Chapter 24
Maya
The muffins are still warm. Blueberry, sugar-dusted, the kind from the bakery three blocks from my apartment that Elias somehow knows are my favorite even though I’ve never told him.
He sets the paper bag between us on the center console, the smell of sugar and butter filling the car before he even pulls out of the parking lot.
“You can eat these as we drive since we are running a bit late,” he says.
Like it’s his responsibility to make sure I eat. I guess it’s something that happens now, part of the landscape of my mornings the same way his presence has become part of my evenings.
I take one from the bag. Break it in half. The blueberries inside are still soft, the sugar catching the morning light through the windshield.
“Thanks,” I say.
He nods once. Doesn’t make a thing of it.
We’ve been doing this for days now. The two of us moving through my small kitchen like we’ve established territories—him by the coffee maker, me at the counter, both of us reaching for things without bumping into each other because we’ve learned each other’s patterns without trying.
This morning I loaded the dishwasher while he wiped down the counter.
He handed me a dishcloth without looking up from the sink.
I took it without saying thank you because thank you started feeling redundant.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to be domestic with Elias.
I eat the muffin slowly, watching the city pass outside the window.
After yesterday—after the strange alpha who made my entire body recoil—the specificity of what I feel for these three men sits differently in my chest. It’s not just compatibility. Not just biology. It’s them. The warm amber of Adrian, the sharp bergamot of Bash, the grounding stone of Elias.
For days, I kept telling myself this was instinct. That my omega was making choices my brain hadn't agreed to yet.
Now I'm not sure that's true.
Maybe my omega just recognized something I wasn't ready to admit.
Nadia’s voice echoes from yesterday’s conversation. You keep doing this. Separating yourself from her. Talking about your omega like she’s some outside force instead of part of you.
She’s right.
I’ve spent days acting like my omega wants things I’m being forced to tolerate.
Like her instincts are separate from my choices.
But the truth sitting in my chest this morning is that I want this.
I want the comfort they give me. I want the way Adrian’s eyes find mine across crowded rooms. I want Bash’s teasing and Elias’s grounding presence and the contentment I feel when all three of them are near.
Maybe that’s the way through. Not fighting what’s happening, but accepting that it is happening. That the omega reaching for them is reaching with my hands, my heart, the same person who’s been watching them since the first week of filming.
Maybe I can have both. The alphas and the career.
The thought sits uncertain in my chest as Elias turns into the studio lot.
The parking garage is the same as always—concrete, exhaust fumes, the particular chill of underground spaces that never quite warms up no matter what time of year it is. Elias parks in his usual spot near the elevator. Cuts the engine. For a moment, neither of us moves.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod. “Ready.”
But the moment we step out of the car, the air changes.
Not the temperature. The quality of it. The studio in the morning carries its own particular scent—coffee from craft services, equipment dust, the faint industrial smell of concrete and metal that’s been here since the building was poured.
But beneath it all, threading through the familiar scents of the studio, I catch Adrian's and Bash's scents. My omega responds before my brain fully registers they’re here, awareness sharpening from background to foreground in the space of a single breath.
We take the elevator up together. Elias stands beside me, close enough that the stone-and-musk of him cuts through the stale elevator air. My shoulder brushes his arm. I don’t move away.
The doors open to the main floor, and the sound hits first—equipment carts rolling across concrete, distant voices calling check numbers, the particular hum of a set coming alive for the day.
Then the smells layer in—coffee, yes, but also the cedar scent of Adrian somewhere to the left and the bergamot of Bash somewhere ahead, both of them already here, already moving through the space the way they do every morning.
My body turns toward the sound of Adrian’s voice before I consciously decide to look for him.
He’s by the craft services table, coffee in hand, deep in conversation with the DP. But his attention finds mine the moment I step into the room, his eyes lifting from the conversation like he felt me enter the space before he saw me.
His smile is so wide it reaches his eyes. Then he's crossing the room toward me, already reaching for the second coffee cup beside him on the table.
