<2> • Live •

I froze, my hand still gripping the heavy fabric.

They’re just drunk, I told myself, a desperate, pathetic hope climbing my throat. Damien will tell them to stop. He’ll protect me.

"Value, boys! That’s what I keep telling you," a second voice joined in, thick with the scent of bourbon. "Why pay for two Omegas when you can get all that meat in one? She’s a one-woman pack."

My blood turned to slush, but I didn't move. I stayed in the sliver of space between the velvet and the gilded frame, my breath hitching. I needed to hear Damien defend me. I needed him to be the man I loved.

"Shut up, you assholes," Damien’s voice finally cut through.

I let out a long, silent breath. My anchor. He was standing up for me. He was—

"Don't scare the followers away," Damien continued, and the world didn't just stop; it tilted. "We hit two hundred thousand tonight. The live feed is going crazy. Do you know how much ad revenue a 'Fallen Alpha Hippo' generates? I’m making fourteen grand a month just letting you guys mock her in the comments."

I stopped breathing. The hand holding the curtain began to shake so violently the velvet rustled. I peered through the gap, my vision tunneling.

There, on the mahogany table, propped up against a bucket of melting ice, was Damien’s phone. The screen was blindingly bright, the red ‘LIVE’ icon blinking like a taunting heartbeat.

The image on the screen made the world turn a sickly, hollow gray. It was a photo of me from my last set, but it had been grotesquely edited. My waist had been bloated until I looked like a sphere, my features stretched until I looked like a monster. Across the bottom, neon letters scrolled: THE OBSIDIAN WHALE: LIVE FEED.

Oh Moon Goddess. What did I do to deserve this cruelty?

The comments were a waterfall of filth:

“Damien, you’re a saint for touching that grease-trap.”

“$10 says she can’t even see her own toes.”

“Spin, Hippo! Make the latex pop!”

“But how do you even do it, Damien? Doesn’t the grease get on you?” Chris’s voice cut through the air, laced with a teasing edge.

“Ugh, don’t remind me of that mushy feeling,” Damien replied, his tone dripping with genuine annoyance. “I have a system for it, though. Every time I leave her apartment, I have to spend twenty minutes in the shower just to wash the grease off. She’s a total goldmine of disgust.”

A chorus of disgusted groans erupted from the guys nearby.

The air in my lungs turned to ash. I clenched my fists, my nails digging crescents into my palms. The transplant fund—every cent of the tips I had handed over to Damien with a grateful kiss—wasn't sitting in a high-yield account. It was the down payment on his new Ferrari. He was selling my humiliation, and my sister’s very chance at life, to two hundred thousand people.

I pulled the curtain back, but I felt anything but strong; I felt like a glass ornament dropped onto stone. As I stepped into the room, my legs felt as weak as water.

The laughter died instantly. Chris choked on his bourbon. The other Alphas—Damien’s court—froze, their phones still held aloft, lenses pointed directly at me.

Damien was the last to react. He looked at me, and for a second, a flicker of something like an alarm crossed his face. He quickly reached for the phone, turning it face down, but he wasn't fast enough, I snatched it from his hands.

"Zo!" he said, his voice instantly shifting back to that sweet, oily tone he’d used for eight months. "Baby, you’re early. I was just... the guys were just joking around. You know how they get when they’ve had too much to drink."

I stared at him, my eyes swimming with tears I couldn't stop. "Joking?" I whispered. My voice was small, broken. "The livestream, Damien. The 'Obsidian Whale.' I saw it. I saw all of it."

He winced, his sweet mask cracking but not yet falling. He stepped toward me, reaching out his hands as if to comfort me.

"It’s not what it looks like, Zosia. It’s a marketing strategy. We needed a way to pay for Nyx’s emergency stabilizer tomorrow, right? I was just trying to stir up some engagement so we could afford the clinic fees. It’s all for her, I promise."

"For her?" I choked out, a sob escaping my throat. "You called me a Hippo. You said... you said you have to shower for twenty minutes to feel clean after leaving my apartment. You told them I was a goldmine of disgust."

Damien’s face shifted. The sweetness vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp irritation. He realized the tricking was over.

"Alright, fine," he snapped, his voice rising, shedding the facade. "You heard. So what? You’re a fat Omega stripper, Zosia. Look at yourself in that suit. You look ridiculous. You were a failed Alpha living in a gutter when I found you. I gave you a brand. I gave you a purpose."

I flinched back as if he had struck me. "You... You said you loved me. You said I was real."

"I loved the ad revenue," he sneered, stepping closer, his Alpha aura flaring in a desperate attempt to push me down. "Do you really think a Vane would be with a girl like you for anything else? You’re a curiosity, Zo. A freak show. Those people on the livestream aren't here because they admire you; they’re here to see the Hippo spin."

I felt pathetic, so small that I could have disappeared into the floorboards. The pressure of my sister’s life, the betrayal of my only love, and the mockery of the world felt like a physical weight crushing my chest. In that moment, I wasn't an Omega; I was just an orphan who had been played for a fool.

"My money," I whispered, my heart a bruised thing. "Nyx’s heart fund. Where is it?"

Damien laughed, a rough, cruel sound. "It’s in the driveway, sweetheart. And a little bit of it is in the necklace I bought Cynthia—my only true love—last week. You should be happy—at least you’re finally good for something."

Cynthia Thorne—the beta model I suspected he’d been sneaking around with, though he’d claimed it was just for a gig. I trusted him and he played me like a fool.

I looked down at my hands, they were shaking. I felt hopeless, weak, passive, pressured by the sheer cruelty of the man I had trusted with my soul.

And then, I felt it. A gaze.

Not from inside the booth. From the shadows of the mezzanine across the club floor.

I turned my head slowly, my eyes burning. In a booth so far back it was almost invisible, a man sat alone. He was perfectly still, a silver coin walking across his knuckles in a rhythmic tick, tick, tick. Even through the smoke, I felt the weight of his stare—a heavy, dark, protective pressure that seemed to anchor me even as I felt myself dissolving.

Inside the suite, the black collar around my neck, the one hiding the rough scar of my suppressed Alpha mark, began to itch. It was a dull, hot throb, mirroring the spiritual agony in my chest.

"Give me the phone, Zosia," Damien growled, his patience finally snapping. "The fans are waiting. You’ve had your little moment of drama. Now, be a good girl and do the anniversary set, or I’ll make sure the clinic turns Nyx away tomorrow morning."

I clutched the phone to my chest, my breath coming in rough gasps. I looked at the man in the shadows, then back at the monster in front of me. I was terrified. But for the first time in eight years, the dam in my blood felt like it was beginning to leak.

"You're not an anchor," I whispered, the first spark of truth cutting through my despair. "You're a parasite."

Damien’s eyes widened, his face turning a mottled, angry purple. He raised his hand, not to hit me yet, but to snatch the phone.

"I said, give it to me!"