Wolves and Lambs: Part 10
Alpha Max Verstappen x Omega fem!driver
Genre: Series, Omega verse, Slow Burn, Romance, Eventual smut
Summary: Male Alphas are the ones who dominate motor sports all around the world, especially Formula 1. It is a well known fact. Females in general nor Female Omegas are never heard nor encouraged to join the sport since the 1950s. Well, up until now...
Word Count: 4.7k
Chapter's Premise: The heat was still there. The future was still uncertain. Nothing had actually been solved. And yet, for the first time since the race ended, you didn't feel quite so alone.
Parts: W&L masterlist / general masterlist
The room was quiet.
Not truly silent. Somewhere beyond the closed door, people still moved through the paddock. Conversations drifted faintly through the walls. Golf carts hummed along service roads. Team personnel hurried between garages, meetings, and media obligations as if the world hadn't shifted violently off its axis in the span of a single race.
But inside the small hospitality room Charles had hidden you in, the noise felt distant. Muted. Like it belonged to another life.
You sat curled into the corner of a couch that was probably far too expensive for something hidden away in a room nobody used. A bottle of water rested untouched on the table in front of you. The label had long since begun peeling away from condensation, tiny droplets collecting around its base.
You'd been staring at it for nearly ten minutes. Maybe longer. Time had become difficult to measure. Everything had. The race felt both seconds ago and years away.
The crash replayed itself relentlessly behind your eyes. The slight hesitation. The tiny lapse in concentration. The briefest distraction.
It hadn't even looked dramatic on television. There had been no trip into the barriers. No yellow flags. No shattered suspension scattered across the track. To everyone watching, it had probably looked like an ordinary racing incident.
One of hundreds that happened every season.
To you, it felt like a confirmation of every fear you'd carried for years.
You could still hear the impact. Still feel the moment the front wing clipped the tyre ahead. Still remember the instant your stomach had dropped because you already knew why it happened. The contact itself hadn't hurt. The realization afterward had.
Your fingers tightened around the sleeve of your race suit. The fabric bunched beneath your grip.
You'd spent years convincing yourself that if you worked hard enough, trained hard enough, sacrificed enough, you could outrun it.
The stereotypes. The assumptions. The limitations people tried to place on you before you'd even opened your mouth. Every podium. Every championship. Every point scored in Formula One. Every article praising your racecraft instead of your gender. Every battle won.
You'd collected those victories like armor. Built yourself into something nobody could dismiss. Yet one race. One heat. One mistake.
And suddenly the armor didn't feel nearly as indestructible as it once had.
The heat simmering beneath your skin didn't help. It felt different now. Stronger. Less like a distant threat and more like a living thing occupying the same body as you. The scent blockers had long since stopped doing much of anything.
Your skin felt warm despite the room's aggressive air conditioning. Every sound seemed slightly too sharp. Every emotion sat dangerously close to the surface.
You hated it. Not because it hurt. Because it made you feel vulnerable. And vulnerability had never been something you wore comfortably.
Across the room, Max remained exactly where he'd been since arriving. He sat in one of the chairs near the door, arms resting loosely on his knees, giving you enough space that you didn't feel trapped. The distance should have been reassuring. Instead, it only made you more aware of him.
The awareness sat beneath everything. Beneath the frustration, the exhaustion, and the lingering disappointment of the race. A constant pull that seemed to grow stronger every time you tried to ignore it.
It wasn't fair. Nothing about this felt fair.
You had spent weeks avoiding him. Weeks carefully maintaining distance. Weeks convincing yourself that if you could just keep enough space between the two of you, things would somehow become easier.
Now sitting in the same room as him felt simultaneously unbearable and necessary. The contradiction made your head hurt.
You shifted slightly against the couch. Immediately aware of the movement, Max glanced up from where he'd been staring at the floor. The concern on his face appeared almost instantly. You looked away before it could fully settle.
That concern was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate. Not because it was unwelcome. Because it wasn't. And that frightened you more than almost anything else.
The room fell back into silence. Neither of you seemed particularly interested in breaking it.
