Hers on the Silver Screen: Claimed by the Movie Star (Femalpha Fatales #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

MYLO

“So, Christine. When did you first realize you were becoming America’s favorite movie star?”

A mysterious smile pulls across her bright red lips. Piercing blue eyes sparkle, and she toys with a strand of her perfectly curled platinum blonde hair. Even seated, she towers over the affable Tommy Kim—the first Korean-American host of Today, Tonight.

“Well, Tommy, I think about two seconds ago! You’re making me blush.”

A chuckle rolls through the studio audience. Tommy shakes his head with a miffed grin. “Are you kidding? Everyone loves you!”

I scoff, reach across the two plastic beer crates that pass for a coffee table, and grab the remote.

“Bro, what the fuck? I’m watching this,” snaps my roommate, Scott.

“I need to moisturize for another hour!” His loose plastic gloves—some kind of moisturizing hand mask—rustle as he points at me.

Scott is a pretty stereotypical-looking gym bro with a too-orange spray tan: not unattractive, but nothing special in LA.

He’d book a lot more gigs if he wasn’t such a pain to work with.

Instead, he changes career plans every four months when the current pipe dream falls apart.

Now it’s hand modeling. Before that was voice-over work, and before that was… TV commercials, maybe?

“You can watch something else,” I snap back.

“You can go somewhere else.”

An acidic retort bubbles on my tongue. But the reason I still put up with Scott is that his mom pays most of the rent. I’d pay to not live with him too—if I had any money. If he decides to move or kick me out, I’m royally fucked.

I drop the remote on the beer crate with a sharp sigh. “Fine. Whatever.”

Tommy leans over and asks Christine, “Did you always want to become an actor?”

She gives a light, musical laugh, and the muscles of her arms—intentionally bared by her sleeveless corset top—ripple.

“I wanted to be everything but one, actually! Doctor, scientist, firefighter, ballerina, the usual. That’s the thing about acting: it lets me be anyone and anything.

No two gigs are the same. I’ve learned an incredible amount from some absolutely amazing people. They’re the real stars.”

Tommy pauses to let the audience cheer and whistle.

I roll my eyes with a groaning sigh.

Scott throws a sidelong glare at me. “Dude, Mylo, what’s your problem? How can you hate Christine Evansworth?”

“How can you like her? You know this is all fake, right? She previews and approves all these questions.” I put on a mocking, high-pitched tone. “You’re making me blush. She’s an actor. It’s all bullshit. Those muscles aren’t real either; all the stars are juicing now.”

Scott raises his brows. “Who pissed in your coffee?”

“Nobody. Nothing. Whatever.” I cross my arms and sink back into the couch, seething.

Scott returns his attention to the show and promptly forgets I exist.

We met on a job—one of the few that Scott actually managed to keep for any length of time. I wish I’d known that then, but it’s not like I had any other way to make rent.

I’m a stunt worker; I live for the high.

That surge of adrenaline when I step off a cliff, putting complete trust in my harness and my team.

The cold beers after a sweaty, shitty day of being lit on fire repeatedly.

Throwing myself through a sheet of glass, knowing that I’m making that sly assassin, rogue detective, or secret agent truly come to life.

There’s nothing like it.

The industry is shrinking. Or, more like being crushed. Directors want to fix it in post, opting for crappy CGI over real stunts.

And then there are the actors who want to do their own stunts. Actors like Christine Evansworth. They already have all the money, fame, and glory, but no, that’s not enough. They have to take work away from the actual stunt professionals.

The final result looks crappier too. Stunt work is so much more than muscle.

I started gymnastics before I could walk and have been studying martial arts since the first time someone picked on me for being short.

Stunt professionals learn how to sell the action, how to make it look good, how to do it over-and-over for that perfect shot.

We put our limbs and lives on the line, and what’s the thanks we get?

Christine’s voice chimes from the TV, “That’s right, I do all my own stunts.” She lifts her arm and flexes.

Tommy’s brows raise appreciatively, and as she glances out at the audience, scattered whistles rise over the applause.

My eyes narrow into the murderous glare that’s gotten me cast as more than one background henchman.

There’s no way Christine has fewer than three dedicated stunt doubles for tricks deemed too risky for America’s favorite movie star.

