Work Text:
29th May, 2007
People truly didn’t know how it all started. Many tried to explain it through economic or social phenomena, claiming that one day humans simply needed an additional form of hierarchy.
Nobody truly questioned the first person who developed a secondary orientation. It was almost five thousand years ago when the first mention of a man going insane with lust and running in an unknown direction, stating that his mate needed him, was found in ancient Babylonian texts. People didn’t really understand it then; many said the man was cursed by his lover, others claimed the gods chose him. After that, others showed symptoms: some were a little different (people hid away, ran, seduced, waited for gifts, hoarded), while others showed the opposite: aggression, demanding moods, hyperfocus on someone, and, in some cases, even murder.
It was Parmenides who used animal designations and named them: Alpha — the provider, the leader, the powerful one; Beta — the mediator, the listener, the solver; and Omega — the caretaker, the heart, the loved one. Over the next centuries, more designations appeared: Prime Alpha, Prime Omega, True Alpha, Delta, Gamma. All had different titles and different statuses. But the first hierarchy stated clearly: Alpha was at the top, Beta right behind, and Omega was the weakest link. [...]
George rolled his eyes and clicked the arrow pointing left to go back to his search results. The website looked promising — there were actual quotations on it, and it mentioned several books he had read earlier. But it still didn’t solve his question. He tapped his laptop and took a breath.
Is it possible to transition to another secondary gender?
He pressed Enter and waited for the results. Of course, the first ones were support groups for people who wanted to change their designation. The rest were shady clinics offering secondary gender reassignment, and he groaned, rubbing his face.
“What did I do in my past life to have to deal with this shit?” he mumbled and scrolled down the results.
It all started before the season, when they were called to an obligatory meeting held by the FIA. Of course, no one actually knew what ridiculousness the organisation had prepared for them, but seeing the looks on the principals’ faces, George guessed it was something unconventional.
He walked into the bright meeting room along with Oscar, who looked half-asleep, and an overly cheerful Lando, who was talking about the break. Honestly, George understood maybe 30% of what the other Brit was saying. As they sat at the far end of the table, George caught sight of Fred and noticed that the man subtly pointed with his eyes toward the chair closest to the rest of the principals. As the GPDA leader, George was the voice of the drivers — but there’d been no meeting beforehand, so he assumed it was just informative.
Apparently, he was wrong.
The rest lazily walked in over the next twenty or so minutes.
Yuki Tsunoda entered, now in a Red Bull kit. Right after him came Fernando, Lance, Pierre, Charles, and Oliver. Then Nico, Esteban, Franco, Liam, Isack, and Max. After that, they were only waiting for Lewis, Kimi, Alex, Carlos, and Gabriel. They arrived together with the missing principals.
Just as Alex waved a small hello to George, Stefano Domenicali walked in. Some drivers’ eyes widened; others sat straighter. It was serious, then. Ben Sulayem followed right after with his team, and George could already feel a migraine pounding behind his eyes.
Toto appeared with his usual glare — but this time it was directed at Ben. Right after him walked Laurent, who looked similarly pissed.
Oh. So it was big.
If Red Bull and Mercedes had talked beforehand — and it looked like Ferrari had joined them too — then it was serious, serious.
George’s phone vibrated, and he glanced down quickly.
alla bon bon
What in the fuck happened
tots and laurie looked pissed
la’inchident
change my name
i ask the last time
fred was pissed too be4
smooth as butter
whelp
we’re dead.
max
… if they’re making us wear
those ridiculous helmets i saw
i will kill
gaaaasly
oh shit no
George rolled his eyes and pocketed his phone, scanning the room. The rest didn’t look relaxed. Yuki avoided eye contact with anyone; the rookies had wide eyes, searching for reassurance from their older teammates. Lance was glaring at the FIA representatives, fist clenched.
Well. That was new. So he might know something. George knew that in the last few years, Lance had started to learn more about the actual mechanics of how the sport worked, not only about the driving.
As if sensing George’s gaze, Lance looked at him, shook his head slightly, and mouthed, later.
“Gentlemen,” Ian — the FIA’s head of PR — stepped forward. “We’re aware you’d probably rather be somewhere else right now,” he said slowly, his eyes locking on Max for a second. “But we appreciate your dedication.”
“What’s the meeting about?” Toto cut in, voice low and rough. “Let’s get back to that.”
The older Alpha was clearly not in a good mood.
“Right, well—” Ian glanced at Ben.
“We are here due to recent revelations of multiple violations of our secondary designation rules,” Ben said coldly, his eyes assessing the room. “Some of you showed inconsistent screenings during the last season. This resulted in multiple consultations with specialists around the globe.”
Charles, sitting next to George, straightened and leaned forward.
“What exactly are you implying?” the Ferrari driver asked slowly, his accent sharpening with anger. “Because I assume this is an implication, not an accusation.”
“What I’m saying is — the rules exist to keep everyone equal. Someone may have been taking advantage of them.” Ben raised a finger toward Carlos, who had opened his mouth. “I said may.”
The room stilled.
“The screenings showed some drivers presenting Beta readings, then Alpha ones two races later, and recently Omega. Another switched between Alpha and Omega; a different one switched between Beta and Alpha. Since the screenings are random, we don’t know who it is.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
They looked at one another, searching for clues.
The room buzzed — not loudly, not yet — but with unease. Chairs shifted. Murmurs passed between people sitting next to each other. Someone cleared their throat far too often.
Max watched them.
He didn’t lean back. He didn’t pace. He rested his forearms on the table and observed, head slightly tilted, like he was waiting for someone to make the first wrong move.
“Let’s simplify this,” Max said pleasantly.
The chatter died — slower than before, but just as completely.
“You’re looking for a reason,” he continued. “Why doesn't the data line up? Why doesn’t it stay consistent? Why does something keep… slipping?”
Ben straightened. “If you have an explanation—”
“Oh, I don’t,” Max replied. “I just want to make sure I understand what you’re accusing us of.”
Every head turned.
“You run designation tests before races. You track scent markers. Hormonal baselines. You justify it as compliance.”
“Explain,” Stefano said coldly.
“Preferably, the implications behind your words,” Ben added sharply.
Max leaned back, arms crossing over his chest as he breathed. After a moment, he sat forward again, looking between Stefano and Ben.
“You’re telling us our biology is changing without our knowledge. And instead of speaking to us privately — maybe even calmly — you bring us here and imply someone’s doing it on purpose to gain leverage during races?” His gaze flicked across the room. “Honestly? A dick move.”
George met his eyes briefly.
“I might not have been the best student,” Max went on, “but I remember that biology doesn’t just randomly change. And if it does, that’s a medical issue. Not a disciplinary one.”
During all the years George had known Max, he’d never seen him this angry. Not the explosive rage from before — this was colder. Sharper.
There had never been any doubt about Max’s secondary designation. Training, treatment, punishment — all of it had shaped him an Alpha. In 2015, when Max presented, they’d witnessed it. Something even his father couldn’t control. Christian had been handling the situation well until Jos decided to try to use that moment to control Max even further. The absolute shitshow followed circled the news for two years afterwards. The pictures were still somewhere online: Max almost ripping his father’s throat out with his hands, blood on his face and eyes so dark red they looked black. They all knew that he’d be an Alpha; his upbringing wouldn’t allow him anything else, and the instinct to survive had already decided that for him.
Jos was an Alpha, too. But even Alphas had hierarchies — and Max was higher.
“We’re explaining new regulations,” Ian cut in tightly. “Extra screenings after races, plus mandatory random screenings during race weekends. Team medical staff will share all data with FIA-approved medical teams.”
The room erupted.
Principals snapped to attention, arguing loudly with FIA representatives. Fernando shot Lewis a look — some silent agreement — and they moved in sync. Lewis gathered the rookies and ushered them out into the hallway, then into one of the building’s restrooms.
Fernando turned back towards the principals and joined the argument.
George watched it unfold like it was happening underwater. For the first time in a long while, the teams were united. The principals spoke with one voice.
He looked down at his hands.
The edges of his vision blurred.
“George?”
Alex’s hand squeezed his shoulder, snapping him back.
“I know you’d want to stay as usual,” Alex said gently. Behind him stood Pierre, Yuki, Charles, Lance, and Lando. “But we think we should get out. Decompress. Lunch, maybe. Max, Carlos, and Fernando will join later. Lewis and the rookies are probably already booking something.”
George let his friend guide him out.
The voice in his head grew louder with every step away from the building.
Randomly change your biology.
Randomly change your biology.
Randomly. Change. Your. Biology.
Those words echoed in his head all the way to the restaurant, where rookies were enjoying their drinks and listening to some story Lewis was telling. The ex-Mercedes driver raised his gaze when they walked in, and briefly, they landed on George; Lewis frowned and blinked, his posture going stiff for a moment. When they were teammates, he could easily pick up George’s shifts in mood and adapt to them, even though he didn’t need to.
“How did it go?” he asked instead, reaching for a pitcher of water and pouring them some. “Anything happened after we left?”
Alex exhaled, sitting down with a huff and reaching for his glass, “Not much. Although I felt like Max knew something we didn’t. From the looks Laurent gave him, it could have been something with Red Bull.”
Lando nodded, his hair jumping a little with the movement. He looked around and noticed all of them were deep in thought.
“But we don’t actually believe that Red Bull was messing up with Max’s designation or readings, right?” Lando asked, emphasising the negation.
“If they did, it was probably Christian,” Oscar said suddenly; they all looked at the young driver and frowned. “Laurent could not know, and the reason why Horner was sacked was never openly stated. Who knows what actually happened in that garage? Checo is not going to talk. Daniel always goes quiet when anyone asks. Alex,” he looked at the Williams driver, “You heard anything while being there?”
“Not really, mate.” Alex shrugged, taking off his cap and running a hand through his hair. “The tests were done separately to give us privacy, but the staff was always nice and never did anything wrong, at least to my knowledge. I also talked to Liam; he was also there to witness it all, but he got the same treatment as I did. Almost everything was done separately.”
George was lost in his own thoughts, his mind like a beehive full of echoes. His fingers moved quietly on the screen of his phone as he opened one of the Reddit threads with several thousand replies to it.
Randomly changing your designation occurred in the past when the social and environmental setting required it from individuals. In some tribes, during a decline in births, Betas tended to switch to Omegas or Alphas, since their instincts recognised it as a biological fault and tried to fix it. Betas were considered a changeable designation for several centuries due to that phenomenon. In the late 1700s, the changes occurred only in Africa in fewer than 1,000 individuals. Starting in 1953, the change hasn’t been recorded anywhere in the world, thus putting an end to said phenomenon.
He locked his screen and reached for his glass just to have it taken before he could touch it. Carlos sat next to him and looked at him with surprise.
“Sorry, that's mine. Yours is there,” the Spanish driver pointed with his chin to the right of George’s plate, and fair enough, his glass was there. He drank from it before. He nodded at Carlos and took his. “You okay there? You seem distracted,”
“I’m fine. I think I have a mild migraine or maybe a cold? I feel a little out of it,” George said tiredly, rubbing the side of his face.
He didn’t notice how Charles’ fist clenched, and his jaw tightened, or how Carlos’ eye grew with a flash of pity.
The rest soon joined, just as the waiters brought our several sharing dishes and side dishes. Fernando and Max sat close to where Lewis was, and the three were discussing something while looking over some data on their phones. Nobody was brave enough to ask Max directly about Reb Bull messing up with screenings, but the man looked downright murderous when he walked into the restaurant with Fernando, who was muttering something to him quietly. It was one of the rare times when others could watch Max interact with the veteran drivers. They all knew that in 2021, Max and Lewis had it out for each other, and Fernando was too short-tempered to have a conversation with Max for longer than 20 minutes. Now all three were calmly discussing something, Max had his phone out as well, and they were comparing something.
“Lance?” George asked the younger Aston Martin driver, who had just finished talking to Esteban. “You know something, don’t you?"
The Canadian nodded and looked around.
"Listen, I know it just because my father is shit when it comes to drinking and likes to brag after one too many. Last month, we had our usual family dinner when he started to talk about some projects connected with making drivers better. Medical projects. I think maybe they’re testing something on us without us knowing.” Lance's dark eyes were full of fear, and he kept looking around. “But it is illegal to do so in many countries, so I think they’re doing it in those where the law is more flexible. Just - Fernando and I don’t take anything from the team. I don’t know who else is involved. I don’t think Toto and Laurent are in it - they looked pissed when they walked into that meeting. I wouldn’t accuse James of it either. The rest, well. Who knows?”
