Jaleesa
I pack my blazers. Two is professional. Three is armor. I fold the third one into my overnight bag and zip it shut before I can second-guess myself.
"You don't have to do this." Lila's voice comes through the phone propped against my bathroom mirror, tinny from the speaker but sharp enough to cut. "Seriously, Leesa. I can talk to Grayson. Tell him this whole lodge thing is ridiculous—"
"It is ridiculous." I pull a silk scarf from the hook on my closet door and drape it across my packed bag.
Backup. Scarves dress up anything and hide everything.
"Off-the-record mediation at his family's private cabin?
There's not a judge in this state who'd call that legitimate process.
He's trying to control the venue, the terms, and the narrative, and his brother's letting him because Vaughn men apparently think the rules apply to everyone except Vaughn men. "
A pause on her end. Then, quieter: "He's doing it for me."
The guilt arrives on schedule. I sit on the edge of my bed and press my palm flat against the mattress, grounding myself against the frustration coiling in my chest. Lila is my best friend.
Has been since law school orientation, when we were the only two Black women in a study group of twelve and decided independently that the other one looked like she didn't suffer fools.
We were both right. Fourteen years later, nothing's changed—except that my best friend is now bonded to the CEO of the company I'm suing, ten weeks pregnant, and apparently so stressed that her body chemistry is punishing her for it.
"How bad is the morning sickness?"
"Bad." She doesn't elaborate, which means it's worse than bad. Lila doesn't minimize unless the truth is ugly enough to scare someone. "I threw up three times before eight this morning. Grayson almost called an ambulance."
"Of course he did."
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting anything." But the corner of my mouth twitches.
Grayson Vaughn calling an ambulance over morning sickness is exactly the kind of alpha overreaction that would be funny if it weren't happening to my person.
"I'm just saying—he does know that nausea is normal in the first trimester, right? "
"He knows. He also bought a blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, and a fetal doppler online at three in the morning, so. We're managing."
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. The image of Grayson Vaughn—ice-cold, terrifying Grayson Vaughn—hunched over his phone at 3 AM comparison-shopping fetal dopplers is almost enough to make me like the man.
Almost.
"Lila." I pick up the phone and take it off speaker, holding it close. "I'm not dropping the suit. You know that."
"I know."
"Maya Lincoln deserves that position. She earned it. And the fact that your husband's brother wrote a policy specifically designed to keep women like her—like us—out of the room where decisions get made? That's not something I can walk away from because it's inconvenient for Sunday dinner."
"I'm not asking you to walk away." Her voice steadies, and I hear the woman underneath the morning sickness—the strategist, the fighter, the omega who hid what she was for two years and still came out swinging.
"I'm asking you to be careful. Hunter is not Grayson.
Grayson is a wall you can see. Hunter is the trap under the leaves. "
"Poetic."
"Accurate. He'll be polite. He'll be reasonable. He'll concede small points to make you feel like you're winning. And then he'll use something you said on hour three against you on hour fifteen, and you won't even realize you handed it to him."
"Lila. I'm a litigator. I've deposed CFOs who lied under oath and made them cry. I think I can handle one weekend with a man whose entire personality is a legal brief."
Silence. Then: "Just... don't let him get under your skin."
"He won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise." The words taste like something I should mean more than I do. "Now go drink some ginger tea and stop worrying about me. You've got a baby to grow."
"Be careful," she says one more time, and hangs up.
I set the phone down and stare at the bag on my bed.
Three blazers. Two pairs of heels. Enough legal briefs to wallpaper a courtroom.
And one small, persistent knot in my stomach that I refuse to call anxiety because Jaleesa Henderson does not get anxious about opposing counsel.
She prepares, she strategizes, and she wins.
This will be no different.
My cycle-tracking app glows on the screen: a clean grid of green, yellow, and red days stretching out across the month.
I check it every morning the way some women check their horoscopes—except mine is based on biology instead of astrology, and the stakes are slightly higher than "Mercury is in retrograde. "
Today is green. Deep green. Fourteen days from the nearest yellow zone, and a solid three weeks from anything red. My cycle runs like a Swiss clock—always has, even without chemical interference.
I don't take suppressants. Never have. Not because I'm reckless—because I'm principled.
Chemical suppressants were developed in the 1960s by alpha pharmaceutical executives who wanted omegas to be less disruptive in the workplace.
The marketing called it "liberation." The science called it endocrine suppression.
The side effects—bone density loss, mood destabilization, fertility damage after long-term use—were deemed acceptable trade-offs for making omega bodies less inconvenient to the people around them.
No, thank you.
My body is not an inconvenience. My cycle is not a disruption.
And I refuse to pump myself full of chemicals designed by alphas, for alphas, to make my existence more palatable in their spaces.
I manage my heats the way my grandmother managed hers and her grandmother before that—planning, awareness, and the self-discipline to stay home when the calendar says stay home.
Fourteen days out. Green across the board. Three weeks from anything that requires management.
I close the app and pick up the scent blocker from my vanity.
The bottle is matte gold, shaped like a perfume flacon, and costs more than it should.
Beau Masque—the industry standard for omega professionals who want to control what the world smells when they walk into a room.
It's not suppressants. It doesn't alter my biology.
It's a topical scent blocker infused with a heavy floral fragrance that sits on top of my natural pheromones like a locked door.
Anyone close enough to smell me gets French jasmine and white musk. What's underneath stays mine.
I spray my wrists. My throat. Behind both ears.
The hollow at the base of my neck. Then I lift the collar of my blouse and spray there too, and again at the inside of each elbow.
Generous. Thorough. The way I do it before court appearances, client meetings, and any situation where an alpha might use my biology to undermine my credibility.
One weekend. One cabin. One insufferable Harvard-educated alpha attorney whose idea of compromise is you agreeing with him slightly faster.
I cap the bottle, drop it in my bag next to the blazers, and head for the door.
The lodge is the kind of place that whispers money without raising its voice.
Stone foundation, exposed timber frame, wide front porch with hand-carved railings.
Old. Well-maintained in the way that only generational wealth maintains things—not renovated, not updated, just cared for by people who've never had to choose between fixing the roof and paying the electric bill.
I park the rental and check the time. Two-fifteen. He said three. Good. I want to be set up and settled before he arrives. Home court advantage matters even when the court belongs to the other team.
Inside, the great room opens up to a cathedral ceiling and a wall of windows that looks out onto nothing but trees.
A massive stone fireplace anchors one end.
The dining table—oak, scarred from decades of family meals—will do nicely as a negotiation surface.
I run my fingers along its edge as I cross to the windows.
The wood is warm, and something about the grain under my fingertips makes me think of courtroom benches, worn smooth by years of people waiting for their fates to be decided.
I set up my side of the table: briefs arranged by relevance, legal pads squared to the table edge, pens aligned.
The Maya Lincoln file goes front and center—her qualifications, her assessment scores, the formal rejection letter signed by Hunter Vaughn himself.
Every piece of evidence that says what Vaughn Industries won't: that they chose policy over merit and called it protection.
I'm at the windows studying the tree line when I hear the front door, followed by footsteps that belong to someone who owns every room before he enters it.
He sets his briefcase on the opposite end of the table and begins unpacking with the kind of precision that would be impressive if it weren't so clearly performative. Files aligned. Documents squared. Everything in its place, including—presumably—his opposing counsel.
"You're late," I say without turning.
"I'm on time. You're early."
His voice is different in person than on the phone. On the phone it's controlled, modulated, a weapon calibrated for maximum impact per syllable. In person, in this room, it has resonance. Depth. The kind of low register that settles in the chest whether you invite it or not.