooped, turning on his heel and sprinting toward the dressing room. "Soundcheck in ten! I want the reverb wet enough to drown in!"
"Dry vocal," I shouted after him. "Don't you dare touch that reverb dial!"
"Make me!" he yelled back, disappearing around the corner.
I looked at Kit and Euan. Kit rolled his eyes, but his hand brushed my lower back, his thumb hooking into the belt loop of my cargo pants for a fleeting second.
"Yours to handle, Boss," Kit said.
"I'll manage the signal flow," Euan added, checking his watch. "You manage the talent."
"I thought I was the talent today," I said, raising an eyebrow.
Euan’s gaze dropped to my covered neck, then back to my eyes. The look was heavy, possessive, and terrifyingly clinical.
"You're the architecture, Z," he said quietly to only me. "Without you, we're just noise."