The new rules were made public, but the reasoning was reshaped by the FIA without informing the drivers. Apparently, it was due to the consistency of development and the inclusion of all designations, making racing fair and open for everybody. Which was… bullshit. They all knew that during 75 years there have been only three omegas: Chiron, Gugelmin and Peterson. All three were long gone from F1 and were dropped due to several pauses during racing. The rules were not really inclusive when it came to Omegas at their time, and not much has changed since, so they all knew that FIA was trying to look good for the media, but at the same time gave the media a perfect weapon: a quote. Since the announcement, many fans have been speculating what happened. Some even managed to snap pictures from the drivers’ lunch, and they were circling the social media with different posts and theories. Others thought that maybe a driver turned out to be an Omega hiding as Beta or Alpha and others felt betrayed or an even more bizarre one - someone mated the said Omega.
gaaasly
just saw one edit
with our chucky and maxie
apparently you two are enemies to lovers now
alla bon bon
george you’re the other woman
shame on you
*gif from Game of Thrones ‘Shame’*
la’inchident
i’m taking your yacht in divorce @balls
balls
first of all: NO
second of all: who the fuck is the admin
and change the nicknames
they suck
alla bon bon
like you don’t 😎
15 members reacted 😂
gaaasly
DAAAAMNNN
Albon chill 😂😂😂
regina the diva
Alexander Albon Ansusinha
Don’t make me call your mother
12 members reacted 😂
smooth as butter
Headmaster Russell is on I see 👀
Apologize @alla bon bon or he will
actually call her
alla bon bon
fuck, sorry sorry @balls
but at least i’m not the other
woman against Charles Leclerc
8 members reacted 🤯
seriously georgie, watch your back
in Monaco 🔪☠️
George silenced the groupchat shortly after as he was having issues with artificial light and light in general. He tried to get out of his apartment several times to go for groceries or a walk, but managed to get into the hallway where the giant window he normally absolutely adored turned out to be his worst enemy and was letting in massive amounts of sunlight into the apartment. He relied on delivery services and went out during the night when the moon was softly lighting the streets, and fewer people were outside; most were inside clubs and restaurants, so he could freely roam and think.
He was currently enjoying yet another stroll through Monte Carlo when he felt like the temperature dropped several degrees at once. He swallowed and looked around frantically, searching for whatever reason could force such a reaction out of him.
“Russell? George Russell?”
He turned around slowly and saw a young woman with blonde hair and a little boy by her side with dark hair cowering his head. The boy had a mini bolide in his hand, and his eyes were big.
“Oh, hello there,” He crouched in front of the boy; up close, he could see that the little car was a replica of his first Mercedes car. “A good car you’ve got there. Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes. He adores it, don’t you, Leo?” The mom laughed and looked down at her son with a soft smile, her hand carding through his hair. “He doesn’t speak,” she explained when she noticed George was waiting for the boy to answer; George’s eyes grew wide, and he tried to say something. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m just sure he wanted you to talk to him even for a second. He loves watching F1 with his grandad,”
“A devoted fan, I see.” George smiled and raised his hand for a high-five. Leo smiled widely and clapped his little hand against George’s. “Enthusiastic one as well.”
The woman nodded, her smile genuine. “That he is, that he is.” She paused and looked around. “I don’t want to come across as nosy, but should you be out this late without any sort of suppressors? Or someone with you? You smell quite close to your… um… your cycle,” She said, her eyes searching.
George blinked as he stood to his full height. Leo was still staring at him with wonder, and his mom was observing George. “My cycle? What do you mean? I’m a Beta,”
She blinked, surprised by his answer. “Really? Sorry, you smell really sweet, like - such sweetness usually belongs to the Omega designation. Oh God, I’m so sorry for assuming.”
George swallowed and gave her a weak smile, his heart pounding. “Nothing to be sorry for,”
She left soon after, little Leo waving George goodbye several times before they disappeared into one of the side streets.
Fuck.
He looked around if there was anyone else on the street, but seeing no one, he quickly pushed his collar up and turned on his heels, speeding back to his apartment. He was breathing heavily, his mind in complete chaos, and not a single thought made sense. He locked all the locks he had installed and leaned against the door, supporting himself with his hands not to slide down and break down on the floor.
It was impossible; there was no way his designation was changing. He read enough of the scientific articles and books, theories, and blogs online to know that the change was supposed to happen in stages and due to outside stimuli. He wouldn’t say that there have been any changes with him before. He was feeling more stressed as the season progressed in 2024, but it happened to all of them as the race for the Championship was nearing its end.
He moved slowly deeper into the apartment and found himself in his bedroom. He blinked, surprised by the mess he had left: some of his winter sweaters and tops were scattered around the room, clean bedding thrown on the bed, and the bedding on his bed was arranged into a large square.
“What the fuck?” he asked, horrified with the realisation. He started preparing for nesting. He made a base.
“No, no, no.” He muttered and moved forward to take the bedding away, but was unable to raise his hands and do so. “What is wrong with me? Why is it happening?” He asked no one and fell onto the bed. Before he could even think of what he was doing, he shrugged off his light jacket and threw it across the room. He wrapped himself in the cream blanket that was in the corner of his bed and closed his eyes.
George made a list. Because that’s what he did, he liked having everything in black and white and in front of him. If his body was going to betray him, he was at least going to approach the betrayal with some structure, a system, and preferably a spreadsheet, although opening Excel felt excessive even for him.
He sat at the kitchen counter with his laptop open, one hand pressed against his lower stomach and the other wrapped around a mug of tea he had made forty minutes ago and still hadn’t touched.
At the top of the page, in neat black font, he wrote:
Possible explanations.
Underneath, he added:
- Hormonal imbalance - patches cannot hold anymore
- Stress-induced scent fluctuation
- Contaminated supplements
- Temporary secondary designation instability
- Absolutely not Omega presentation
- Stop being dramatic
He stared at number six for a long time.
Then deleted it. Then typed it again. Then deleted the whole document and shut the laptop so hard the sound cracked through the apartment.
“Brilliant,” he muttered, pushing back from the counter. “Very mature.”
The problem was that the apartment smelled wrong. No. Not wrong. Too much. Everything was too much.
The detergent from the clean towels in the bathroom. The lemon cleaner the housekeeper had used on the kitchen counters smelled too sweet and not sour enough. The faint metallic scent of the lift shaft through the front door. His own scent clinging to the air, sharper now, sweeter in a way that made his skin crawl.
He was a Beta. He had always been a Beta.
Reliable. Balanced. Neutral enough to sit between Alphas and Omegas in a room without starting diplomatic incidents. There was nothing dramatic about him biologically, which was exactly how he liked it.
His body cramped. George gripped the counter and breathed through it.
“Not happening,” he said through his teeth. “Absolutely not happening.”
The cramp passed slowly. When he straightened, sweating lightly, his eyes caught on the blanket folded over the back of the sofa. Soft cream wool. He had bought it because it matched the room, not because touching it suddenly made something under his ribs loosen.
He looked away. Then looked back.
“No.”
The apartment stayed quiet.
George crossed the room, picked up the blanket, and carried it to the bedroom with the grim expression of a man walking himself to an execution.
Five minutes later, he was standing over his bed, staring at the blanket arranged carefully between two pillows.
A base. He had made the base of a nest. Again.
George took one step back. Then another.
“Oh, fuck off.”
The first message came at 02:17.
George was on the kitchen floor at the time. He didn’t remember getting there. That was becoming a problem.
He remembered leaving the bedroom because the nest was wrong. He remembered standing in front of the washing machine with a bundle of clothes in his arms, telling himself that washing them would help. Normal people washed clothes. Normal people did laundry instead of pressing old shirts to their faces and breathing into them like they contained answers. Then he remembered the thought of detergent touching the fabric. After that, the memory blurred.
Now he was sitting against the lower cabinets, knees pulled up, arms wrapped tightly around a shirt he did not recognise.
That was the worst part.
He didn’t recognise it.
It was dark, soft from too many washes, and too large for him in the shoulders. It could have belonged to half the grid if he thought about it hard enough, which he absolutely refused to do because thinking about it made something inside him twist sharply.
Salt.
Lemon.
Something colder underneath, like air before rain.
The scent settled over his nerves with terrifying efficiency.
His phone vibrated on the counter.
George flinched so hard his head knocked against the cupboard behind him.
“No,” he muttered. It vibrated again.
The kitchen light was off, but the screen lit the room in pale blue.
max verstappen
you disappeared
George stared. Then blinked.
Then stared again, just in case his body had decided hallucinations were the next logical step in whatever fresh biological hell it had designed for him.
Max Verstappen.
Texting him.
At 02:17 in the morning.
George looked around his empty kitchen like there might be an explanation hidden somewhere between the dishwasher and the shamefully abandoned mug of tea on the counter.
There wasn’t.
He reached for the phone slowly, with the same caution he might use for an unexploded device.
george
Why are you texting me?
The reply came almost immediately.
max verstappen
because you disappeared
and alex is spamming
George frowned at the screen.
george
That was not a philosophical question.
max verstappen
good
i wasn’t giving a philosophical answer
Despite himself, George stared at the message for a second too long.
That was exactly the kind of irritating reply Max would give. Short, unhelpful, and somehow smug without using enough words to justify being smug.
George’s fingers hovered over the screen.
george
Did Alex put you up to this?
max verstappen
no but his behaviour slightly
george
Lando?
max verstappen
lando would send voice notes himself
and probably cry halfway through
George huffed. His abdomen cramped, sudden and deep, and he curled forward around the unknown shirt, pressing his face into the fabric before he could stop himself. The scent helped. That was horrifying.
George squeezed his eyes shut.
“No,” he whispered, furious.
The phone vibrated again.
max verstappen
so?
are you ill or just being difficult?
George lifted his head slowly. Max asking about him almost made him tell him everything. Because it was rude, obviously. Completely unnecessary. Very Max. But there was something under it that made George’s throat tighten before he could stop it.
He had disappeared from the group chat. He had ignored Alex. He had ignored Lando. He had missed calls from Cara because the thought of explaining what was happening made his skin crawl. And somehow Max Verstappen, of all people, had noticed.
George swallowed.
george
Why do you care?
The dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
George hated that he watched them.
max verstappen
i didn’t say i cared
George snorted weakly.
george
Right. Of course. My mistake.
max verstappen
i said you disappeared
those are different things
George stared at the screen, jaw tight.
Then another message came through.
max verstappen
but you looked wrong at lunch
His fingers stilled.
The apartment seemed to narrow around him.
Wrong.
Not tired. Not distracted. Not dramatic. Not George being George, which was what most people would have said if they wanted to sound affectionate and annoying.
Wrong.
George looked down at the shirt in his arms. Salt. Lemon. Rain.
Then back at the phone.
george
Wrong how?
Max took longer to reply this time. Long enough for George’s breathing to pick up. Long enough for the silence to become something sharp.
max verstappen
like you were listening to something no one else could hear
or was trying to figure out the meaning of the world
George’s mouth went dry. That was too accurate. Annoyingly, painfully, terrifyingly accurate. He pressed the heel of his hand into his eye.
george
That is a very creepy thing to say at two in the morning.
max verstappen
you asked
george
I regret it.
max verstappen
you often do after asking questions
George stared. Then, because his body was clearly committed to humiliating him in every possible direction, he laughed. Small. Broken. Real. It hurt less than he expected.
For half a second, the apartment felt less like it was trying to swallow him.Then the cramp returned, lower this time, dragging a sharp breath out of him. He curled forward, one hand gripping the phone, the other clutching the shirt so tightly his fingers ached.
The scent helped again.
He hated that.
max verstappen
george?
The use of his name made something in his chest go strange. Not soft. Not exactly.
More like startled. They didn’t do this.
They argued in press conferences. They exchanged dry comments in meetings. They respected each other on track in the complicated, irritating way drivers did when they knew the other person was good enough to be a problem. They were not friends in the neat, easy sense. They did not text at two in the morning. They did not check if the other was alive on a kitchen floor.
George typed:
george
I’m fine.
He stared at it.
Deleted it.
Typed it again.
Sent it.
Max replied instantly.
max verstappen
no you’re not
George closed his eyes.
Something about the lack of question hurt worse than it should have.
george
You don’t know that.
max verstappen
you just lied badly
so yes i do
George’s fingers tightened around the phone.
george
You are spectacularly unpleasant.
max verstappen
and still correct
George hated him a little.
It was comforting, in a horrible way.
max verstappen
turn the lights off if they hurt
drink water
don’t go outside if your scent is unstable
George went still. The humour drained out of the room.
george
What do you mean, unstable?
How do you know all of that?
No reply.
George stared at the screen.
george
Max.
Still nothing.
The silence was worse than the messages.
He shifted against the cabinets, the unknown shirt still pressed to his stomach. His skin felt too tight. His mouth was dry. His scent was wrong in the air, sweet and sharp and not his, not fully, not anymore.
Finally, the phone vibrated.
max verstappen
i could smell it at lunch
George stopped breathing. For a moment, everything went cold.
Then embarrassment hit, fast and brutal, followed by fear so sharp he nearly dropped the phone.
george
You could what?
max verstappen
smell it
george
Thank you, I understood the words. I was giving you a chance to rephrase them into something less horrifying.
max verstappen
no
George’s laugh came out too shaky to count.
george
You’re impossible.
max verstappen
you’re the one sitting alone and pretending nothing is wrong
George looked away from the screen. His throat hurt suddenly. He didn’t want Max to be right. Not about this. Not about him.
Not when Max was supposed to be annoying and arrogant and too blunt, not observant enough to notice George quietly unraveling while everyone else was busy panicking about the FIA.
george
I don’t know what’s happening.
