Chapter 27 #3
He nods once. Doesn’t try to fix it or shrink it or polish it into a lesson. He just lets it sit there in the room with us, heavy and real, and somehow that makes it easier to breathe.
I should say something useful. About the production. About James Chen. About the career I’ve built with my own two hands and the way they handed it back to me with strings I never agreed to. About the fear sitting in my chest that this is only the beginning of doors closing.
Instead, what comes out is: “They built me a room.”
Elias stills. His hands pause on the blanket he’s smoothing over the foot of the bed, and his gaze lifts to mine.
“They did,” he says.
“Why would they do that?”
He considers the question carefully. His dark green eyes hold mine.
“Because they care about you.” He pauses. “They’ve been paying attention to you longer than you think.”
The simplicity of it breaks something open in my chest. A slow crack spreading through a wall I’ve been leaning against for weeks.
I’m tired of being brave. I’m tired of holding myself together. I’m tired of separating Maya from the omega like they’re two different people occupying the same skin.
I’m just tired.
Elias sees it. Of course, he sees it. He’s been seeing me since the first week of filming, watching from the edges of rooms, paying attention to things everyone else missed.
He sits on the edge of the bed beside me, close enough that the warmth of him reaches me through the space between us, but he doesn’t touch me. He’s just there if I need him.
“Talk or don’t talk,” he says. “I’m here either way.”
I look at my hands. At the blankets. At the soft, expensive evidence of being wanted spread across every surface of this room.
“I’ve spent my entire life being the person nobody notices,” I say.
The words come out uneven. “The reliable one. The beta who exists in the background because that’s where betas belong.
And then I present, and suddenly I’m hyper-visible in exactly the way I never wanted to be.
Everyone is treating me differently and my career has become conditional.
The one thing that was supposed to be mine gets taken away because my body decided to change.
” I press the heel of my hand against my eye.
“And then I come here, and they’ve built me a room, and I don’t—I don’t know how to hold all of that at once. ”
Elias listens without interrupting or rushing to reassure me. He simply sits beside me and lets the words exist in the space between us.
After a long moment, he speaks.
“You’re still you,” he says quietly. “The production didn’t change that. Your designation didn’t change that. The woman who ran that set for months is sitting right here.” He turns his head slightly, his eyes finding mine in the dim light. “She didn’t go anywhere.”
Something inside me eases at his words.
I am still me.
The realization doesn’t fix anything. But it makes the weight slightly easier to carry.
Elias reaches for the blanket beside him and pulls it across our laps. The movement is casual and domestic. The kind of gesture that exists between people who have shared space long enough to stop calculating every touch.
His hand brushes mine as he adjusts the fabric, and I don’t pull away.
I curl toward him instead.
The movement is unconscious. I turn toward him, my shoulder settling against his arm as my head finds the space between his shoulder and chest. I let it rest there, my cheek against the soft cotton of his Henley, while the stone-and-musk scent of him fills my lungs with each breath.
His arm slowly lifts. His hand settles on my upper back, the weight of it grounding through the fabric of my sweater, and he holds me there with a gentleness that makes something in my chest ache.
There is no resistance, internal argument, or voice in my head insisting this is the omega and not me.
There is just the feeling of safety. The soft weight of blankets, the steady weight of Elias's arm around me, and the relief of a body that has finally, finally stopped fighting itself.
I close my eyes. His heartbeat presses against my ear, slow and even, and I match my breathing to the rhythm without thinking about it. His thumb brushes once across my shoulder blade, and warmth spreads outward from the point of contact.
“We’ve got you,” he murmurs. His voice is so low I feel it more than hear it, the vibration moving through his chest into mine. “However you need. However long it takes. You’re not alone in this.”
I believe him.
Not just because he said it. Because he's been showing me since the first night he slept on my couch, since the first morning he brought muffins, since the first time he positioned himself between me and a crowded hallway without being asked.
Elias Stone doesn't make promises he doesn't intend to keep.
My body relaxes into his. Muscle by muscle, joint by joint, the tension I've been carrying for weeks surrenders to the simple, undeniable fact of being held.
I'm still scared. I'm still angry about the production. I still have no idea what my career looks like on the other side of this, or how many doors will close, or whether the industry I love will make room for an omega coordinator the way it made room for a beta one.
But curled against Elias's chest in a room built for me by people who wanted me here, the fear feels smaller than it did this morning.
Small enough to carry.
Small enough to breathe around.
Small enough, finally, to sleep through.
I drift. The room blurs at the edges.
Elias leans back against the bed, bringing me with him without breaking the loose hold he has around my shoulders.
I settle against his chest as he stretches out beside me.
His breathing evens out beneath my cheek, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm my body follows without effort.
His hand rests against my back, and the weight of it anchors me to something solid in a world that has felt increasingly unstable for days.
For the first time since presenting, I understand with bone-deep certainty that I’m not alone.
I carry that certainty with me as sleep pulls me under, and for once, I don't resist it.