Page 2 of Heat Unwritten
I stood up, my knees trembling violently, and made my way to the kitchen. The stainless steel aesthetic felt clinical, like a surgical theater waiting for a patient. On the black marble counter sat the regimented line of amber bottles that dictated my existence.
Omega Health Foundation. Patient: Kane, Tessa.
Protocol: Post-Suppressant Rehabilitation.
I cracked the lid on the daily stabilizer. The smell of the pills, chalky, chemical, and faintly bitter, made my stomach roll, but I dry-swallowed two of them. It had been a few years since I stopped taking the black-market "Omegablock XR-9" suppressants that Nexus Management had fed me like candy to keep my productivity up. "Write more, bleed less," had been the implicit motto of my ghostwriting days. They had nearly killed the woman to keep the bestseller machine running, chemically casting me into a numb, grey void where words flowed but feelings died.
Now, my body was a raw nerve. I wasn't just recovering; I was relearning how to exist in my own skin without chemical armor, and everything felt too loud, too bright, toomuch.
A massive boom of thunder shook the floor, vibrating up through the soles of my wool socks. The recessed lights flickered, dimmed to a brown-out, and then surged back to full, blinding brightness. The storm outside was ugly, a low-pressure system that looked like a bruised welt on the doppler radar, churning black and grey over the ocean. My joints ached in sympathy with the barometric drop.
My doctor, a kind, patient Beta named Mathieu, had warned me about this.Your endocrine system is fragile, Tessa. It’s confused. Storm fronts, high stress, irregular sleep, it all sends signals to your hindbrain that you’re under attack. It triggers a biological regression. A need to hide.
I rubbed my temples, trying to massage away the tension headache building behind my eyes. I realized with a jolt that I smelled like distress. My own scent, usually a quiet, intellectual mix of blackberry and old parchment, had sharpened into something brine-soaked and sour.
It smelled like fear.
I had to get it together. I needed to get back to the desk. I needed to finish the scene, or at least the page. The deadline wasn't just a suggestion; it was a calibrated inevitability, and I didn't break contracts. Contracts were safe. Contracts were boundaries.
The ultra-wide monitor on my desk lit up with a harsh, urgent ping that sliced through the sound of the rain.
I froze, one hand gripping the cold marble of the island until my knuckles turned white. My personal email was encrypted, shielded behind five different firewalls and routing through three different servers. Only three people had the address: Dr. Mathieu, my lawyer, andhim.
SENDER: Anders Svinton
SUBJECT: URGENT: FINAL PAGES / ASSET PRODUCTION
My stomach dropped all the way to my socks.
Anders. The name that haunted me. The same name as the class president in my high school, though I refused to believe there was even a chance they were the same person.
I had never metthisman in person, our entire relationship existed in concise, sharp-edged emails and terrifyingly competent contract negotiations,but he was the most intense presence in my life. He was a shark in a world of goldfish. He had taken T.L. Rose from a mid-list indie author to a global multimedia empire without ever asking to see my face. He protected my anonymity with a fervor that bordered on religious.
But in exchange, he demanded perfection. He demanded yield.
I walked back to the desk, treating the computer like it was an unexploded bomb ticking down. I tapped the spacebar to wake the screen fully, the white light washing over my face, probably illuminating the exhaustion that I knew was etched under my eyes.
T.L.,
The development team for the audio adaptation is onsite. We are currently losing twenty thousand dollars an hour while the voice talent sits around drinking my coffee and waiting for the rallying speech script.
I don't care if the muse is on vacation. I don't care if you're rewriting the hero's tragic backstory for the fifth time to avoid the emotional climax. I need the pages. The extraction point for the file transfer is the secure server. You have one hour before we miss the rendering window for the vertical slice.
Do not make me explain to the studio executives why the "Invisible Queen of Omegaverse" missed a deadline.
Send it.
— A.
The words were so quintessentiallyhim, cold, authoritative, and for some reason I imagined them smelling virtually of expensive bourbon, teakwood, and steel. He didn't ask; he commanded. He was pure, distilled control. Usually, thatfirmness grounded me. It was a structure I could lean against when my own world felt too fluid. He was the barrier between me and the industry, the Alpha upon whom I dumped my business problems so I could hide in my cave.
Today, however, it felt like a cage door slamming shut.
One hour.
I looked at the blinking cursor. The terrifying white page.
Lady Charlotte opened her mouth...