He stared at the sentence for a long time.
Too honest.
Too exposed.
Too much to send to Max Verstappen, of all people. His thumb moved to delete it.
The cramp hit again. He sent it instead.
The reply didn’t come immediately.
For some reason, that made it worse.
George sat there in the dark kitchen, curled around a shirt he didn’t recognise, breathing through pain he couldn’t explain, waiting for Max to say something rude enough to make this feel normal again.
Eventually, the phone vibrated.
max verstappen
i understand
George blinked.
george
Okay?
max verstappen
yes
george
That is your helpful contribution?
max verstappen
you said you don’t know
so first we stop pretending you do
George stared. His eyes stung again. He blamed the screen. Again.
max verstappen
eat something if you can
water first
turn off the lights
stay somewhere comfortable
call your family if it gets worse
George stared at the last line.
Call your family.
Not don’t tell anyone.
Not anything strange enough to make him properly suspicious. His chest loosened a fraction. Maybe Max was simply being practical.
Maybe Max had noticed something at lunch and decided, in the most irritatingly Max way possible, that this was now his problem to comment on. Maybe this was concern, translated through a personality that considered emotional warmth a mechanical fault.
george
You’re being weirdly helpful.
max verstappen
don’t tell anyone
i have a reputation
George’s mouth twitched.
george
As what, exactly?
max verstappen
not your nurse
A laugh slipped out of him before he could stop it. Almost normal.
george
No danger of that.
max verstappen
good
you’d complain too much
George looked at the screen for a long moment. He was touched. That was awful.
Not dramatically. Not in a way he would ever admit under threat of death or press conference. But there was something about Max noticing, about Max texting without making it sound like pity, about Max being rude enough that George didn’t have to feel fragile while still somehow being careful around the edges.
It made George feel less alone. He hated that almost more than the rest.
george
I’m scared.
The moment he sent it, he wished he could claw the words back out of the air.
The reply came fast.
max verstappen
i know
George swallowed.
Then:
max verstappen
you don’t have to explain it now
His grip on the phone loosened. For a moment, it almost felt like Max was in the room. Not physically. That would have been ridiculous. But there was a steadiness to him, even through the phone. A blunt, familiar weight that made the walls feel less like they were leaning in.
George looked towards the bedroom. The nest was there. Not a nest. A pile of bedding. A perfectly normal pile of bedding arranged in a square because apparently he had lost his mind with attention to geometry.
max verstappen
george
His fingers twitched.
george
What?
max verstappen
stop thinking so loudly
i can hear it through the phone
George stared.
george
I hate you.
max verstappen
no you don’t
George’s smile faded slowly. No. He didn’t. That was the problem.
The phone dimmed in his hand.
George sat there for another minute, curled around a shirt he did not recognise, breathing in salt and lemon and rain, letting Max’s last message sit in the dark with him. Then he dragged himself off the kitchen floor. He drank water. He turned off the remaining light.
He went back to the bedroom and crawled into the shape he had made from blankets, clothes, and denial. He told himself it was because Max had made sense.
Not because Max had told him to.
Not because something inside him had settled the moment Max’s name appeared on the screen.
Not because the unknown shirt smelled like safety.
George pressed his face into the fabric and closed his eyes.
For the first time in hours, he slept.
Alex A.
hey, quick question - are you in MC?
Charles L.
Yeah, why?
I’m not going for any bar hopping
I already told that to Lan
no one will convince me
Alex A.
no, not that
I can’t seem to get through
to George
he wasn’t feeling the best
and now won’t answer anything
could you maybe pop over to his and check?
Charles L.
yeah sure
when was the last time he replied?
maybe he’s busy?
or factory work?
Alex A.
right after our lunch - it’s been a week
I’m worried but I can’t really fly there now
I called others but Max is in Milton
Lando is doing something with his brand
I even thought about calling George’s apartment
manager but I lost her number
Charles L.
I’m with Ollie so we will go
check on him
maybe he’s resting or isn’t here
Alex A.
I called his sister and mom
he didn’t go home and didn’t call
they’re also worried
Charles L.
okay - I’ll let you know
The apartment building where George was living was close to Charles’ own, but due to good weather, the traffic on the streets was heavier than before. Apparently, some sunlight meant that the temperature was bearable again. The manager of the building noticed him and Ollie standing awkwardly behind him and let them in. He nodded at her, and she gave him a polite smile, but he could see a spark of curiosity in her eyes. They quickly rode in the elevator to George’s floor and soon were standing in front of his door.
“Weird,” Charles mused after a couple of minutes of knocking and no answer. “It’s like he’s not here, but if I saw right, his car was here.”
Ollie shrugged and leaned against the wall. “Maybe he had a car pick him up?”
“Maybe,” Charles nodded and knocked again. “Still, it’s weird for him to disappear without notifying Alex or his family. Alex mentioned they were worried about him.”
“Maybe he needed a break after that FIA meeting? It was really intense,” Oliver said the last part a little quieter.
Charles looked at him and was once again reminded of how young some of the drivers were. The tension between FIA and drivers was always there, but it never crossed the invisible line and wandered into designation territory; but it did now.
“Listen, what happened during that meeting is being dealt with. Okay?” He looked at the young British driver with a slight smile and clapped him on his shoulder. “We have been dealing with them for a while now, and we know how to- wait. George could be at FIA. He’s one of the GPDA after all, he could be trying to work out the new rules.”
Oliver blinked and, after a moment, nodded. “Oh, that would make sense. He’s George after all.”
“Probably got lost in the never-ending rules and regulations and silenced his phone. I’ll call Alex from the car. Come on, we will go for those pastries I promised you.”
They soon left the floor, unaware that inside George’s apartment, the British driver was tossing and turning around, trying to prepare a nest for himself with almost every single piece of his clothing he possessed. Somehow also borrowed and never returned clothes of others also found themselves mixed in the nest.
“Why is it happening?" George asked the empty room with trembling lips and a dry throat. His body was fighting itself, trying to deal with the changes it was pushed to.
Day one was full of battles with his thoughts and the never-ending pain in his abdomen and lower back. He was in and out of consciousness, his eyes felt too heavy to open, even when he heard someone screaming right outside his windows. He could hear the loud barking of his neighbours’ tiny dog and the argument of the couple across the street. Everything was so loud.
Then came the smells. He could smell everyone just fine; it wasn’t like as a Beta, he wasn’t able to smell anyone. But when he woke up at an unknown time after Charles’ visit, he was hit with an army of intensified smells from everywhere. His own smell of grapefruit was usually so light that people needed to focus to smell him. Now, his smell had an additional smell of bergamot, and so he was feeling like he was sitting inside a bakery or a sweet shop.
He could smell other scents from his nest: Alex's clear coconut scent, Lando's vanilla scent, Oscar’s chocolate one, and Kimi’s sweet scent that reminded George of tiramisu. He could also smell his mother’s apple and his father’s cinnamon ones. And lightly, Cara’s tea scent. There was also one t-shirt that smelled of seawater and lemon, and couldn’t remember whose it was.
He dragged the t-shirt closer to himself and fell asleep, hearing a soft purr coming out of his own chest.
Day two brought him hotness like never before. He woke up, the room felt like it was a million degrees, his body overheated, and as he pushed all his clothes off and the blanket away, he was suddenly feeling abandoned and dragged the clothes back to himself.
Day three started differently. He was more aware of what was around him, whose scents were around him, but his instincts were blasting alarms inside his head. Like something was wrong, something was incomplete or missing. He re-did the nest several times, changed its shape, then direction, then placement altogether and dragged it into the living room, finally settling a little. But then a noise from the front door dragged him away from his peaceful little nest.
“George? Gee? Are you okay- What is that smell?”
His sister appeared from behind a corner, and her eyes grew comically wide at the sight of him and his massive nest covering most of his living room. Her scent shifted slightly, and the smell of sweet tea filled the room.
“Oh, George," she whispered and dropped her purse and took off her shoes, slowly moving to the edge of the nest. "Can I?” George just made a small wounded sound, and it was enough for her. He was shifted so she could wrap her arms around him, and soon he calmed down to her hand running through his hair. “What happened to you? Everyone thinks you’ve gone off like a vagabond.”
He wasn’t feeling strong enough to answer; his voice wouldn’t probably sound like him due to disuse. He lightly shrugged, and she sighed, moving one hand to take out her phone from the back pocket of her jeans.
“Mom? Hi, yes, I have him. Listen, book a flight, you need to come. And grab some blankets, pillows and plushies from his old room. Trust me, they will be needed. I can pick you up or send a car for you. But please be quick.”
She disconnected the call and looked down to see that George had managed to fall asleep, wrapped in the clothes around him. She lay there with him for some more time and thought.
What pushed George and his body to change his designation? It’s not an easy process and definitely not one that people could just randomly do. It’s a prolonged and difficult process. What started it?
She sighed and slowly untangled herself, stepping out of the nest to go to the kitchen. From what she could remember about heats, Omegas needed someone to take care of them because it was draining them emotionally and physically to go through one. George has been ‘missing’ for several days now. She briefly checked his bedroom while waiting for the frozen vegetables to steam and noticed some wrappings of protein bars and quick oats.
Well, at least he ate something.
Alison Russell and Steve Russell arrived in a car with multiple bags packed with blankets, old teddy bears and plushies that once belonged to George. They were given a surprised look by the night manager of their son’s building, but the woman just let them through to his floor.
“Oh, thank God,” Cara opened the door, hair a mess and light scratch marks on her arms. She grabbed some of the bags and threw them in, then grabbed her parents and dragged them inside, quickly locking the door. “Unpack it, fast. Throw them to him and don’t step closer for now. Leave the coats and shoes in the bathroom. No outside scents.”
Alison blinked without understanding what was happening, but then she took a breath, and her eyes grew wide and flashed. She basically ripped off her coat and then her husband’s and locked them in the bathroom and moved fast to get some blankets out.
“Sweet Jesus,” Steve muttered, staring at the nest and his son hissing and growling at them from inside of it. Alison threw the blankets at George and then grabbed the ones Steve was holding and did the same. Cara threw some plushies to both sides of George, and all three waited.
The new Omega was still hissing, but it stopped abruptly, and he visibly smelled the air. He made a happy sound and quickly got to work, covering the nest in the blankets and organising the plushies around himself.
“Cara, what is happening?”
They were sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, observing a sleeping George, who was purring happily and releasing so much scent it made them all dizzy. They opened the windows briefly but then opted for going to the shop for some scent neutraliser, which they placed around the living room.
“I don’t know. I came to him in the living room, miserable and weak. I don’t know what happened. I don’t think anyone knows about him. Alex texted me that Charles checked on him, but he didn’t answer, and they thought he was gone.”
Alison sighed, hands around a mug of coffee. “Good that you're such a noisy brat, then."
Cara didn’t answer, just sipped her drink calmly, eyes focused on the nest. George was patting everything and fluffing the pillows.
“I searched the web and found nothing. It should be impossible for him to turn his designation so abruptly. Unless there’s a specific chemical involved or,” She looked at her parents and ran a hand through her hair. “Some forums mentioned an Enigma involved. Yes, I know they’re extinct. If they even existed in the first place, really, it’s a rabbit hole if you start reading about it.”
“Alpha,”
All three looked at George, who was staring at them with hostility. Bright blue eyes looked unnaturally intense, gleaming with a golden hue.
“Alpha, mine. Alpha, where is, ALPHA!” The whine sounded pathetic, the poor Omega looking around frantically.
“Oh, shit.”
The word didn’t even sound like Cara anymore. It came out thinner. Sharper. Like something in her had just aligned all the wrong pieces at once.
George pushed himself up in the nest, movements uncoordinated but urgent, his fingers clutching at the blankets as if they might anchor him. His breathing picked up, chest rising too fast, scent flooding the room in thick, cloying waves that made Alison’s head spin.
“Alpha,” he repeated, more desperate now, voice cracking. “Mine—mine—where is—”
“There is no Alpha here, sweetheart,” Alison said immediately, instinct overriding everything else as she moved half a step forward before Steve’s hand caught her wrist.
“Ali-”
“No,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off George. “He’s panicking.”
George’s head snapped toward her.
Wrong.
Not aggressive, just… wrong. The recognition wasn’t there. Not fully. His eyes tracked her, but like he was looking through her, searching for something else layered over reality.
“You’re not-” he said, voice dropping into something smaller, wounded. “Not right.”
His hands shook.
“Not mine.”
The silence that followed pressed heavily into the room.
Cara swallowed.
“Okay,” she said quietly, forcing her voice to stay steady. “Okay, we need to approach this logically.” She winced when she heard herself.
“Logically?” Steve repeated, staring at his son—at the nest, at the scent diffusers struggling and failing, at the way George kept scanning the room like something was missing from it, preparing to attack them if they even took one step towards them. “Cara, he just—” He paused. “He just—”
“—called for an Alpha he thinks belongs to him,” she cut in. “Yes. I heard.”
She dragged a hand down her face. That situation was way too complicated for her. She was quite happy that she was a Beta, not dealing with any cycles or such situations as the one they were in now.
