Page 119 of Stream Heat
Ash whooped, “Damn, Queen, where was that last season?”
I found the words, just, “Getting sabotaged by my own genetics, probably.”
The chat flipped, for a second it was nothing but #GeneticsGang, #QueenNeverFell, people spamming support. For a second I thought maybe the mods had it clamped down, maybe I’d survive two more rounds.
The next superchat hit, and it was nuclear.
A hundred bucks, and the filter let every word through.
Queen, do you get off on all the Alpha attention? Or do you need the whole pack to keep you from popping a heat on stream again? Bet your chair is drenched right now from being around all those Alphas. Maybe you should go back to faking Beta, it was more believable. #SuppJunkie #NotEvenHuman #AlphaWhore
It pinned itself at the top of chat. All thirty thousand viewers, forced to see it loop and loop and loop.
Vision went tunnel. Breathing? Gone. Controller? I couldn’t feel it in my hands.
“Fuck,” I muttered, but the mic was hot and everyone heard.
Malik’s voice, low, straight for my nerves. “You can log off if you want. We’ll cover.”
But I couldn’t log off. My eyes were glued to the insult. The word “whore” cycled, hundreds of times per second. I couldn’t even feel my hands.
The mask slipped. And I knew it’d be clipped, replayed, meme’d by morning.
I tried to say something cool, make a joke, retake control, but all I did was stare at the waves of chat, drowning.
Last thing I spotted before I tried to shake myself out of it was the other four Alphas, all-caps, turning on the troll with a force I’d never, ever seen.
But it was too late. And for the first time in a year, the urge to quit wasn’t just background noise, it was in my marrow.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been trolled. But it was the first time it stung like this.
The pack reacted instantly, sensing how much the comment had hurt me.
Reid’s fingers clamped onto his controller; plastic creaked like it was about to snap in his grip. His arms were veined up, jaw fixed, murder in his eyes. On stream, he dropped the team’s whole strategy, broke cover, and drove straight for my avatar in a suicide sprint, blocking every bullet.
Theo was all noise, but the kind that made grown men duck. He banged his chair out, knees up, channeling every manic impulse into the team DM and the public chat. He was firing off so many lines I wondered if he had six hands. “Mods BAN. Ban. BAN. Nobody comes for Queen. Pack law.”
Jace? Not a word. He went stiller than still. You wouldn’t catch the change unless you’d seen it before, the way his eyes blacked out, pupils swallowing the color, the way he stopped even pretending to type. He was already tracking the troll, pulling their info, prepping to retaliate. Surgical, emotionless, and ten times scarier than the yelling.
Ash was the opposite, pure motion. He was half-up from the workbench, hands braced on the edge, knuckles white as bone. The RGB strips on his PC shifted from blue to blood-red, matching the pulse in his neck. His scent changed, too, charcoal and vanilla with something sharp underneath. It was instant. My nerve endings flipped on, every sense on high alert. He never took his eyes off the monitor, but he was ready to close the gap in a blink if needed.
Malik was the slowest, but when he moved, it was final. He twisted away from his station so the camera couldn’t catch, dropped his voice so low I heard it only because I was listening for it, “Kara, listen. You don’t have to stay. We’ll kill the stream. You want out, just say.”
I wanted to answer, but my tongue was stone. My only response was to stare at the monitor, the chat, now a war zone. The viewers had picked up the mood.
Alpha mode engage
Did you SEE Reid’s face
Protect Queen, she’s in shock
You could bottle the tension in there and sell it as a weapon.
In-game, I was crouched behind cover. In real life, the room was sitting on a hair trigger. You could hear it, even through the headphones, the breathing, barely held in check.
Theo was still typing. “Pack Wrecked runs on respect. You wanna hate, back it up IRL.” Actual growl that time, and chat spammed comments of surprise.
Theo’s gonna eat this guy lmao