For several minutes, the only sound came from the quiet hum of the air conditioning unit overhead. Then Max leaned forward. The movement was small. Almost unnoticeable.
His hand reached toward the table and nudged the untouched bottle of water slightly closer to you. The gesture was so absurdly normal that it caught you off guard. Not an Alpha trying to manage an Omega. Not a mate trying to comfort his bond. Just a concerned person noticing another person hadn't had a drink in far too long.
"Drink." His voice was low enough that it barely disturbed the silence. The single word settled somewhere in your chest.
You stared at the bottle. Then at him. Then back at the bottle.
The ridiculousness of the situation suddenly struck you. A laugh escaped before you could stop it. Not a particularly happy one. Just tired. Exhausted.
The kind of laugh people made when they no longer knew what else to do.
"I hate you." The words came out automatically. A reflex more than an accusation.
Max blinked once. Then, to your immediate annoyance, the corner of his mouth lifted. "No, you don't."
The certainty in his response irritated you instantly. You welcomed the irritation. It felt familiar. Predictable. Much easier to manage than everything else currently happening inside your head.
"You seem very confident about that."
"I am." The answer arrived without hesitation. Your eyes narrowed.
"Arrogant."
"Usually." The response came so quickly you almost laughed again. Almost. Instead, you sank deeper into the couch cushions.
The conversation should have ended there. Normally it would have. But the exhaustion stripped away too many defenses. Made it harder to maintain the distance you'd spent months carefully constructing.
"You know what's funny?" The question left your mouth before you'd fully decided to ask it.
Max looked up. "No."
A humorless smile pulled briefly at your lips. "Neither do I."
The confession lingered between you. You stared at the ceiling. At the recessed lighting overhead. At anything except him. Because looking at him had become increasingly dangerous. Not physically. Emotionally.
"I spent years worrying about what would happen if this day ever came." Your voice sounded strange. Quieter than usual. Rough around the edges. The words seemed to fill the room despite their softness. "I had plans." A bitter laugh escaped. "So many plans."
You shook your head. The movement felt heavier than it should have. "I had backup plans for my backup plans." That finally earned the smallest hint of amusement from Max. You ignored it.
Because the humor disappeared as quickly as it arrived. "And none of them covered this."
Silence followed. Not uncomfortable. Just honest. The kind that existed when both people understood the conversation had become something important.
You swallowed. The knot in your throat growing tighter. "What if they stop seeing me?" The question emerged so quietly you almost thought it hadn't left your mouth.
Yet the moment it did, the room seemed to still around it. You stared down at your hands. At the faint marks your fingernails had left in your palms. At anything except the man across from you.
Because once spoken aloud, the fear sounded exactly as terrifying as it had inside your head. "What if everything I've done stops mattering?" The words came easier now. Not because they hurt less. Because they were already out. Already real. "I fought so hard to get here." Your throat tightened.
Memories flashed through your mind. Karting circuits. Junior categories. Years spent proving people wrong. Years spent refusing to quit. "I became a Formula One driver." A painful laugh escaped. "And somehow I'm still terrified that's not going to be the first thing people think about when they look at me."
The room remained quiet. You expected reassurance. Expected disagreement or some version of everything will be okay. Instead, Max simply listened. And somehow that made the confession hurt even more.
Because for the first time since the crash, somebody was actually hearing what you were saying. Not the heat. Not the Omega. Not the race. You.
And for the first time all day, you weren't entirely sure what to do with that.
Charles should have been in a debrief.
At the very least, he should have been pretending to pay attention during one.
Instead, he found himself sitting alone in an empty conference room inside the Ferrari hospitality suite, staring absently at a half-finished bottle of water while engineers and strategists moved through the paddock outside. The post-race rush continued around him exactly as it always did. Radios crackled. Team personnel hurried from one meeting to the next. Somewhere in the distance, a television replayed highlights from the Grand Prix. Life carried on with the same relentless momentum Formula One had always possessed.