“Which means whatever is happening isn’t just biological. It’s imprinting. Or something close to it.”
Alison went very still.
“No,” she said immediately. “No, that’s not—”
“No one imprints without contact. Physical or— ” Steve added sharply. “That’s not how it works.”
Cara didn’t answer right away.
“Cara,” Alison pressed.
“I’m saying,” Cara started slowly, choosing every word, “that if something forced a designation change—fast, unnatural, incomplete—then whatever caused it might have… redirected the instinct.”
“Redirected to who?” Steve demanded.
George made a broken sound behind them. All three turned.
He had curled in on himself again, dragging a t-shirt—some Alpha’s, Cara realised distantly—tight against his chest, burying his face into it like it was the only thing keeping him together.
“Alpha,” he whispered into the fabric, voice shaking. “Close. Close but not—” He inhaled sharply, frustration bleeding into it. “Not here. Wrong. Why wrong—”
Cara’s stomach dropped.
“…we need a specialist,” she said.
The clinic was discreet. The specialist checked on several sites, with stellar recommendations from France, Switzerland, and Germany. Private entrance. Just one name on the building. Security that didn’t ask questions.
The man who greeted them didn’t look surprised. That, somehow, made everything worse.
“I was told it was urgent,” he said, stepping aside to let them in. His gaze flicked briefly over them—lingering just a fraction too long, like he was already assessing more than they’d said.
“It is,” Alison replied tightly.
They were led into a clean, quiet office. No scent. Neutral. Controlled.
Cara explained. Everything. The nest. The shift. The scent. The calling for an Alpha. The man didn’t interrupt once. When she finished, the silence stretched.
“…you said he asked for an Alpha,” the specialist said calmly. He had three pages of notes, two books opened, and was checking something on the screen.
“Yes.”
“And that he rejected you. All of you.”
Cara nodded. The man exhaled slowly, leaning back in his chair, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“That would align.”
“With what?” Steve snapped.
The specialist’s gaze shifted to him.
“With Enigma interference.”
The room stilled.
“That’s not funny,” Alison said coldly.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“They’re extinct,” Steve added, jaw tight.
“Officially,” the man corrected.
Cara felt something cold settle in her chest. “No,” she said under her breath. “No, that’s—those are theories. Forums. Not—”
“They exist,” he said simply. “Rarely seen. Even more rarely documented. But they exist.”
Silence.
“They don’t present,” he continued. “Not in a way that standard screenings would catch. Their hormones and pheromones levels are so elevated that the test fail and machinery goes crazy. We had one a decade ago, broke the equipment worth 2 million euros. So, now they mask. They adapt. They… hide.”
“Hide from what?” Alison asked.
“From everything that would classify them,” he replied. “Including the FIA, apparently. I assume your brother and son spends most time with people who are under their jurisdiction. FIA is known for checking every athlete, we all remember how Senna tried to murder Piquet over his posturing. They don’t want it to happen again, I imagine.”
Cara’s hands clenched.
“And George?” she pushed. “What does that have to do with George?”
The man studied her for a moment.
“Enigmas,” he said slowly, “have one consistent trait across all surviving records. A curiosity and a reason to be terrified of them.” He looked at them all and sighed. “They destabilise.”
Steve frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means proximity to them—especially prolonged, unregulated proximity—can disrupt established secondary designations.” The words settled like a weight. “In the previous centuries, our designations were flexible. Betas changing to Omegas was quite normal, too little births, too many Alphas. Nature. But since the population stabilized, that trait went extinct. No one carries it anymore, there were test done to prove it. But Enigmas — they’re something we still can’t understand.”
“No,” Alison said again, but it sounded weaker this time.
“Yes.”
Cara’s voice came out barely above a whisper. “You’re saying someone… did this to him.”
“I’m saying,” the specialist replied carefully, “that if your son was in close contact with an Enigma, it is more than possible that his body was forced into a secondary shift.”
“Forcefully,” he added. “Violently.”
Silence swallowed the room whole.
“And the Alpha?” Steve asked hoarsely. “The one he’s asking for?”
The specialist didn’t hesitate.
“Whoever triggered the change,” he said. “Is probably posturing as an Alpha. Omega’s instinct is calling for an Alpha because it’s the most typical pairing. Enigmas were in the past Alphas, the Primes as I believe they were called. Name Enigma started to be used when they developed traits unknown and not understandable to the medics.”
Cara’s heart dropped straight to her stomach.
“No,” she breathed.
“There is of course possibility that the change was started…willingly.”
Max didn’t rush when he got to George’s front door. He was filling anxious the entire week, preparing, waiting, researching. It wasn’t the first time he would have an Omega. But this would be his one and only. He had the jet on a standby in Nice, ready for a take off if necessary.
He closed the door behind him slowly, like there was no reason to hurry. Like nothing inside could leave without him allowing it. The scent hit him —stronger now, concentrated, clinging to the air and the walls and the furniture. Not muted like in the conference room.
Sweeter. Overripe. Wrong, if you didn’t understand it.
Perfect, if you did.
His tongue pressed briefly against the inside of his cheek, grounding himself. He couldn’t storm into the room and possibly frighten George. He was still in a delicate state of mind and could react badly. He swallowed and felt the possessive side of his instincts flare. The heat started in his body. Faster than expected.
“…George,” he called, voice carrying the weight of something hard to explain.
Not loud. Not searching.
Certain.
There was a sharp movement from the living room. Something dragged across the floor. Fabric. A quiet, distressed sound—and then George stumbled into view. Not walked. Stumbled. Like his body had moved before his mind caught up.
His hair was a mess, eyes blown wide, pupils swallowing the blue almost entirely. His hands were shaking, clutching at fabric that hung off him unevenly, layers slipping from his shoulders.
For a second—
just a second—
he looked lost.
Then he saw Max waiting for him in his hallway, eyes dark red.
Everything snapped.
“Alpha—”
It broke out of him like a gasp, like something forced through his chest. Relief hit so hard it looked painful. George crossed the distance too fast, nearly tripping over himself, grabbing at Max’s shirt like he needed to anchor himself.
“You’re here,” he breathed, voice thin, desperate. “You’re here—you took too long, I—”
His words tangled. Max didn’t help him. He just watched. Took it in. The state of him. The scent. The way George leaned into him without hesitation, pressing closer like there was no version of reality where Max wasn’t exactly where he was supposed to be.
“I’m here,” Max said quietly. “Sorry it took so long. I needed to have everything prepared for you, liefde.”
George made a soft, broken sound, pressing his forehead against Max’s collarbone. He took short and sharp breaths, trying to get as much of Max’s pheromones as he could. The Engima was holding his hips, digging the fingers into the flesh.
“I couldn’t—” he started, voice cracking. “It’s wrong when you’re not here. Everything—everything is wrong, it doesn’t—” His fingers tightened. “It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop unless—”
Max’s hand came up and he curled his fingers around the back of George’s neck.
Held it there, George stilled instantly. It was liek a switch flipped. A quiet, almost embarrassing sound slipped out of him, his entire body relaxing at once, tension draining so fast his knees nearly gave.
“Better,” he whispered, breath catching. “That’s— Max, please—”
Max’s grip tightened just slightly. Testing. George leaned into it further. No resistance. No awareness of anything outside of it. Good.
“…you made a nest here,” Max said, glancing briefly toward the living room.
George shook his head immediately, frantic.
“No, no—it’s the first, it’s mine, I— I made it, I needed it, but it’s not—” He swallowed hard. “It’s not enough without you.”
Max looked back at him. There it was again.That pull. That instinct settling into place like it had always been there, just… waiting.
“You will do more in our home. One with just our scents there. Go and pick things for your family nest, I’ll wait,” Max said.
George blinked.
“More nests?” He asked hopefully.
Max nodded and rubbed his hand on George’s nape. “Of course, go.”
No hesitation. No question. George nodded immediately.
“Okay.”
Max’s thumb brushed once, slow, over the side of George’s throat. Felt the hitch in his breathing. The way his pulse jumped. Sensitive. Unprotected. Waiting.
Max leaned in. George didn’t move.
Didn’t even think about moving.
His head tilted automatically, exposing more, hands clutching tighter into Max’s shirt as his breathing turned uneven again—but this time not from distress.
“Max—”
It came out small. Not a name. A need.
Max didn’t rush it.
He pressed his teeth into the skin just below George’s jaw, not enough to break—but enough to leave intent. George gasped.
Sharp.
His whole body jerked before melting straight back into Max, a quiet, desperate sound spilling out of him as his grip turned almost painful.
“Please—”
Max exhaled slowly against his skin.
George broke.
A choked sound tore out of him, something between relief and overwhelm, his legs giving completely this time as he clung to Max like he was the only thing holding him together.
Max held him up easily.
Kept him there and waited until the trembling eased just slightly. When he pulled back, George looked wrecked: glassy-eyed. Breathless. Completely gone.
“…mine,” he murmured, not even realizing he said it.
Max’s mouth twitched.
“Yes, just yours. Now go, so we can go home and I can make you mine fully,” he said.
George picked up most of his nest while Max went to the bedroom and grabbed the most essential things the Omega owned. The documents, the medicine, all electronics. He paused with them and turned them off. He knew they were easy to track. Once he got into the bathroom he stared at the bottles, jars, and packages of products and swiped them into the garbage bag.
He was speeding through the narrow streets not long after with George happily purring on the passenger seat next to him. The car was filled with the smell of citrus, both lemon and grapefruit mixing together.
“We’ll ge there soon, schat.”
When the Russells returned, something was wrong before they even opened the door. Steve paused before putting the key in, his nose twitching. He looked at his daughter who was whispering something to her mother.
The apartment was too quiet. Too… empty.
Cara froze mid-step.
“…no.”
She forced herself to walk into the living room, already knowing deep inside what she would see inside the room. A sound that resembled a half-sob and half-choke left her mouth. The nest was still there.
Collapsed and abandoned. Ripped apart, some pieces of it missing.
Every window was shut. No scent. Nothing. “George?” Alison called sharply, stepping inside. “George!”
No answer.
Steve moved through the apartment quickly, checking rooms, bathroom, bedroom—
“Nothing,” he said, voice tight. “He’s not here, there’s not a sign—”
Cara’s phone was already in her hand.
The police arrived within twenty minutes. Too fast. Too slow. It didn’t matter. Nothing changed. The officers who arriver looked ready to argue but once they saw who called them and saw the inside of the apartment, they started to check everything twice.
“There are no signs of forced entry,” the officer said, voice steady in that way that suggested he’d already decided what this was not. “Locks intact. Windows sealed. No disturbance beyond—” he glanced toward the living room, where the remains of the nest still sat like evidence of something they didn’t understand, “—that.”
“That is the disturbance,” Cara snapped. “My brother was forced to change his designation by someone and left the only safe place he had.”
The officer didn’t react.
“Miss Russell, I understand you’re worried—”
“He was not like this three days ago,” she cut in sharply. “People don’t just disappear without a trace. Besides, he was too weak and out of it to make any sort of reasonable decision!”
Another officer crouched near the nest, careful not to touch anything.
“There’s scent residue,” he noted, frowning slightly. “Strong. Unusually so.”
Alison’s grip tightened around her mug.
“He’s in heat,” she said, like the words physically hurt to say. “Or something close to it. He wouldn’t leave. Not like that.”
“Then someone helped him leave,” Steve added, voice rough.
“Or took him,” Cara said.
The first officer straightened, he had several plastic bags with swaps in them. He also had a notebook where he wrote several things in.
“We’ll review camera footage again. Expand the perimeter. Speak to neighbours.”
“We already did,” Cara shot back. “No one saw anything.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It means whoever took him knew exactly how to do it,” she said flatly. “Or knew we wouldn’t be here.”
The officers exchanged looks. “We’ll call the station. They’ll decide if we need to involve the Interpol and Designation Task Force.”
Another hour passed, the task force arrived. The doctor was questioning Mr and Mrs Russell, Cara was sitting on the balcony. Across the hall, Mrs. Dufour wrung her hands nervously.
“He was… quiet,” she said, glancing between the officers and the Russells. “I heard movement, yes, but nothing unusual. No shouting. No struggle. I thought maybe he was sick, I saw his family come in.”
“No visitors?” one officer asked.
She shook her head; then a strange look passed over her face.
“…there was a smell,” she admitted slowly, after thinking for some time. “Very strong. But typical for here, I assumed—well, I assumed he had company. Or someone knew came in to take care of him.”
“Did you see anyone enter or leave?” One of the task force officers pressed.
“No,” she said quickly. “No, I would have noticed. I always notice.”
“Cameras didn’t pick anything up either,” another officer added from behind them. “There were no outsiders in the building except the Russells. And the camera moves, two degrees every ten seconds. There’s a chance they walked out during the time it was turned away.”
“Of course,” The other officer rubbed his face. “We need to file a report. Missing person, call the neighbouring towns and cities. Possible kidnapping.”
Cara, in the meantime, decided that if the police didn’t know where to look, maybe someone else would.
The group chat had stopped being coherent.
alla bon bon
i’m at the airport
gaaasly
i’m already in MC
going to change and go there
this is fucked
la’inchident
Police are involved.
