Page 19 of Heat Unscripted

Bram gave me a nod. Brief. Professional. Underneath it, warmer, the rare thing of being seen by a man who knew exactly what it cost to walk into the light.

Tuck caught my eye and winked. Pure Tuck, easy and sure, years of warmth folded into it, the on-air chemistry that had never been only on-air. His cedar had started to bloom in the rising heat of the booth, wrapping around me like it knew the way.

Cillian adjusted my gain without looking up. His fingers moved over the board with the focus of a man who’d done it ten thousand times, watching the frequencies that would carry my voice to the world.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His eyes did it for him.I’m here. I’m watching. The second you need me, I move.

I took a breath and pulled it deep. Found the Rogue where I’d left her, poised, cool, her whole life built on a performance of not needing anyone.

The campaign began.

“The Rogue regards the bridge before her.” Bram’s voice filled the booth, filled my headphones, filled the hollow place under my collarbones where the thing had been rising for weeks. “Old stone, worn smooth by centuries of feet, leading toward a dark she can’t see into and a future she can’t predict. She has always preferred roads she could map first. This one gives her nothing.”

I leaned into the mic. Let the character settle over me like a second skin.

“She steps forward anyway,” I said, and it came out rich and steady, the gravel contralto that had paid for my whole life. “Because standing still was never a real option. Because the pack behind her is watching. Because.”

I paused. Let the quiet stretch, the way Bram had taught me.

“Because some bridges only show up once you’re ready to burn the ones behind you.”

The chat window on Cillian’s monitor went off like a flare. Hearts and exclamation points, five million people answering at once to a moment they’d waited months to hear.

The “On Air” light held red.

The suppressants held.

Twenty-four hours. Three Alphas in a sealed box, their biology tracking mine since before any of us had a name for what we were building.

I just had to hold.

TEN

Isobel

By hour two, I’d forgotten to be afraid.

Call it the Rogue’s gift. Or Bram’s, since he’s the one responsible for building a world so dense that the sealed booth just dissolved around me. It turned into torchlit corridors and obsidian bridges. The dice hitting the table with a sound like a verdict coming down. The character ate me alive the way she always did when the work was good, when the script and my voice and the moment all clicked into the same groove. I stopped watching my own pulse. I stopped counting the minutes to my next dose. I stopped tracking the three Alpha scents slowly thickening the air I had to breathe.

I just played.

“The Rogue does not kneel.” My voice dropped into the gravel five million people were hearing live, the register that turned warrior queens into something with a heartbeat. “She’s knelt before. For coin. For survival. For the performance of bowing that kept her breathing in courts where a drawn blade got you less attention than an unbowed head.”

Bram’s pen moved across his folio. He didn’t look up. But the corner of his mouth shifted, and that was more private than approval.

“The Knight steps forward.” His voice laid the scene down in layers, unhurried, present in a way that didn’t seem possible. “He doesn’t ask her to kneel. He never has. He lowers himself to one knee in front of her instead, and sets his blade on the ground between them.”

Tuck leaned into his mic. The bass of him traveled through the shared desk, up my forearms, and settled low in my stomach.

“I’m not asking for your fealty,” he said. There was a weight in the Knight’s voice the character couldn’t quite account for. “I’m asking for your company. On the road. At my back. Wherever you’re going next.”

The chat counter on Cillian’s second monitor blurred into pure motion. I caught fragments.

THE CHEMISTRY.

I’M LITERALLY CRYING.

THEY ARE SO IN LOVE.