Page 36 of Stream Heat
My laptop sat open on my desk, inbox overflowing. Sponsors, mostly, the desperate kind, the cautious kind, the “let’s see if Pack Wrecked can housebreak her” kind. Viewer mail was split between support, disappointment, and unfiltered venom. I scanned for anything useful, jotting notes for my content plan.
The narrative was spinning faster than I could keep up. Apparently “enemies to packmates” was trending, or at least people were curious enough to watch. The energy from yesterday’s stream with Reid was everywhere.
A knock came at the door.
“Quinn?” Ash’s voice, slow and deep, was instantly recognizable. “Got a sec?”
He stood there holding a pile of sound panels and a toolbox. The scent was charcoal and vanilla, warm, making me want to breathe deeper. Instead, I opened the door wider. “What’s up?”
“The acoustics in here are shit,” he said, no offense, just fact. “Mind if I fix it?”
I stepped back, and he was already analyzing the room, calculating, and I could see the gears turning. “Your voice is bouncing off the far wall. Adds echo. Viewers might not notice, but the algorithm picks it up.”
I blinked. “You can tell by just looking?”
He grunted, not exactly a laugh but not unfriendly. “Sound is physics. Physics is easy.”
He got to work, moving between marks with a kind of efficiency I envied. For a guy built like a tank, he barely disturbed the air. He explained as he went, marking the wall, placing each panel with obsessive precision.
“So you’re the tech support,” I said, mostly to fill the silence.
“Someone has to be,” he said, not looking up. “Otherwise they’d still be using stock cooling. Theo blew out three GPUs before I fixed his system.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” The thought of Theo melting hardware made me smile.
Ash caught that, glanced at me with cool, unreadable eyes. “You’re adapting.”
I tensed, not wanting the conversation to go there. “I’m managing. That’s all.”
He shrugged. “Call it what you want.” He wiped his hands and checked his spacing. “From here it looks like you’re getting used to us.”
Change topic or die, I told myself. “The joint stream thing, was that your call?”
“Malik’s.” He secured the last panel. “He understands audience psychology. People want to see things evolve. If it’s forced, they bail.”
“Nothing about this setup is natural,” I pointed out.
He swung the toolbox up, half-smiling. “Isn’t it?” He looked at me dead-on. “Five alphas, one Omega, locked in a house, sharing resources. It doesn’t get more basic.”
My breath stuttered. “It’s still just business.”
“If you say so.” He handed me my headset. “Try now.”
I did, hitting record. The sound was noticeably better, cleaner, like I’d leveled up without realizing.
“Not bad,” I admitted, taken by surprise. "Thanks, Ash."
He paused at the door, studying me with those intense grey eyes. "You know, for someone so determined to maintain distance, you sure say our names a lot."
I opened my mouth to snap back, but the door was already closing. He was gone, scent trailing.
Left alone, I cataloged the weird, creeping ways these alphas were already under my skin.
Malik’s breakfasts and low, soothing advice. Jace’s wordless support, coffee arriving right when I needed it. Theo’s nuclear energy, turning any mood around in seconds. Ash’s tech wizardry, quietly calling out what everyone tried to hide. Reid’s command presence, making me feel locked down and… fuck, safe.
It was dangerous, all of it. Letting myself adjust. I reminded myself none of this was real. It was optics, curated, performative, designed to rescue my numbers and their brand in one sweep.
I ran the mantra as I scheduled my stream, edited my social post, and scanned Theo’s game suggestion. Adaptation, adaptation, adaptation.