His family is with them
…he wouldn’t just leave, right?
gaaasly
WE KNOW
balls
maybe he just went out?
felt better and is probably fine
smooth as butter
did he take anything??
passport?? phone??
alla bon bon
Everything is gone
smooth as butter
so he vanished completely
“Walk me through it again,” the officer said.
Cara exhaled sharply.
“He was in the nest. Disoriented. Instinct-driven. He was asking for an Alpha.”
“Specifically, someone?”
She hesitated.
“There was no name. Trust us, we would tell you if we had any.”
“He was stable when we left,” Alison added quickly. “He had what he needed. He was safe.”
“And you locked the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And when you returned?”
“He was gone.”
The officer nodded slowly, writing something down.
“Alright. We’re treating this as a missing person case for now. Given the circumstances, we’ll escalate if necessary.”
“If necessary?” Steve repeated, disbelief sharp in his voice. “My son is gone.”
“And we are taking that seriously,” the officer replied calmly. “But we need evidence of—”
“There won’t be evidence,” Cara cut in quietly.
All eyes turned to her. She swallowed.
“…not if we’re right.”
The officer frowned. “Right about what?”
Cara didn’t answer. Because how do you explain something that wasn’t supposed to exist?
“We saw a specialist today. To help us help George. He said that there was a high chance of it being a forced or,” She paused and licked her lips. “Willing changed designation with Enigma’s interference.”
“Engima? Those are fairy—”
“We know how it sounds,” Steve cut him off. “The specialist showed us the evidence. Engimas exist, and one apparently targeted my son to make him an Omega to mate him. Why? I don’t know. But clearly that person is dangerous and powerful. And I want my son safe, so I beg you, as a father, find my son before I lose him.”
Max’s place was quiet. Deliberately so; no lights, distractions, or outside scent.
Controlled.
George noticed immediately. His shoulders dropped the moment the door closed behind them, relief washing over him so visibly it almost looked painful.
“Here,” he murmured, voice softer now, but still threaded with something fragile. “Better here.”
Max didn’t respond. He watched. That was all he’d done since they walked in.
Watched as George moved slowly through the space, hesitant at first—like he was unsure what was allowed. Then his attention caught on something.
Clothes. More specifically: Max’s.
Left over the back of a chair, George stopped. Something shifted. His breathing changed.
Max didn’t interrupt.
George reached out carefully, fingers brushing over the fabric like he was confirming it was real. Then he picked it up. Held it close. Inhaled. The reaction was immediate.
His eyes fluttered shut, shoulders dropping as a quiet, almost embarrassed sound left him.
“Better,” he whispered.
Max leaned back against the wall.
Said nothing.
George moved faster after that. Not frantic—focused. Purposeful in a way that had nothing to do with logic. He gathered more. A hoodie. A shirt. Another. Something from the sofa, something from the bedroom, something half-folded that he didn’t even check properly before adding it to the growing pile.
He carried them to the center of the living room. Arranged them. Pulled them closer, then apart, then closer again.
Max watched every second.
Didn’t stop him, correct him, or help.
George dropped to his knees eventually, hands moving through the fabric, building something that only made sense to him. A nest.
Different from before. Smaller. Tighter.
Every piece saturated with the same scent.
Max’s.
George settled into it slowly, almost cautiously—like he was afraid it might not work. The moment he lay down, he stilled.
A long breath left him. Then another.
His fingers curled into the fabric around him, pulling it closer, burying his face into it as his entire body relaxed in a way it hadn’t before.
Finally safe.
“…mine,” he murmured again, softer this time, barely audible.
George shifted slightly in the nest, pressing further into the scent, calmer now, quieter. Max pushed himself off the wall. Walked closer. Stopped just at the edge. Looked down at him and smiled.
The first thing George registered doing after finishing the nest was looking at Max. Not at the windows, the phone on the table, the hallway, the faint glow of Monaco outside.
Only Max.
He sat in the middle of the nest he had built from almost every piece of clothing he could steal from drawers, chairs, the laundry basket, the suitcase Max hadn’t unpacked properly. Hoodies. Shirts. A pair of joggers. Fireproofs from an old training session. Anything that carried his scent strongly enough to make George’s breathing settle.
His fingers curled in the fabric. His eyes stayed fixed on Max.
Wide.
Bright.
Adoring.
Waiting.
Max leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, watching him with an expression so calm it would have looked bored to anyone who didn’t know better.
But George knew better now.
Somewhere under the fever, under the instinct, under the strange golden haze wrapped around his thoughts, he understood that Max was pleased. And because Max was pleased, George’s chest warmed.
His scent shifted softer. Sweeter.
Max noticed immediately and his mouth twitched.
“Come here.”
George moved before the words properly settled.
He crawled out of the nest without hesitation, hands and knees pressing into the floor, the motion unsteady but eager. He nearly slipped on the hem of one of Max’s hoodies, caught himself, then looked up quickly as if afraid he had done something wrong.
Max didn’t hesitate to move to George instead and stopped at his feet. George grabbed his hands and looked at him. Waiting again.
“Let’s get up.”
He swayed when he reached his full height, body still weak from the change, from the heat, from days of fighting something he had already lost. Max caught his chin between two fingers before he could stumble sideways.
George went still instantly.
His eyes softened so much it was almost painful.
“You’re safe here,” Max said.
The word hit him like a hand against his chest. George made a small sound. Not quite a whimper. Not quite relief. Something worse. Something that belonged to instinct rather than language.
Max’s thumb dragged once along his jaw.
“You listen well now. Because there are people who will try to take you away from me and our home.”
George swallowed.
“No, please. I’ll be good, I’ll—” His voice barely existed.
Max tilted his head.
“When did I say I’ll let them?”
George blinked slowly, trying to find the answer through the fog. It was there. Deep down. Obvious. The only thing that made sense.
“Yes, Alpha.”
The air grew heavier, darker, warmer. The scent around them sharpened, wrapping around him until his knees almost weakened again. Max’s hand moved from his chin to the back of his neck, fingers settling over the mark he had left earlier.
George’s breath caught.
“There,” Max murmured. “That’s better.”
George’s lashes fluttered. He wanted to say something. Maybe thank you. Maybe please. Maybe don’t leave me again. Nothing came out properly. Max watched him try.
Enjoyed how happy George seemed to be about all the changes.
Then his gaze shifted toward the nest.
“I’ll mark you and you will do the same to me.”
George turned immediately, heading towards the nest. He didn’t question it.
He went back to the nest, climbed into the centre of it, and lowered himself down carefully, arranging Max’s clothes around his body again. His hands moved automatically now, dragging one hoodie over his lap, pressing another against his chest, smoothing the sleeve of a shirt until it was exactly where his instincts wanted it.
Then he looked at Max.
Waiting.
Max stayed by the counter for a moment longer. Still. Silent. Studying the result.
George looked almost unreal in the middle of it. Too pale. Too bright-eyed. His scent sweet enough to drown the room, his body finally calm because it had stopped trying to resist. He had been sharp once. Difficult. Proud. The kind of man who argued with regulations for sport and corrected people because he could not bear imprecision.
Now he sat in a nest made of Max’s clothes and waited to be told whether he was allowed to breathe wrong. Max felt something possessive settle under his skin.
Deep.
Satisfied.
Proud.
It had worked.
Not perfectly. Not cleanly. George had fought harder than expected, had locked himself away, had forced his family close enough to complicate things.
But it had worked.
And quickly. So quickly that Max almost wanted to laugh.
Instead, he pushed himself away from the counter and walked toward him.
George straightened instantly.
Not because he was scared. Because Max was coming closer. Because everything in him wanted to be ready.
Max stopped at the edge of the nest. George looked up at him like he had hung every star outside the window by hand.
“Do you know where you are?” Max asked.
George nodded immediately, then hesitated because hesitation felt wrong, then nodded again.
“With you.”
Max’s eyes darkened.
“That wasn’t the question.”
George’s expression crumpled for half a second, panic flashing across his face.
“No—sorry, I—” His fingers twisted in the hoodie on his lap. “Here. Your place. Your home.”
Max crouched slowly in front of him.
George went silent.
“Whose home?”
George’s lips parted. A shiver ran through him.
“Yours.”
Max waited.
George’s throat bobbed.
“…ours?”
Max smiled properly. “There you go.”
George’s entire face softened with relief. Like he had just been forgiven for something terrible. Like Max’s approval was oxygen. He leaned forward without thinking, reaching for him, then stopped himself abruptly. His hands hovered uselessly in the air.
He looked at Max. Waiting. Asking without words. Max watched that too. The restraint. The need. The way George’s instincts had already learned the shape of his authority and were arranging themselves around it.
“Ask,” Max said.
George’s breath trembled.
“Can I—” His voice broke. He swallowed and tried again. “Can I touch you?”
Max let the silence sit between them. Long enough for George’s hands to shake. Long enough for his scent to sharpen nervously. Long enough for his adoring gaze to turn almost frantic.
Then Max moved, lying down in the nest and dragging the taller man on top of himself, placing his face right next to the glands on his throat. Placed his own hands on George’s lower back and lightly pressed his fingers into the soft flesh, moving them in circles. George exhaled like he had been underwater.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Max’s fingers stilled and he laughed.
“Don’t thank me for what’s already yours.”
George stared at him. The words took a moment to sink in. When they did, something open and helpless moved across his face.
“Mine,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
George’s hand curled in Max’s shirt.
“Mine.”
Max leaned closer, voice dropping.
“And what are you?”
George didn’t understand at first. He frowned faintly, distressed by the gap in comprehension.
Max waited. Patient. Predatory.
George’s breathing grew uneven.
“What am I?” he repeated softly, like the words were too complicated.
Max’s hand slid back to his neck again. George’s eyes fluttered.
“Think.”
George tried. It showed on his face. The effort. The fog. The instinct pushing over thought like water over glass. Then his gaze cleared in the wrong way.
Not human clarity. Instinctive certainty.
“Yours.”
Max’s thumb pressed into the place where a mark usually went. George’s whole body went loose.
“Yes,” Max said. “Exactly.”
At George’s apartment, nothing was calm.
The police had moved from polite procedure into contained alarm when the second set of camera checks returned the same result.
Not damaged footage.
Not corrupted files.
“That is impossible,” Charles said, standing in the middle of George’s living room with his arms folded so tightly across his chest that his knuckles had gone white.
The officer looked exhausted. “It’s unusual.”
“No,” Alex snapped. “Unusual is if he ordered the wrong coffee and didn’t explode about it. This is impossible.”
“Alex,” Charles said quietly.
“No, don’t Alex me.” His voice cracked slightly, and that seemed to anger him more. “You were here. Ollie and you stood outside that door. You two thought he wasn’t home. He was inside, and you left.”
Ollie, pale and silent near the kitchen, looked like someone had physically struck him.
“You didn’t know,” Lewis said gently.
“That doesn’t help,” Ollie whispered.
Lando was pacing.
Not his usual dramatic pacing either. No exaggerated hand movements. No jokes thrown at the walls to make the fear less real.
Just back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
“His phone is not here,” he said for the fifth time. “His passport also. His wallet is here but all IDs aren’t. He didn’t take shoes, did he? Did anyone check the shoes?”
Cara closed her eyes.
“He didn’t take shoes.”
Lando stopped.
“Then he didn’t leave on his own.”
No one answered.
Because everyone had already thought it.
Alex stood near the ruins of the nest, one hand pressed over his mouth. He had gone quiet in a way none of them liked. Pierre stood close to him, not touching, but near enough that he could if Alex tipped too far into panic.
Alison sat at the breakfast bar, a blanket around her shoulders that someone had given her and she hadn’t noticed. Steve was speaking to one of the officers in the hallway, his voice low and controlled in that terrifying way only fathers managed when fury had nowhere useful to go.
Lewis looked around the apartment again.
At the nest.
At the locked windows.
At the door.
At the absence.
Then he asked the question nobody had wanted to say aloud.
“Where is Max?”
Everyone looked at him.
Lando blinked.
“What?”
Lewis’s face was unreadable.
“Where is Max?”
Charles frowned.
“He replied in the chat?”
“Yes,” Lewis said. “He replied.”
Alex lowered his hand slowly.
“He said George was probably fine.”
The room changed.
Not loudly.
No dramatic gasp. No sudden accusation.
Just a shift.
A terrible one.
Lando shook his head immediately.
“No. No, Max wouldn’t—”
“I’m not saying he would,” Lewis said. “But it’s weird he’s not here. He saw how worried we all were, and he’s not here?”
But his voice was careful. Too careful.
Charles took out his phone. Called. They all listened to it ring.
Once.
Twice.
Five unanswered calls.
“Do we tell the police?”
Charles stared at his phone.
His jaw worked. He looked sick.
“…yes.”
Max’s phone vibrated on the table.
Again. And again. And again.
George flinched every time.
Not because of the noise.
Because each vibration pulled Max’s attention away. His eyes kept flicking toward the phone, then back to Max, increasingly distressed by the idea that something outside the apartment might matter.
Max noticed. He reached over, picked up the phone, glanced at the screen.
Charles.