Yet Charles couldn't seem to focus on any of it. His thoughts kept returning to the same place. To the same person. To the expression on your face after the race.
The image lingered stubbornly in his mind no matter how hard he tried to redirect his attention elsewhere. He'd seen disappointed drivers before. God knew he'd been one often enough himself. Every driver on the grid understood the hollow frustration that followed a bad race. They understood the anger of missed opportunities, the bitterness of mistakes, and the endless habit of replaying every corner in search of the exact moment things had gone wrong.
What he'd seen in Y/N hadn't looked like disappointment. It had looked like fear. The realization sat uneasily in his chest.
Charles frowned slightly and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Fear wasn't an emotion he associated with her. Stubbornness, certainly. Competitive obsession, absolutely. A tendency to hold grudges far longer than was probably healthy? Without question.
But fear? No. Not Y/N. At least not openly.
You were the kind of driver who attacked opportunities before most people even realized they existed. The kind of person who would rather throw herself at a problem repeatedly than admit you needed help. If there was one thing Charles had always admired about you, it was that relentless refusal to back down.
Yet today, for the first time since he'd known you, you had looked genuinely frightened.
His gaze drifted toward the window overlooking the paddock below. Team members moved like ants between motorhomes and garages, carrying equipment, paperwork, and laptops as another race weekend slowly drew to a close. Somewhere among them, Y/N was sitting in an unused hospitality room with Max Verstappen.
The thought should have felt strange. Instead, it made a surprising amount of sense.
Charles exhaled slowly. Because when he looked back on the last few months, there had been signs. Far more signs than he'd realized at the time.
The avoidance had been the most obvious one. He'd noticed it long before anyone said anything. Not because you had been particularly subtle about it, but because you had become strangely predictable whenever Max entered the equation. Meetings ended early. Conversations were abandoned halfway through. Entire routes through the paddock seemed to change depending on where Max happened to be standing.
At first, Charles had assumed they were arguing. Then he'd assumed it was some complicated version of whatever relationship drivers often developed with each other after spending enough time together. Now he wasn't so sure.
The apartment came back to him unexpectedly. The memory arrived with startling clarity.
Cardboard boxes scattered across the floor. Half-built furniture. Instructions neither of them had bothered reading properly. Long afternoons spent arguing over bookshelves and lamps while Y/N insisted she was perfectly capable of assembling everything herself despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The recollection pulled a small smile onto his face. Then the smile faded. Because even during those afternoons, there had been moments that hadn't made sense. Moments he'd dismissed at the time.
She'd disappear into another room for ten minutes and return looking slightly pale. Sometimes she'd stare out the window while he talked, her attention clearly somewhere else entirely. Other times she'd look exhausted despite claiming she'd slept fine. Every explanation she'd offered had sounded reasonable enough in isolation.
Looking back now, none of them felt convincing.
Charles sat forward slightly, resting his forearms against the table.
The pieces were beginning to fit together. Not perfectly. Not completely. But enough. Enough that he could finally see the outline of something that had been hidden from him before.
The knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. A second later, Oscar stepped inside.
The Australian took one look at him and immediately grimaced. "You look terrible."
Charles huffed out a laugh. "I think that's contagious today." The attempt at humor didn't last long.
Oscar closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms crossed loosely over his chest. For several seconds neither of them spoke. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It simply felt inevitable.
Charles suspected they were both thinking about the same person. Judging by the look on Oscar's face, he was right.
The realization settled between them without needing to be spoken aloud. Eventually, Charles broke first.
"What happened?" Oscar looked away. Not dramatically. Just enough to confirm that whatever answer existed wasn't simple.
Charles felt his stomach tighten. Because people only avoided questions when the truth carried weight. After a long moment, Oscar sighed heavily and dragged a hand through his hair.
"How much have you figured out?"
The question landed harder than Charles expected. Not because it answered anything directly. Because it confirmed there was something to figure out. Something significant. Something important enough that Oscar wasn't even attempting to deny it.
For several moments, Charles simply stared at him. Then he looked down at the water bottle resting on the table.