"Here," he says, handing it to me. Cream, no sugar. Exactly the way I take it.
A week ago, I would have convinced myself it didn't mean anything. That he was being friendly. Attentive. The kind of person who remembered details about everyone.
Now I know better.
He noticed. He remembered. And he cared enough to act on it.
"Thanks," I say.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Better.”
He nods, studying my face for half a second longer than the conversation requires. Then he’s headed back to the DP, his body angled slightly toward mine even as his attention returns to work.
Bash appears from behind a lighting rig five minutes later, a script tucked under one arm. He spots me across the room. Grins. Starts toward me, then stops abruptly when a group of PAs clusters between us, their voices rising as they debate something about the next setup.
I feel it before I'm consciously aware of it—the first curl of overstimulation, the tension that starts behind my temples when too many conversations compete for space at once. My shoulders tighten.
Bash notices.
He changes direction mid-step, cutting between two of the PAs with casual ease. A question here, a comment there, and somehow the conversation shifts toward the far side of the room without anyone realizing they've been redirected. The space around me clears.
The tension eases before it can fully take hold.
Bash catches my eye from across the room, nods once, then returns to whatever he was doing before.
Like taking care of me is second nature.
Elias has already positioned himself near the security checkpoint, his posture relaxed, his attention occasionally drifting across the set in the particular pattern I’ve come to recognize—not scanning for threats, but tracking.
Keeping a mental note of where I am, where Adrian is, and where Bash is.
The three of them move through the same space with a synchronization that feels less practiced and more instinctive with each passing day.
I feel calmer whenever any of them are in my line of sight. Adrian by craft services. Bash near the monitors. Elias at the edges.
Three steady points I find myself orienting around before I even realize I'm doing it.
The morning unfolds. Setups, resets, the familiar chaos of a filming day. I move through my stations, check call sheets, confirm locations, and answer questions. Doing my job the way I’ve always done it.
But something’s different.
The first time I notice it is in the production office.
I step through the doorway with a scheduling question, and the conversation inside stops.
Not dramatically. Not the way it would in a bad movie.
Just a natural pause, the kind where people register someone new has entered the space and adjust accordingly.
Except the adjustment is different now.
The line producer—a beta woman I’ve worked with on four previous projects—lowers her voice when she answers my question.
It’s not patronizing.
Just different than usual.
The kind of adjustment people make when they suddenly become aware of something they never had to think about before.
“The warehouse sequence got pushed to after lunch,” she says. Her voice is softer than it was thirty seconds ago when she was addressing another worker. “We’re thinking two, two-thirty. Will that work for your... situation?”
My situation.
I nod. “That’s fine. Thanks.”
I leave the office quickly. The hallway outside feels too narrow suddenly.
Twenty minutes later, the gaffer pulls me aside near the lighting rig.
He’s an older alpha, gruff, competent, the kind who’s been in the industry long enough to have strong opinions about everything and the experience to back them up.
He’s never treated me differently before.
Today, he keeps half a step more distance than he normally would.
“You hanging in there?” he asks. His tone is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “Long days for someone in your condition.”
My condition.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically. “Really. The schedule’s manageable.”
He nods. Doesn’t look convinced. “Just... you know. Say the word if you need to tap out. Nobody would blame you.” I thank him and move to the next station before the tightness in my chest can fully form.
By eleven, a PA I barely know hovers near my station for thirty seconds, a question visibly forming and dissolving on his face three separate times before he finally decides not to approach me at all. He turns away. Finds someone else to ask.
I watch him go. A feeling of dread forming as I do.
This is what I’ve been afraid of since the beginning.
Not the alphas themselves. The way their attention makes me visible to everyone else.
The way my changing scent turns me from Maya-the-production-coordinator into Maya-the-omega in the space of a single breath, regardless of what I want or how hard I’ve worked to be seen as anything else.
People are noticing my designation before they notice me.