Alex.
Lando.
Lewis.
George watched him with anxious devotion, fingers twisting in the fabric around him.
“Alpha?”
Max locked the phone and placed it face down. George relaxed immediately.
“They’re loud,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Make them stop?”
Max looked at him. George’s eyes were wide and wet and completely trusting. Not frightened of him. Frightened of anything that might take him away. Max stepped closer.
“They can’t take you.”
George’s breathing shook.
“They will try, you said so.”
“No,” Max said, crouching again. “They don’t understand. That’s different.”
George frowned slightly, trying to follow.
Max touched his cheek. George leaned into it instantly.
“They think you’re missing,” Max said.
George blinked. “I’m not.”
“No.”
“I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“With you.”
Max smiled faintly.
“Good boy.”
George’s eyes went soft again. The words slipped under his skin and rewrote something.
He lowered his head slightly, almost nuzzling into Max’s palm, and the sound that came out of him was small, pleased, humiliatingly honest.
Max watched him with dark satisfaction.
Then he stood. George immediately looked up.
“Stay in the nest.”
George nodded.
“Don’t answer the door.”
Another nod.
“Don’t touch the phone.”
George’s gaze flicked toward it, then back.
“No phone.”
Max’s mouth curved.
“And if someone calls for you?”
George hesitated. The hesitation was tiny. Almost nothing.
But Max saw it. His expression cooled.
George sensed it instantly and panicked.
“No—no, I won’t, I won’t answer, I promise, I—”
Max stepped closer. George stopped speaking at once.
“Just wait for me, okay?” George nodded, eyes bright. Max smiled and knelt next to the nest. “Come here.”
As soon as he was close enough, Max grabbed his neck and pressed their lips together, making the other man gasp and cling to him, pressing himself closer. The room was soon filled with the scent of citurses and salt. Max slowly slowed down their kiss, moving down to the pale neck.
“Please—”
Max exhaled slowly against his skin.
Then he bit down properly.
George broke.
At the police station, the words sounded insane when Charles said them aloud.
“Max Verstappen.”
The officer glanced up.
“You believe Mr Verstappen may know where George Russell is?”
Charles pressed his lips together.
“I believe he knows something.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Lewis said from beside him. “But he told us George was fine when no one else knew where George was.”
The officer wrote that down. Alex sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, phone hanging uselessly from one hand.
“He wouldn’t hurt George,” he said quietly.
It sounded like a plea. Nobody answered fast enough.
Alex looked up.
“He wouldn’t,” he repeated, sharper now.
Lando rubbed at his face.
“We don’t even know if it’s Max. Maybe George contacted him. Maybe—maybe Max saw something. Maybe he’s doing that thing where he knows more than everyone and explains nothing because he thinks we’re idiots.”
“That is also possible,” Charles said, but his voice lacked conviction.
Lewis remained silent. That was worse.
Alison turned toward him slowly.
“You know something.”
Lewis’s eyes lifted to hers.
“I know Max,” he said.
“So do we,” Lando muttered.
Lewis shook his head.
“No. You know him now.”
The room went quiet.
Lewis looked down at his hands.
“There was always something in him that could become very still when he wanted something badly enough. People thought the temper was the dangerous part.” He paused. “It wasn’t.”
Charles swallowed.
“What was?”
“The quiet.”
Max moved through his apartment slowly, checking locks, windows, blinds.
George watched every step from the nest. He did not move. Not once.
Even when Max disappeared into the hallway. Even when the front door made a faint sound under his hand. Even when the phone vibrated again.
George stayed exactly where he had been told to stay, breathing through the distress because Max had given him an instruction and instructions were easier than thinking.
When Max returned, George’s face lit up. Not subtly. Not with dignity. Like the whole world had corrected itself. That was his mate.
Max stopped by him and crouched, brushing a hand through George’s hair, and George leaned into it with such immediate devotion that Max felt his smile return.
“Are you feeling okay? I got a bath ready for you.”
George’s eyes fluttered shut. He looked peaceful.
Until Max’s phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
Max answered this time. George’s eyes snapped open.
“Mr Verstappen?” a voice asked. “This is Inspector Moreau with the Monaco police. We’re contacting you regarding the disappearance of George Russell.”
George went completely still.
Max looked at him. Put a finger to his lips.
George obeyed instantly. Not a sound. Staring at Max with curious eyes.
Max’s gaze stayed locked on him as he answered.
“Yes,” he said evenly. “I heard.”
“We understand you told other drivers that Mr Russell was fine.”
George stared up at him, adoring and silent, hands pressed over his own mouth because Max had told him to be quiet and he would be quiet, he would be so quiet, he would be good.
Max’s smile was barely there.
“Yes,” he said.
“And how would you know that?”
A pause. George’s eyes shone.
Max looked straight at him.
“Because George always finds a way to be fine,” he said calmly. “If he’s been sick for a week, he probably felt better and went to a doctor or maybe pharmacy? I assume he’s not returned if you’re calling me.”
The inspector was silent for half a second.
“We would like to speak with you in person.”
“Of course.”
“Where are you now?”
Max’s gaze dropped to George, curled in the nest made of his clothes, looking up at him like a prayer.
“At home,” Max said.
George’s whole body relaxed at the word.
“I could be there in the next hour if you need me.”
“We would be grateful.”
The police station smelled wrong.
Not bad. Not exactly. Just wrong in the way public buildings always did when too many people had passed through them with too many separate emergencies clinging to their clothes. Coffee gone bitter in paper cups. Cleaning solution too sharp at the edges. Wet pavement from someone’s shoes. Stress. Fear. Old anger pressed into the walls.
Max noticed all of it the moment he walked in but he did not react. The officer at the front desk looked up, recognised him, then did the thing people did when they recognised someone famous in a situation where fame had become inconvenient. His eyes widened first, then narrowed, then slid quickly towards the corridor behind him, where the real work was clearly happening.
“Mr Verstappen?”
“Yes.”
“Inspector Moreau is expecting you.”
Max nodded once.
“Okay.”
The officer paused, as if he had expected more. An explanation. A question. Maybe concern.
He followed the second officer down the corridor with his hands loose at his sides, his face carefully held somewhere between blank and tired. Not too blank. Too blank looked rehearsed. Too calm looked strange. Max knew that because people had spent years telling him his normal face looked like he was planning a murder and then acted shocked when he adjusted it.
So he looked tired. A little confused. A little irritated because irritation was easier for people to believe from him than fear. It was a narrow line.
He walked it carefully. They took him into a room with a table, three chairs, a camera in the corner and a window that was not a window. Max looked at the camera first.
Then away, visibly swallowing.
Inspector Moreau stood as he entered. Mid-forties, dark hair going grey at the temples, pleasant expression, calm hands. Beside him stood another officer, younger, Beta, posture too relaxed to be natural. Friendly one, then.
Max swallowed again, this time adding a slight grimace to it.
“Mr Verstappen,” Moreau said, offering his hand. “Thank you for coming in so quickly.”
Max shook it. Firm. Normal. Maybe a little too firm.
He adjusted quickly.
“I came when you called.”
“Yes. We appreciate it.”
The second officer smiled slightly. “Can we get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
Max blinked at him.
“Yes.”
A tiny pause.
The younger officer’s scent shifted almost imperceptibly. Irritation. Quickly hidden. Max sat down when Moreau gestured to the chair.
“Before we start,” Moreau said, sitting opposite him, “you understand this is just an informal conversation?”
Max nodded slowly.
“Okay?”
“You’re not under arrest.”
“Oh, I didn’t think- you never said it was possible arrest. Saw on films that it’s the police who comes to get you, not that you go to them.”
“No one is accusing you of anything.”
Max’s jaw tightened before he could fully stop it.
“Some people are.”
Moreau’s eyes sharpened slightly.
“Who?”
Max looked at the table.
“The drivers. I saw them while going in. Also saw the texts,”
The younger officer leaned forward a fraction.
“Why would they accuse you?”
“I don’t know.” Max rubbed one hand over his face, then stopped, like he regretted showing the movement. “Because I texted him. Because I answered in the group chat. Because I’m not reacting how they want.”
“And how do they want you to react?”
Max gave a short, humourless laugh.
“I don’t know. Crying? Shouting? Running around Monaco smelling walls?” He looked up, and for the first time, something openly strained crossed his face. “I don’t know where he is.”
Moreau let the silence sit. Max looked away first.
Good. Let them think they had unsettled him. Let them think the fear was fear of suspicion. Not fear of losing control.
“Let’s go through it slowly,” Moreau said. “You know George Russell.”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
Max hesitated.
“We met when we were children. I don’t know how much you know about my childhood, but I didn’t really have friends back then; if I did, my father would gladly turn them into my enemies. Still, I think George and I are slightly closer than co-workers, but friends? Maybe friend,” He scratched the side of his neck, biting the inside of his cheek at the same time. “We did have a falling out several times, so we might be a bit strained.”
“You speak often?”
“Not really.”
Moreau wrote something down.
“Yet you texted him recently.”
Max looked at him.
“Yes.”
“At two in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he disappeared. I was doing some simulator training, and well, I saw the group messages and decided to ask him.”
“That concerned you?”
Max’s fingers tapped once against his knee before he forced them still.
“It was strange.”
“Strange enough to text him privately?”
“Alex was already worried. And George had looked wrong at lunch. He didn’t reply to anyone’s texts. Which, fair, he sometimes did the disappearing act, but to Alex? Those two always let each other know. For Alex to text me privately and ask about George - the red light lit in my head.”
Moreau lifted his gaze.
“Wrong at lunch. How exactly did Mr Russell look wrong?”
Max inhaled slowly.
“He was distracted. Pale. Not listening properly. George listens to everything, even when he pretends he doesn’t or is doing something else at the time. He looked like he was trying to solve something in his head and losing.”
The younger officer watched him carefully. “You noticed all that?”
Max’s shoulders moved in a small shrug. “I notice things.”
“About George?”
Max’s gaze flicked to him.
“About others. There’s a small number of us there. Like a mini world of F1, you know?”
“Right.”
Moreau nodded.
“What did you say?”
“I asked if he was ill.”
“And was he?”
“I don’t know. He said migraine, probably.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No,” Max chuckled, crossing his arms.
“Why not?”
“Because it sounded like bullshit.”
The younger officer’s eyebrows rose slightly. Max noticed and looked briefly uncomfortable.
“Sorry.”
“No need,” Moreau said.
Max exhaled through his nose.
“He does that. Makes things sound smaller than they are. Most drivers do. You say migraine when you mean you can’t see properly. You say tired when you mean you haven’t slept in two days. You say fine because it’s easier than explaining anything else.”
“And George said he was fine?”
“At first.”
“But later?”
Max’s thumb pressed into his palm under the table.
“Later he said he didn’t know what was happening,” Max admitted.
Moreau’s pen stopped. “And how did that make you feel?”
Max looked at him like he hated the question.
Then he answered anyway. “Bad.”
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
“Can you explain?”
“No.”
Moreau waited. Max’s jaw shifted.
“He’s George,” he said eventually, voice lower. “He always sounds like he has a plan, even when the plan is stupid. He doesn’t say things like that. I told him the usual. You know, drink water, switch off the lights, maybe air the house. Not to go outside. His scent was messed up already.”
The room went quiet for a moment. This time, the younger officer’s expression softened a little. Max let himself look at the camera again, then back down.
“You told him to drink water,” Moreau said.
“Yes.”
“And turn the lights off.”
“Yes.”
“And not go outside if his scent was unstable.” Max nodded. “Why did you say that?”
“Because it was.”
“How would you know?”
“I could smell it at lunch.”
The younger officer leaned forward. “You noticed his scent closely enough to know it was unstable?”
Max looked at him, then away. His throat moved.
“That’s not—” He stopped. Tried again. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Like what?” Max’s face tightened.
“I know what you’re asking.”
“What am I asking?”
“If I was interested.”
Moreau said nothing. Max gave a short, tense shake of his head.
“I wasn’t. It smelled wrong. Not bad. Wrong. Like something was changing, it was just too much, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
“But you recognised it as unstable.”
“I recognised that it was not normal.”
“For George?”
“For anyone,” Max said, deflecting. “I have a sister and mother who are Omegas. I smelled both whilst they went into heat. It was similar but also like… heavier? Wrong in a way. But George is a Beta, and that’s why it was so weird. I don’t think he is with someone now, so the smell threw me off a little.”
Moreau watched him for a long moment. Max let the discomfort sit on his face.
“Did he say anything about an Alpha?” Moreau asked.
Max blinked.
“An Alpha?”
“Yes.”
“No?”
“Did he say he felt influenced?”
“No.”
“Did he say he was afraid of someone?”
“No, I mean,” Max paused. “He said he was scared. That’s all.”
“And you didn’t call anyone?”
Max looked at him.
“I told him to call his family.”
“Why not call them yourself?”
“Because he is an adult. And I don’t have numbers of other driver’s family members.”
“He was scared.”
“I know.”
“So why not call someone who did have those numbers? Mr Albon, for example?”
Max looked away, and this time the frustration seemed to crack into something less controlled.
“Because I thought he would hate me for it.”