The plastic had begun collecting condensation. Tiny droplets slid lazily down the sides before pooling beneath it.
His thoughts drifted back to the room. To Y/N nearly stumbling when she stood. To the way she'd flinched from physical contact. To the scent.
Charles closed his eyes briefly. There it was again. The part he had been avoiding. The part he didn't particularly want to examine too closely. Because if he was being honest with himself, he had noticed it. Not consciously at first. Not in a way that immediately registered. Just enough to feel wrong. Just enough to catch his attention.
The memory left an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. Not because the reaction itself was unusual. It wasn't. The opposite, actually.
That was precisely the problem. The response had been instinctive. Automatic. Biological.
And Charles hated that.
Because Y/N wasn't instinct. She wasn't biology. She wasn't some abstract designation people attached to themselves. She was Y/N.
The woman who swore at furniture instructions. The woman who routinely mocked Ferrari strategy to his face. The woman who laughed so hard she occasionally snorted when Oscar said something particularly ridiculous. His friend.
Reducing all of that to something as simple as Alpha and Omega felt deeply unfair.
The realization settled heavily inside him. Slowly, Charles looked up. Oscar met his gaze. Neither of them needed to say it. By now, the answer had become obvious. Not because someone told him.
Because everything finally made sense. The fear. The avoidance. The panic. The crash. The exhaustion. The months of tension nobody had fully understood.
For the first time, Charles could see the burden she'd been carrying. And suddenly, he couldn't blame her for being terrified.
Because if he had spent years fighting to become known as a Formula One driver first and everything else second, he probably would've been terrified too.
The thought stayed with him long after the conversation ended. Long after Oscar left. Long after the paddock outside began preparing for another flight to another country.
Because beneath all the uncertainty, all the complications, and all the questions that still remained unanswered, one truth felt remarkably simple.
Whatever was happening to Y/N, she was still the same person she'd been yesterday. And Charles intended to make sure she remembered that.
For a long moment, neither of you and Max spoke.
The silence that settled over the room wasn't uncomfortable. If anything, it felt strangely fragile, as though any sudden movement might shatter something neither of you fully understood yet. Outside the closed door, the paddock continued its usual rhythm. Cars were being packed away. Engineers were beginning their debriefs. Flights were being scheduled. Another race weekend was already slowly becoming history.
Inside the room, however, time seemed to have stalled.
You stared down at your hands, tracing the faint scars scattered across your knuckles. Most of them were old. Karting accidents. Training mishaps. Tiny reminders of years spent chasing something most people had considered impossible.
You remembered being twelve years old and insisting on driving despite bruised ribs. Sleeping in airports. Studying telemetry long after everyone else had gone to bed. Every person who had looked at you and assumed you wouldn't make it. The memories arrived one after another, uninvited and relentless.
For most of your life, they'd served as proof. Proof that you belonged, that you'd earned your place, and that no one had handed you anything.
Now, for the first time, they felt strangely distant. Not because they mattered less. Because you were terrified they might matter less to everyone else.
The thought settled heavily in your chest. You hated how irrational it sounded. You hated it even more because part of you genuinely believed it.
Across from you, Max remained silent. He wasn't trying to interrupt. Wasn't trying to offer solutions. Wasn't trying to tell you that you were overreacting.
It also made it impossible to hide behind your usual defenses. Because if Max had pushed, you could've fought back. If he'd challenged you, you could've gotten angry. If he'd tried to dismiss your fears, you could've convinced yourself he simply didn't understand.
Instead, he was listening. And somehow that felt far more dangerous.
The exhaustion that had been lingering at the edges of your consciousness all afternoon seemed to settle deeper into your bones. The adrenaline from the race had long since disappeared, leaving only the aftermath behind. Your muscles ached. Your head throbbed. The heat simmering beneath your skin remained an unwelcome constant, no longer sharp enough to command your full attention but impossible to ignore entirely.
It left you feeling raw. Exposed. Like every protective layer you'd spent years building had finally worn thin.
"What if I'm wrong?" The question escaped before you'd fully decided to ask it. You looked up.