“You are just a wonder woman!” Tommy enthuses.

Christine gives a sly grin. “No, no, I’m Electra.”

Tommy chuckles, and the audience follows suit. “Yes! Let’s talk about that. You have a movie about to come out, don’t you?”

“Have you seen the teaser?”

“You are absolutely incredible in it. Here, you all have to see this.” Tommy gestures urgently at the audience, and a trailer expands to fill the screen.

Dark smoke billows across the screen, and a flash of lightning illuminates Christine from behind.

She strides slowly forward, revealing Electra’s signature outfit: molded gold breastplate, matching bracers, gladiator skirt, and knee-high boots in night-blue leather, with a crimson cape flowing from her shoulders.

She reaches out a hand, and lightning flickers in the churning smoke, coalescing into a spear that she hurls toward the screen.

There’s a flash of light, and text lingers:

Electra returns this fall.

The studio feed fades back in with another surge of applause.

“Really fantastic, right?” Tommy says. “You have no idea how excited I am.”

I roll my eyes again but hold back a groan this time, ignoring Christine’s effortless-yet-practiced answer. Christine, Christine, Christine. What about the costume designer? The lighting crew? The concept artists?

“I’ve got another question,” Tommy says. “Just how tall are you?”

“Six-foot-three. Well, six-seven in heels.” She flicks an open-toed silver stiletto and a perfect French-tip pedicure at the camera.

The audience rewards her with laughter and cheers—probably because some blinking sign is telling them to—and Christine joins them, flashing her sharp canines. As she settles, she tucks her hair behind a pointed ear.

Half of why I hate Christine Evansworth is that she’s an alpha. Not only can she go wherever she wants, do whatever she wants, be whatever she wants, people will kiss her feet as she does it.

It makes me furious.

Alphas are the reason nobody will hire omegas for anything in the industry.

Legally, officially, omegas can’t be banned.

But it’s trivially easy to come up with an excuse to not hire someone, no matter how well they audition.

Not the right look. Just not seeing the chemistry. Someone else was a better fit.

The open secret is that omegas are considered too much of a liability.

Not for anything omegas do, no. Of course not.

But because we can’t have our star getting distracted.

Because omegas are just fragile, everyone knows that.

Because alphas just can’t control themselves. Because it’s a ticking HR time-bomb.

Studios or unions could require that all working alphas be on suppressants. It’s the standard in most industries at this point. But directors worry their beloved stars will lose their ‘edge.’

Alphas in LA are wilder. Sharper. Greedier.

Omegas in LA are nonexistent.

Or so everyone thinks.

Christine laughs at something else, and the sound claws at my brain. My stubbornness finally gives out, and I stand, heading out onto the apartment’s small balcony.

I pull the slider shut, and the quiet night air rises to meet me.

With a tight sigh, I lean against the railing, then slide a vape out of my pocket and take a few deep pulls. Smoke pours from my nose as the nicotine settles my nerves.

The other reason I tolerate Scott: this view.

My eyes glide over the Hollywood Hills, settling for a moment on the iconic sign. It’s brightly illuminated, a beacon in the darkness; the pulsing, irresistible lure that drew us all here like witless moths.

Sometimes I wish I could tell people the lengths I’ve gone to for this job.

I wish I could join in the good-natured contests of who’s done the most fucked up thing for Hollywood, wish I could trade nostalgic anecdotes about my childhood without keeping careful track of every lie, wish I could just…

tell someone and laugh about it over beer.

But if anyone, anyone, finds out the truth, everything ends.

I’ll be swaddled in bubble wrap and shipped back to Bumfuck, USA.

I try to forget it, almost believing my own story that the meds I must take at a precise time every day are for a congenital thyroid disorder.

But the truth is inescapable. That I hate alphas so much, that I can’t just turn my brain off and kiss their boots like everyone else in this fucking town does, is proof.

It doesn’t matter that I had my teeth filed down or that my ears healed perfectly.

No matter how well my red color-depositing conditioner tones my naturally teal hair to a cool brown with every shower, and even though I got my fucking irises tattooed to hide their natural amber-orange with whiskey brown…

I can’t change my fucking DNA.

I can’t escape.

I’m an omega.