The younger officer went still. Moreau didn’t move. Max rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“We’re not close. I already shouldn’t have been the person he said that to. If I called his family, or Alex, or anyone, and it was nothing, then I’m the idiot who made it worse and crossed a line. And if it was something—” He stopped.
“If it was something?” Moreau prompted.
Max stared at the table.
“Then maybe I should have.”
That answer changed the room.
A guilty man could say that.
A worried man could too.
That was the point.
“Did you speak to him after those messages?”
“No.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Did you visit his apartment?”
“No. I don’t even know where it is actually.”
The lies came quieter now. Less perfect. More human.
No pulse jump. No scent spike. His body stayed exactly where he needed it to stay, but his face gave them enough. Tightness around the eyes. A swallow before answering. The kind of fear people understood because it looked like regret.
Moreau turned one page.
“George’s family said he was disoriented. In distress. Possibly going through a forced designation shift.”
Max’s fingers stilled.
He looked up.
“A forced designation- What do you mean by a designation shift?”
“That’s what they believe. Someone forced George to shift his designation from Beta to Omega.”
Max let a second pass.
“That’s possible?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know. We had the FIA meeting about screenings going crazy and reading people as different designations, but—” He shook his head, looking genuinely thrown. “I thought those readings were inconsistent. Not that someone could force anything.”
“You mentioned the FIA meeting before.”
“Because it was about this.”
“About George?”
“No. About designation screenings.”
“You think his disappearance is connected?”
“I think if drivers have inconsistent readings and then George disappears during a designation crisis, it would be stupid not to check.”
Moreau’s eyes sharpened slightly.
“Check whom?”
Max hesitated.
“The people taking the readings. The people who had access.”
“That’s a lot of people.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone specific?”
Max looked at him.
“I don’t know who is doing the screenings. They change before every race. I think FIA has contracts with local hospitals to get the specialists from them.”
Moreau tapped his pen once against the file.
“You seem to have thought about this.”
“Everyone has thought about this.”
“Have they?”
Max’s expression tightened.
“George is missing.”
The younger officer leaned back slightly.
For a moment, Max let himself look exactly as he needed to: scared, angry, helpless, and deeply uncomfortable with all three.
Then voices rose outside.
Max heard Alex first. Of course he did.
“—you can’t just leave us out there while he’s in here like this is some bloody press briefing—”
The door opened before Moreau could stop it.
Alex appeared in the gap, pale with fury and fear. Charles was behind him, jaw tight. Lewis stood slightly further back, very still. Lando hovered near the wall, looking like he had been pacing for hours and had finally run out of floor.
Moreau stood. “Mr Albon, you need to wait outside.”
Alex ignored him. His eyes locked on Max, his shoulders loosened slightly.
“You came.”
Max looked at him. “Yes, they called me.”
“That’s it?”
Max frowned. “What do you want me to say?”
Lando made a sharp sound. “Maybe that you’re worried?”
“I am.”
“You don’t look it.”
Max’s face changed. Not into anger. Into something smaller.
“I’m sorry I’m not doing it right. I am worried but know that panicking and running around Monte Carlo without a plan is like looking for a drop of juice in the ocean.”
The line hit harder than shouting would have. For half a second, even Alex seemed thrown. Then the fear came back as anger.
“You were texting him,” Alex said. “You said he was fine.”
“I said probably.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
Max looked genuinely confused. “Do what?”
“Act like this is a wording issue.”
“It is if you’re accusing me based on something I didn’t say.”
Charles stepped forward, voice tight.
“Then say something useful.”
“I don’t know anything useful! I can screenshot you everything, I can leave my phone here if you want. I don’t know anything useful for you.”
“If you know something,” Lando said, voice cracking slightly, “just say it. Please. Whatever it is. If he told you something, if he said where he might go—”
“He didn’t.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Alex snapped.
Max looked at him, frustration rising. “Yes, because it’s true.”
Charles’s eyes were sharp and wet.
“He had no shoes, Max.”
Max frowned and blinked, his confusion evident. Charles saw it.
“He had no shoes,” he repeated. “His nest was torn apart. His documents are gone. His scent cuts off in the apartment. The cameras have nothing. And you’re sitting here telling us you know nothing?”
“I don’t. But how do we know he is missing or, I don’t know, taken? If his documents are also gone, how possible is it that he left with someone?”
“Max!” Alex’s scream was filled with anger.
Max’s mouth opened. For once, he let them see that there wasn’t a clean answer.
Alex stared at him.
“You don’t know.”
“No. I know. George wouldn’t. He wasn’t seeing anyone; he tells me everything. He would tell.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Why didn’t you call us or text! Me for example!”
“I thought he would call someone.” Max’s voice sharpened, then broke back down into something rougher. “I thought he would call his family. Or you. Or Lewis. I thought he would do the sensible thing because he is George and he is that annoying. I didn’t think he would vanish.”
Lando looked away, jaw trembling. Charles’s voice dropped.
“And if he did vanish? If he wanted to?”
Max looked at him. This was the dangerous part. The part that needed to sound ugly because he was cornered, not because he was cruel.
“If he wanted to disappear,” Max said slowly, “then maybe we should ask why.”
Alex’s face twisted. “What?”
“I don’t mean—” Max stopped, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t mean I don’t care. I mean if he left because he chose to, then chasing him may make it worse.”
“He was sick,” Alex said.
“I know.”
“He was not thinking clearly.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t stand there and make it sound like his fault.”
Max flinched. Small. Visible.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know what to do!” Max snapped.
The room went silent. His scent didn’t change. His pulse was slightly quicker but still steady. But his voice sounded raw enough that even Moreau did not interrupt.
Max breathed once, then lowered his voice.
“I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what happened after he texted me. I don’t know if he ran, or if someone took him, or if this is connected to the FIA, or if it’s something else. I don’t know. And all of you keep looking at me like I should have an answer because I texted him, but I don’t.”
Lando swallowed. Alex looked like he didn’t want to believe him, but wanted to believe him badly enough that it hurt.
Lewis stepped forward. “Max.”
One word. Quiet. Careful.
Max looked at him.
There was history in the space between them. Old fights. Old respect. Old understanding neither of them had ever fully admitted to because it was easier when people thought they hated each other cleanly.
Lewis’s face was unreadable. But his eyes weren’t.
“If you know something,” Lewis said, “now is the time.”
Max held his gaze. “I don’t.”
Lewis didn’t look away. Neither did Max.
The room breathed around them. Then Moreau stepped between them, not physically blocking, but enough to break the line of sight.
“Everyone outside,” he said. “Now.”
Alex let out a sharp, bitter breath.
“You’re letting him leave?”
“We’re not holding him. He’s not under investigation or a suspect.”
“Why the hell not? He’s acting like one!”
Moreau’s face hardened.
“Because there is currently no evidence tying Mr Verstappen to George Russell’s disappearance.”
Alex stared at him. “No evidence?”
“No indication of deception during questioning. His pulse remained steady. His scent didn’t change. He showed no physiological signs associated with direct involvement.”
Max looked down at the table. Not at Moreau.Not at the others. Let them read that as exhaustion. Let them read that as shame.
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t lying,” Charles said, voice thin.
“No,” Moreau said. “It means we cannot treat him as involved based on suspicion alone.”
Lando looked sick. Alex shook his head.
“He was the first one who noticed something was wrong.”
“And that makes him a relevant witness,” Moreau replied. “Not a suspect.”
The words hung there.
Relevant witness.
Max kept his hands folded in front of him.
“Can I go?” he asked quietly.
Moreau studied him for a moment longer.
“Yes. But stay available.”
“I will.”
“And Mr Verstappen?”
Max paused at the door.
Moreau’s voice was polite again. Friendly. Almost warm.
“If George contacts you, you’ll tell us?”
Max looked at him. For the first time, he let hesitation show. Not too much. Just enough.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I wouldn’t even think of not telling you.”
The lie sat perfectly in the room, dressed as fear. He stepped into the corridor.
The others were still there.
Alex looked like he wanted to tear him apart. Lando looked like he wanted to beg. Charles looked like he was trying to memorise Max’s face for later, when anger became useful. Lewis only watched him, still and silent, and that was the only one Max paid attention to.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Lando said, very quietly, “Max.”
Max didn’t stop. Lando’s voice shook.
“If he texts you again…”
“I’ll tell the police. Don’t worry. I actually want him to be fine,” Max said. “Maybe try not to accuse each other now.”
Alex laughed once, disbelieving and ugly.
“Are you serious?”
Max looked at him. The answer came softer this time.
“Yes. You accused me so easily, who knows? Maybe tomorrow you’ll decide that fucking Aryton Senna took him.”
Max walked away before any of them could answer. Behind him, the corridor erupted again. Voices. Anger. Someone saying his name like a curse. Lewis calling Max and repeating the apology.
Max kept walking.
By the time he reached the car outside, his phone had vibrated three times.
Unknown number. Charles. Lewis.
He ignored all of them, got into the driver’s seat, and closed the door.
Only then did he allow himself one slow breath.
The scent of George still clung faintly to his sleeve.
Sweet.
Grapefruit.
Bergamot.
Fear, fading into trust.
Max looked at the police station entrance, where Alex had appeared behind the glass doors, held back by Pierre and Lando. His expression fell for half a second.
Not guilt. Not exactly. Something close enough to pass for it.
Then he started the engine and pulled away from the kerb.
Max knew before he opened the door that something had changed.
The hallway outside his apartment was quiet, expensive, controlled. The kind of silence people bought with money and layers of security and neighbours who knew how not to ask questions. The penthouse was something he didn’t share with anyone. Brand new in a different part of the city than his original one. Away from the track.
But the scent slipped under the door anyway.
Sweet.
Heavy.
Alive.
Max stopped with his hand on the handle.
For one second, he let his eyes close.
Grapefruit. Bergamot. Heat. Want. Fear smoothed out into something warmer, something more dangerous because it had stopped fighting and started waiting.
The interrogation room still clung to him faintly. Bitter coffee. Police disinfectant. Alex’s anger. Lewis’s suspicion. Lando’s fear. Charles’s grief dressed up as fury.
George drowned all of it before Max even stepped inside.
The lock clicked, and the door opened. Warm air rolled out.
Max entered slowly and closed the door behind him.
The apartment was dark except for the low lamp near the sofa and the city lights bleeding through the curtains. He had left the place controlled, quiet, organised enough that George would not panic when he woke and found the world too sharp.
George had changed it anyway.
The nest had spread.
It was no longer just Max’s clothes arranged in a careful circle in the living room. It had grown, claimed territory, pulled the apartment into itself. Blankets from the bedroom. Cushions from the sofa—a throw from the armchair. Three shirts Max knew had been folded in his wardrobe when he left. One of his old team hoodies was stretched over the edge like a wall, sleeves tucked under pillows with obsessive precision.
George was in the middle of it. Barefoot. Flushed. Hair damp at the temples. Eyes too bright. He lifted his head the moment Max entered. For a second, nothing happened. Then George smiled. Not the sharp, polite smile he gave journalists when they asked stupid questions and he wanted to keep his job. Not the small, reluctant one Max had seen once or twice across a paddock when someone said something too ridiculous not to be funny.
This was softer.
Open.
Ruined.
“Alpha,” George breathed.
Max stayed by the door, didn’t take a step closer. George’s face shifted immediately. The smile trembled.
“You came back.”
“I said I would,” Max replied.
George swallowed, eyes searching him with frantic intensity, like he needed to confirm every part of Max was real. His fingers dug into one of the shirts in the nest.
“You were gone too long.”
“It was not long.”
“It was,” George said, and the words broke a little, frustration and distress crossing his face. “It was. It was too long. I couldn’t—” He stopped, breathing unevenly. “I tried to make it right.”
Max’s gaze moved over the room. The extended nest. The curtains pulled shut. The untouched food Max had left on the counter.
“You didn’t eat.”
George looked at the food, then back at Max, almost confused by the idea that food mattered.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You need to eat.”
George nodded immediately.
The words sat between them, unspoken but obvious. George waited like movement itself required permission, like all his cleverness and stubbornness and sharp-edged control had been pushed behind frosted glass, still there somewhere, but unreachable through the heat.
Max took one step forward, eyes scanning George’s body. George’s scent surged, but not with fear. Need.
Max stopped again. George made a small, wounded sound, hands twisting in the fabric.
“Don’t stop. Come closer.”
Max’s jaw tightened.
He had expected heat. He had prepared for heat. He had read enough, asked enough careful questions in places where people answered if the money was good and the names stayed hidden. But this was different. This was not just a cycle.
This was mating heat.
The kind people wrote about in old texts with too much reverence and too little warning. The kind doctors insisted was rare, usually triggered by established bonds, compatible biology, prolonged exposure, stress, danger, instinctive certainty. The kind that did not ask politely.
The kind that narrowed the world until an Omega could think of one thing.
Their mate.
Max looked at George, who was staring back at him with wide, fever-bright eyes and no shame left because heat had burned through it.
“Come here,” George whispered.
It was not a command. It barely sounded like a language for Max’s ears. Max moved closer.
