Page 150 of Stream Heat
Something inside me cracked and re-formed. “That’s why we built this,” I said, squeezing her hands back. “So no one else has to make the call I did.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, voice shaking. “There are packs forming all over the industry now. Real, safe packs. Not just for show. You made that possible.”
I thought of the rooms full of creators finding their people, their teams, making something new instead of pretending to be something they weren’t. That was worth every bit of pain it took to get here.
I escaped to the far side of the room, needing to catch my breath. The event was rolling, creators clustering around interactive displays, execs arguing over the best way to monetizenew categories, medical professionals swapping recovery strategies for former suppressant users like baseball cards.
Reid tracked me down, scent of storm and wood and everything that felt like safety.
“Proud of you,” he said, words stripped down to the bone.
“Proud of us,” I countered. I wasn’t letting him put this all on me.
He smiled crookedly, sliding an arm around my waist. “You were the catalyst. Anyone could have tried, but only you were crazy enough to walk into Congress and tell them they didn’t have a clue about how the internet worked. Or about how people like us navigated it.”
“You say that like it’s a compliment,” I deadpanned.
“With you, it always is.”
The others found us in twos and threes, as they always did, orbiting back to the center as if drawn by gravity. Theo showed up with a tray of champagne, sloshing half the glasses before he even made it. Jace materialized beside me, silent and grounding. Ash finished his rounds with the engineers and folded himself into the corner of our circle. Malik trailed after, eyes sweeping the room, calm but calculating, always.
“To Quinn!” Theo toasted, glittering with pride. “For turning the worst day of her life into a goddamn revolution!”
“To the pack,” I corrected, holding my glass high. “For seeing me and loving me when I needed it the most.”
The sound of clinking glasses was sharp, and the warmth from it lingered. Six months ago, I’d have been hiding in my room, hoping no one noticed me. Now, I was at the eye of the storm, leader of a movement, fully visible, not hiding a single part of myself.
It wasn’t easy. The medical shit alone would have ended most people. The hate mail, the lawsuits, the old guard shoving back, trying to make me eat crow for refusing to play their game. Buthere I was, not just alive but winning, and building something that might outlast me.
Kara Quinn. Omega. Content creator. Pack member. Industry nightmare. For once, all those roles stitched together instead of fighting for dominance.
And I knew, this wasn’t the end. It was just the part where the story starts to get good.
Later, after the noise and chaos faded, I found myself back in the nest, the one Ash built, round and deep and perfect. The one that had turned into the gravitational center of our lives. Tonight, it was quiet, just the afterglow of the event and the weight of everything we’d accomplished humming around me.
I sat in the center, surrounded by the layered scents of my Alphas, and finally let myself process. We’d blown our projections out of the water; the support was bigger than even the most optimistic timeline said possible. But that wasn’t the thing that hit hardest. It was the kids who’d found me afterwards, the ones who’d choked out thank-you’s and told me that, for the first time, they didn’t feel like monsters for just existing. The advocates who wanted to take our model and apply it to every industry. The doctors eager to pitch our protocols to their clinics and see if it could work for others. Real change. Tangible. Blood-and-bone real.
“Deep thoughts?” Malik’s voice was soft, pitched low so it wouldn’t break the mood. He settled beside me, hand finding mine like it always did, easy as breathing.
“Just… taking it all in,” I said. “Feels like a lot.”
“It is a lot,” Malik replied, and for a second his calm was so complete I felt my own pulse slow just from proximity. “You did something extraordinary today.”
“We did.”
He squeezed my fingers. “Six months ago, you couldn’t even say the word Omega without apologizing. Now you launched aplatform designed to make people like you visible. And there’s a line of creators waiting to follow you through that door.”
Put that way, the contrast was blinding.
“That’s why we have a pack,” he said. “We reflect each other’s growth.”
The rest of them trickled in, summoned by some animal logic. Theo first, energy dialed a little lower but still enough to light up a room. Jace next, ghosting in and settling behind me, combing gentle fingers through my hair. Ash, massive and steady, taking up his usual spot at the foot of the nest. Reid last, filling the space with unspeakable relief.
Ash had no chill, as usual. “Launch metrics are beyond projections by 43%. Creator signups over two hundred percent above model. Infrastructure held, but we’ll need to adapt if it keeps up at this rate.”
“In other words, we kicked ass,” Theo cut in, wriggling closer.
“It’s more than numbers,” Jace said. “The testimonials… the stories we’re hearing. That’s legacy, not just business.”
