Page 51 of Scrum Heat

But here we are.

I scroll again—see more support, more girls asking how I got into this work, more people tagging their friends with “YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS”—but it’s the ugly stuff that lingers.

It always is.

Later, Evie corners me in the clubhouse hallway.

“Hey,” Evie says. “You okay?”

I glance up, caught off guard. She doesn’t usually ask things like that.

“Yeah,” I lie instantly. “All good.”

She stares for a second. Not warm, not soft—but assessing.

Then she exhales through her nose.

“Frankie,” she says, calm and matter-of-fact, “people will always assume the worst of you before they consider the work.”

I sniff.

“They’ll say you’re sleeping your way into the role. That it’s your face, your scent, your proximity to alphas. They’ll write off the numbers, the strategy, the effort. Because it’s easier for them if you didn’t earn it.”

My throat goes tight. “So what—do I just ignore it?”

“No. You outlast it,” she says. “It’s not your job to convince people who already decided you don’t belong. Do the work. Make it undeniable. That’s it.”

She adjusts her sleeve, checks her watch, and turns without waiting for a response.

I stand there, nodding slowly, wondering when exactly I became someone worth defending. Even briefly.

Even byEvie.

I do what she says, though. I keep going. I drown myself in work: queuing content, making a schedule, writing captions, planning the next video.

But all day, my head hums.

The pressure. The comments. The scent of alphas everywhere I go.

It’s too much.

Which is probably why I lose it a little when Finn walks into the kitchen that evening and says, gently, “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He hovers. “You sure?”

I look up into his bright green eyes, and something in me justsnaps.

“Nope,” I say, all in one breath. “I’m not sure. I’m holding on by a thread. I’m trying really hard to do a good job, but my skin feels too tight and I keep having to breathe through the weird buzzing in my chest and now people on the internet think I’m a pack-hungry omega with a media strategy built around cleavage.”

Finn pauses.

Then, quietly, he says, “I didn’t notice the cleavage.”

I stare at him.

“I mean I did, eventually,” he adds. “I’m not dead. But that’s not why the video worked.”

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