Max's expression shifted slightly. Not confusion. Curiosity. "What do you mean?"
You swallowed. The words felt heavier than they should have. "What if I've spent all this time fighting something that wasn't actually happening?"
A humorless laugh slipped out. The sound barely resembled amusement. "I've been so convinced that the moment people found out, everything would change."
Your gaze drifted toward the window. The sunlight had begun fading completely now, leaving the room bathed in muted shades of gold and gray. "I've spent years preparing for that." The admission made your chest tighten. "Every decision." You paused. "Every precaution. Every excuse" Another pause. The room remained quiet.
You leaned back against the couch and closed your eyes briefly. Because once you started talking, it became harder to stop. "I built my entire life around making sure nobody ever had a reason to question me." The words came slowly.
Carefully. As though speaking them aloud might somehow make them more real. "I worked harder." A faint smile touched your lips. "Took fewer breaks." Another. "Refused help."
That one actually made you laugh. Because even now, sitting here, you could recognize how absurd some of it sounded.
Max certainly seemed to. The corner of his mouth twitched. "That's definitely true."
You shot him a look. His expression remained entirely innocent. The effect was ruined by the amusement in his eyes.
Despite yourself, you felt your own smile linger a little longer. The realization caught you off guard. You couldn't remember the last time you'd smiled today.
The race felt a lifetime ago. The crash felt even longer. And yet somehow, sitting here talking about your worst fears, you felt lighter than you had all afternoon. The contradiction made no sense.
Neither did the warmth spreading through your chest whenever Max looked at you like that. Steady. Patient. Present.
You hated that too. Because it would've been much easier if he were exactly what you'd expected him to be. Pushy. Overbearing. Certain. The kind of Alpha you'd spent your entire life preparing to resist.
Instead, Max had stubbornly refused to become the villain in your narrative. And that was proving to be a problem.
Your gaze dropped again. A dangerous awareness settled between you. Not new. It had been there for months. Lingering beneath every conversation and every argument. You'd simply become very skilled at pretending it wasn't.
Now, exhaustion had robbed you of that ability. The room suddenly felt smaller. Not claustrophobic. Just intimate. The fading sunlight. The quiet. The absence of everyone else. It left very little room for distraction.
You became acutely aware of how close he actually was. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to matter.
Your pulse quickened slightly. Immediately, frustration followed.
Because you couldn't tell where the heat ended and your own feelings began. Maybe there wasn't a clear line anymore. Maybe there never had been.
The realization unsettled you more than you cared to admit. Max must have noticed something shift in your expression. Concern appeared almost immediately.
"There it is again."
You frowned. "What?"
"That look." His voice remained gentle. "Like you're carrying the entire world by yourself."
A laugh escaped before you could stop it. This one sounded more genuine. "Maybe I am."
"You're not." The certainty in his response arrived without hesitation.
You looked at him. Really looked at him. At the stubborn confidence sitting behind those words. At the unwavering certainty that somehow seemed immune to every argument you threw at it.
For the first time all day, you found yourself wanting to believe him. The realization was terrifying. Not because it was unreasonable. Because trust had always been more frightening than independence.
Trust meant giving someone the power to disappoint you. To leave. To prove you wrong.
For years, it had been easier to rely solely on yourself.
Yet sitting here now, emotionally exhausted and physically drained, you found yourself wondering how much energy you'd spent carrying things alone simply because you didn't know any other way.
The thought lingered. Quiet. Uncomfortable. Necessary.
Neither of you spoke again for a while. The conversation had left something hanging between you. Not tension exactly.
Something softer. More uncertain. A possibility neither of you seemed ready to name.
For the first time since the heat arrived, you didn't feel compelled to run from it.
And for the first time since you'd met Max Verstappen, sitting beside him felt less like a threat and more like a choice.
You weren't ready to accept everything. You weren't ready to stop being afraid. You certainly weren't ready to figure out what the future looked like.
But as the room slowly darkened around you, one realization became impossible to ignore.
For the first time in a very long time, you didn't want to face it alone.
