He lifts his head to protest, as I expected.
But then, once again, Mylo surprises me.
His expression softens, voice warm with rare sincerity. “I’d… like that. I’d like that a lot.”
A wave of emotion pangs through my chest, so overwhelming that all I can do is fold my arms around him, pressing his cheek against my heartbeat.
“I love you, Mylo.”
Then, murmured against my skin, come four words that mean I need never fear the future again:
“I love you, too.”
EPILOGUE
MYLO
Nine months later
The leather-linedinterior of the limo is cool and dark, a refuge from the eager chaos of the gathering crowd outside.
Today’s date has been circled on the calendar for months: theElectra 2premiere.
I sit next to Christine, knee brushing hers, as the limo pulls up to the start of the red carpet.
“You ready?” she asks, her smirk painted ruby red. With her platinum hair curled and cascading over one shoulder, she’s a picture of Hollywood glamour.
“Obviously,” I say, as if the question is droll, even though I am very muchnotready.
Stunt performers don’t walk the red carpet.
Okay, well,technicallyI have before—at a couple premieres for some much smaller movies where I did background stunt work. But walkingalongthe red carpet with other relativelynormal people—fellow production crew, friends and family of the cast, contest winners—is entirely different thanwalking the red carpet.
I’ve never had paparazzi in my face, people asking me who I’m wearing, shouting my name.
That all changes tonight.
Chrylo, the tabloids have dubbed us. It makes me cringe, but at least it’s better thanMystine.
Making sure Haley and the crew found out about me being an omega before the papers was no small feat.
That first heat, we spent a whole week at Reynold Gosling’s guest house, fucking on every conceivable surface. Just me and Christine and the ocean. She taught me how to surf—or, to be precise, she laughed at me as I tumbled into the waves over and over again, then fucked me senseless until I forgot to be mad about it.
When my heat was finally over, the housemighthave smelled of sex a little too much to invite anyone to it at that point, so Christine booked a cottage near Santa Barbara and invited Haley and a couple of her friends over for a surprise-I’m-life-bonded-to-an-omega-now party.
To her credit, Haley wasn’t particularly surprised. She just gave a wide-eyed nod and said, “That explains a lot,” before diving into planning coordinating outfits that would take advantage of my teal hair.
Christine swore her friends to secrecy—with an alpha bark, for good measure—then called Lana to begin the tedious legal process of disclosure. Insurance plans would need to be consulted, contracts would need to be amended, but Christine wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer when it came to the question of my continued employment as a stunt performer.
Then it was back to LA. After a brief detour to my apartment to collect all the belongings I actually cared about and informScott that he needed to look for a new roommate, I officially moved into Christine’s obnoxious, excessive mansion.
Though I have to admit, the abundance of rooms made for nice changes of scenery throughout my second heat, which came right on the heels of the first. True to Christine’s prediction—which was later affirmed by that psychiatrist, Giovanna—the next few months were a series of irregular, frequent heats. Some lasted only a day, others nearly a week; sometimes I got a few weeks’ respite and other times it was hard to tell what was several short heats versus a long one.
Giovanna prescribed moon baths.
I wrote it off as hokey nonsense, but tolerated the idea since sleeping outside, draped across Christine’s chest on her poolside daybed, wasn’t such a bad treatment. But then it actually worked.
Apparently, just like how our daily body clocks sync to sunrise and sunset, the monthly hormone cycle of alphas and omegas is supposed to sync to the moon’s cycle. Something about getting everyone out to fuck on moonlit nights.
