Lost Alpha

NuNew POV July 5, 2026

Trigger alert. There is sexual harassment and assault discussed in this chapter. I also made some edits not long after I published for clarity.

After dropping off a very excited Star at Grandma and Grandpa's house I went home, changed, and got ready. Damn, I looked good.

I wasn't planning on drinking, but I still called a cab. I don't mess around with drinking and driving. You never know what is going to happen.

Sitting in the back seat of an Uber, stuck in traffic, I began to cool off. We had never fought like that before and I didn't like it. But that did not mean I wanted to back down. There was nothing wrong with what I was doing and there was everything wrong with Hia trying to isolate me and restrict me. I probably could have handled it better but since the Veronica thing...

For the last four months, I have been going to therapy every week. I thought it was going to be horrible, but therapy was mainly about learning coping skills, and about myself. My therapist told me my panic attack most likely was triggered because I had not dealt with what happened during the pregnancy. She told me I had a fear of losing Hia.

It was so weird to be reminded of the four months I could not find Hia. I had kind of forgotten about all the evil things Janis and the Panichs did to me and how I lived in fear that I had been abandoned. So, when, another manipulative woman came into the picture, my brain interpreted her presence as extremely dangerous and harmful to my relationship with Hia and that because of her, he would leave me and Strawberry. In reality that was not even close to accurate.

Now that I knew this kind of thing was a trigger for me, I could do my grounding exercises and reassure my brain that we were not in the past. We are in the present. The past can't hurt me anymore.

Maybe I should bring up today's argument with Hia at my next therapy session. I think I have some left-over feelings about it.

Arriving at the club, I quickly found James and Nat. We wanted to meet before the dancing started so we could talk. James was dressed to break hearts. That could only mean one thing, he was going to flirt.

Walking to the table Nat looked at me with big wide eyes and kept giving side eye to James. He needn't have gone to all that effort. I could already tell we would be pulling men off James all night.

Per the Jelly Code, no Jelly was left behind. No Jelly was allowed to go home with anyone. If one of us found someone they liked, they could get a phone number and call them in the morning.

James bought us a round of drinks and served up the tea.

"I'm sick of it. I might as well have been alone these last six months. I never saw him and when I did, he was preoccupied with other things."

"Like what?", asked Nat.

"That's the thing. He wouldn't tell me. He just said work. I call bullshit. I have been around him for almost two years now. I know what he is like when he is working. This was different."

"Do you think he is cheating?", I asked.

"At this point, I don't know what to think.", James said.

"It was the only thing we fought about."

"What was different this time? Why did you break up?", Nat asked.

"I hadn't heard from Film in over a week. I mean he would answer a text, but it could be hours before he responded, and only with the bare minimum. He said he was working a lot."

"I missed him and wanted to send him a care basket with his favorite snacks to where he was filming. I called his agency to ask where to send it and they told me he had not had a job in weeks."