The realization settled quietly between you. It should have frightened you. Instead, it left you feeling strangely exposed.
You had spent so much of your life relying on yourself that the simple act of wanting someone else's presence felt unfamiliar. Dangerous, even. Yet every attempt to dismiss the feeling only brought you back to the same uncomfortable truth.
You were tired. Not physically. Not entirely. You were tired of fighting. Tired of carrying every fear by yourself. Tired of pretending none of this affected you.
Across from you, Max hadn't looked away.
The room had grown darker while the two of you talked, the last traces of sunlight slipping beyond the horizon. Shadows stretched across the floor, softening the edges of everything around you. Somewhere outside, a door slammed. Distant voices echoed through the paddock.
Neither of you paid attention. The world beyond the room felt impossibly far away.
You became aware of the silence first. Not because it was uncomfortable. Because it suddenly felt charged with something neither of you had acknowledged.
The conversation had stripped away too many defenses. Too many distractions. Leaving only the truth. And the truth was that you were exhausted. The truth was that Max understood you better than you wanted him to. The truth was that every time he looked at you, you found it harder to remember why you'd spent months running away.
Your gaze dropped briefly to his mouth before you could stop yourself. The mistake was immediate. Heat rushed through your chest. Embarrassment followed a second later. You looked away. Unfortunately, not before noticing that he'd seen it.
A strange tension settled over the room. Subtle. Fragile. Impossible to ignore.
Max shifted slightly in his chair, leaning forward just enough that the distance between you suddenly felt much smaller. Not threatening. Not overwhelming. Simply noticeable.
"You know," he said quietly, a faint smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, "for someone who spent months avoiding me, you've been staring at me a lot today."
You groaned immediately. The sound was muffled by the hand you dragged across your face.
"There he is."
"There who is?"
"The insufferable version of you."
His smile widened. Something inside your chest betrayed you at the sight. The warmth that followed had nothing to do with the heat. At least, you didn't think it did. That uncertainty was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. The silence returned. Only this time it felt different. Heavier.
Your pulse quickened. You hated that he noticed. You hated it even more when his expression softened. Not smug. Not victorious. Just... soft.
The look caught you off guard. Because suddenly you remembered the first kiss inside your driver’s room. The weeks that followed. The rooftop conversation. The way he'd waited. The way he'd respected every boundary you threw between the two of you. The way he was still here. Even now. Especially now.
Something tightened painfully in your chest. Before you could think better of it, you leaned forward. The movement was small. Barely noticeable. Yet Max immediately went still.
The room seemed to hold its breath. So did you. For a brief moment, uncertainty flickered through you. Not about him. About yourself. About where your feelings ended and your instincts began. The question had haunted you all day. Maybe longer.
Yet standing on the edge of the moment, you realized something unexpected.
You didn't have an answer. And for once, you didn't need one. Your hand rose slowly, fingers brushing lightly against the side of his jaw. The contact sent a shiver through you.
Max's eyes never left yours. Giving you every opportunity to change your mind. You didn't.
The kiss began softly. Tentatively. Nothing like the chaos unfolding inside your head.
For one suspended moment, everything else disappeared.
The crash. The fear. The uncertainty. The heat. All of it faded beneath the simple reality of his lips against yours.
When Max kissed you back, something inside your chest cracked open. Not dramatically. Quietly. Like a door finally unlocking after months of refusing to move.
The kiss deepened for only a moment before reality returned. The confusion. The questions. The uncertainty.
You pulled back first. Not far. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to think. The space between you felt impossibly small. Your forehead nearly brushed his.
For several seconds, neither of you spoke. Then a frustrated laugh escaped you. Small. Breathless. Confused.
"This is a terrible idea."
Max's smile returned. Softer this time. "Probably."
You stared at him. Then laughed again despite yourself. Because somehow, impossibly, the world still felt like a disaster.
The heat was still there. The future was still uncertain. Nothing had actually been solved.
And yet, for the first time since the race ended, you didn't feel quite so alone.
Next part: Part 11
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