George reached for him the second he was within distance, fingers catching in Max’s shirt, pulling with almost no strength and too much desperation. He pressed his face against Max’s stomach first, then his chest when Max lowered himself to the edge of the nest, inhaling like he had been suffocating without him.
“There,” George whispered. “There, there, there—”
Max’s hand settled in his hair. George shuddered.
His whole body went loose for half a second, relief moving through him so violently that Max had to catch the back of his neck to keep him upright.
“Better,” George breathed. “Better. You make it better.”
Max looked down at him. The words should have pleased him. And they did. That was the problem.
“They questioned me,” Max said.
George blinked slowly, as if the sentence had to travel a long distance before reaching him.
“Who?”
“The police.”
A faint frown touched George’s face. Then vanished.
“Why?”
“Because they think you are missing.”
George’s fingers tightened.
“I’m not.”
“No.”
“I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“With you.”
Max’s thumb moved once against the back of his neck. George’s eyes fluttered.
“With me.”
The answer satisfied something in him. George softened further, leaning into him, hands sliding up Max’s chest with clumsy need. He looked at him like the rest of the world was a badly remembered dream. Then his expression changed again. Focused. Hungry in a way that was not simple. Not only desire. Instinct.
He shifted closer, trying to draw Max into the nest fully, trying to get him surrounded by the things he had gathered. His breathing turned shallow.
“Need you here,” George said.
“I am here.”
“No.” George shook his head quickly, frustrated. “Here. In the nest. With me. It’s for us.”
Max glanced at the nest. At the careful walls. At the clothes arranged around the centre. At the space George had left open beside himself. His space.
Of course.
George pulled again, weaker now, voice cracking.
“Please.”
Max let himself be guided down.
George immediately moved closer, almost crawling into his lap, hands restless and shaking. His scent flooded the room again, sweet and thick and demanding. He pressed his forehead to Max’s throat, then his cheek, then his mouth against skin without coordination, like his body knew the idea but not the order.
“Mine,” George whispered. “You smell like mine.”
Max’s hand tightened around his waist.
“You’re in heat.”
George nodded quickly.
“Yes.”
“You understand that?”
Another nod, but this one less certain.
“Need you.”
“That is not the same.”
George looked at him. For a moment, under the heat, something like confusion passed through his eyes. Then distress. Then the fragile beginning of panic.
“You don’t want me?”
Max’s face changed. He caught George’s chin, forcing his gaze up.
“Don’t say stupid things.”
George stilled. The panic softened. Not gone. Waiting.
“I want you, more than I should allow myself,” Max said quietly.
George’s breath hitched.
“But you are not thinking clearly.”
“I am,” George insisted immediately, because of course he did, because even half-lost to instinct, George Russell could still argue with the confidence of a man personally offended by the concept of being wrong. “I am. I know. I know what I want.”
“What do you want?”
George answered without hesitation.
“You.”
Max held his gaze. George swallowed.
His hands moved down, pressed against Max’s chest like he needed to feel his heartbeat.
“You. The nest. Your scent. I need—” His eyes went unfocused for a second, lashes fluttering. “I need it to take. I need—”
He stopped. A flush spread down his throat. For the first time since Max entered, a flicker of awareness cut through the heat. Horror followed it.
George’s lips parted.
“Oh.”
Max watched him.
George looked down at himself, at his hands fisted in Max’s shirt, at the nest around them, at the shape of his own body curled toward Max with shameless, instinctive certainty.
“Oh, God.” His voice broke.
Max’s grip softened just enough to look kind.
“George.”
“No.” George shook his head, but he didn’t move away. Couldn’t, maybe. His body stayed pressed close even as his mind tried to recoil. “No, I didn’t— I didn’t mean—”
“You’re in mating heat.”
George’s face twisted.
“That’s not possible.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it shouldn’t be!” The words came out too loud, too desperate. “None of this should be possible. I’m not— I wasn’t—” He swallowed hard, fighting for language while his body trembled against Max’s. “I don’t even know what I am.”
Max’s hand slid up to his neck. George went quiet instantly. Not because he chose to. Because his body did. Max felt it.
The obedience.
The relief.
The way every line of George softened under touch, the way his scent shifted from panic back into need so quickly it was almost cruel.
“You’re George,” Max said.
George stared at him.
“I don’t feel like George,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I feel like—” He stopped, ashamed.
Max waited. George’s eyes shone.
“Like all I’m supposed to do is get you to stay.”
Max’s thumb brushed once over the sensitive skin beneath his ear.
“And… am I leaving?”
George’s breathing shook.
“No.” George leaned into him again, almost collapsing with relief.
“Then you don’t need to be scared.”
It was not true. They both knew it, George believed it anyway. The heat rose again after that. Not all at once. In waves.
George would go quiet for minutes at a time, curled against Max, breathing in his scent like it was medicine. Then the restlessness would return. His hands would move. His body would press closer. His mouth would find Max’s throat, his jaw, the place where his pulse sat steady and strong under the skin.
Every time Max shifted away, George followed.
Not seductively. Desperately.
Like seduction was simply the only shape his instincts had left to ask for care.
“Stay,” George whispered into his neck.
“I’m here.”
“Stay in the nest.”
“I am.”
“Stay with me, forever.”
“Yes.”
“Need you.” His voice thinned. “Need you, need you, need—”
Max caught his face between both hands. George stopped. Eyes wide. Waiting. Max looked at him for a long moment.
The city moved outside the windows. Police lights somewhere far away. Sirens that did not belong to them. Monaco pretending not to know that one of the most recognisable drivers in the world was being searched for while curled inside another man’s apartment, alive and feverish and lost to a biology no one believed existed.
“Breathe,” Max said.
George breathed.
“Again.”
George obeyed.
“Good.”
George’s eyes fluttered, pleasure and relief moving through his face with such openness that Max felt something hot and possessive settle in his chest.
Then George whispered, “Please.”
Max did not ask what for. He already knew. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to George’s. For a moment, there was only breathing.
Heat.
Scent.
The nest.
George’s hands were trembling where they clutched him.
Then Max pulled him closer, and the rest of the night folded around them, private and dark and hidden from a world that was still looking in all the wrong places.
Time became strange after that.
For George, it narrowed.
Days were not days anymore. They were measured in Max leaving and Max returning. In whether the curtains stayed closed. In whether the nest smelled right. In whether his body hurt from heat or from exhaustion or from the terrible moments of clarity when he woke with his face pressed into Max’s shirt and remembered enough to feel afraid. Sometimes he knew he was missing.
One morning, the fog was finally lifted, and he was back to his own mind. Max saw.
“You want to leave?”
George swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth. The awful, humiliating truth.
Part of him wanted to run so badly he could feel it in his teeth. Part of him wanted to call his mother and hear her say his name and cry until he knew what parts of himself were still real. Part of him wanted Alex to kick the door in and yell until the entire building understood that George Russell was not a thing to be kept.
And another part of him, the part curled deep and warm and terrified beneath his ribs, looked at Max and thought: home.
That part scared him most.
“I should,” George whispered.
Max did not move. “Should what?”
“Leave.”
The word made his body revolt.
His hands clenched in the blanket. His breathing turned shallow. The nest, which had felt too warm a moment ago, suddenly felt like the only safe thing in the world. He grabbed the closest blanket and wrapped it around his middle.
Max watched him carefully. Somehow, he already knew what had happened.
“You did something to me.” The apartment changed around the sentence.
Max set the glass he was holding down on the counter. His face was unreadable.
George’s breath caught.
“I have, yes,” Max admitted. His cold blue eyes met George’s sea-blue ones. “You may not know this, no one does besides… Us, besides Enigmas. We don’t get to choose our mates. They’re based on instincts and compatibility. It was out of my hands. Even if I didn’t want to have you,” Max walked towards George. “I couldn’t stop it. That’s why I kept my distance during those years. Because I knew what would start. The fights in 2024 didn’t help. Too many emotions and pheromones. It started already, in Miami. It was out of my hands by then.”
Outside, the world did not stop.
George Russell had not been seen publicly since the FIA meeting. George Russell’s family had requested privacy. Mercedes had released one statement, then another, then nothing at all. The police refused to confirm whether foul play was suspected. The FIA denied any connection between its new designation screening regulations and George Russell’s disappearance.
Max Verstappen arrived at testing with a flat expression, drove like he had a knife between his teeth, and answered every question about George with the same careful sentence.
“I hope he’s good and safe,” The reporters gathered in front of the Red Bull garage were watching. The rest of the grid was also questioned. “F1 won’t be the same without him, it’s hard to imagine him not racing with us.”
Alex and Lando were not talking to him, still believing he was the one who took George. Lewis came to him to apologise, Charles actually came to him a week after George’s mating heat passed when Max was in his official apartment, and they talked. He admitted that he thought that maybe Max and George had fought and Max did something and tried to hide it. Then he apologised as well once Max allowed him to search the apartment and his phone.
Media was hunting for George as well. Toto paid them handsomely for any information about his driver. Max knew that right after George’s family, the Austrian was the biggest threat.
One month after George vanished, Mercedes called a press conference. Everyone knew before anyone said it. The room was packed beyond reason. Journalists stood along the walls. Cameras lined the back. Every seat taken. The air smelled of anticipation, discomfort, and the particular cruelty of people preparing to call tragedy logistics.
Toto Wolff walked in first. He looked older. Not dramatically. Not enough for headlines. But people who knew him saw it. The exhaustion around his eyes. The way his jaw stayed set even before anyone asked a question. The absence beside him where George should have been felt louder than anything he could have said.
Valtteri Bottas followed.
That was when the room shifted. Not shock. Confirmation.
Valtteri looked solemn. No jokes. No theatrics. No sunglasses. Just a dark Mercedes team shirt and an expression that said he understood exactly what stepping into that seat meant.
Kimi sat on Toto’s other side, pale and silent. Too young for this. Too young to watch the sport replace someone because the calendar did not care if people disappeared.
Toto leaned towards the microphone. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
The room quieted instantly.
“As you all know, George has now been missing for thirty-one days. The investigation remains active, and we continue to support his family and the authorities in every possible way.”
His voice held but barely.
“George is not only our driver. He is part of this team’s family. Our focus remains, first and foremost, on his safe return.”
A pause. Someone’s camera clicked too loudly. Toto’s eyes flicked towards the sound. It stopped.
“However,” he continued, and the word seemed to cost him something, “the season is about to begin. We have obligations to our staff, our partners, the championship, and to Kimi, who cannot be left without an experienced teammate as he begins his first full season.”
Kimi looked down at the table. Valtteri did not.
“For that reason, Valtteri Bottas will race for Mercedes until further notice.”
The room exploded.
Hands shot up.
Questions overlapped.
“Toto, is George still officially contracted?”
“Is this a temporary replacement?”
“Have the police advised Mercedes to prepare for the possibility—”
“Do you believe George is alive?”
Toto’s face hardened. Valtteri’s eyes flicked to him. Kimi went even paler.
“We are not discussing speculation about George’s condition,” Toto said coldly. “He is missing. Not forgotten. Not replaced as a person. This is a racing decision made under circumstances none of us wanted.”
A journalist in the second row stood.
“Valtteri, how does it feel to return to Mercedes in this context?”
Valtteri leaned towards his microphone. For a second, he didn’t speak.
Then he said, “Bad.”
The room stilled. He looked out at them with calm, exhausted honesty.
“It feels bad. George is my friend. This is his seat. I am here because the team needs someone, not because I wanted this situation. I think everyone should remember that.”
Silence.
Then another question, quieter this time.
“Have you spoken to George’s family?”
Valtteri nodded.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us what they said?”
“No. They have asked for no questions and privacy.” The answer was immediate.
In the back of the room, Lewis stood with his arms folded, face unreadable. He had not needed to be there. He came anyway.
So did Alex.
So did Lando.
So did Charles.
None of them sat together. That was how bad things had become.
The grid had fractured around George’s absence, grief and suspicion cutting strange lines between people who used to survive chaos by making jokes in the same group chat.
The group chat itself had gone almost silent.
Just occasional updates.
Police request for timeline.
“Toto, there has been rumours about Max Verstappen being questioned about George. Has he been questioned again?”
The room froze.
Toto’s expression did not move.
“This is a Mercedes press conference.”
“Given that Mr Verstappen was reportedly one of the last drivers to speak with George—”
“This is a Mercedes press conference,” Toto repeated, colder this time.
The journalist sat down.
Across the paddock, in a Red Bull motorhome that smelled too clean because Max had made sure of it, a screen showed the press conference on mute.
George sat curled on the sofa in their home, wrapped in one of Max’s hoodies, watching Valtteri Bottas sit in front of a Mercedes backdrop. For a long time, he didn’t speak. George’s fingers dug into the sleeve.
“They replaced me.” George laughed softly. It sounded awful. “Until further notice,” he quoted.
On the screen, Toto was speaking again. Valtteri sat beside him. Kimi stared at the table.
George’s face twisted. “Kimi looks terrified. He shouldn’t have to do this.”
George started fighting Max on the fourth morning.
Not properly, not in the way people imagined when they heard the word fight and built something cinematic around it. There were no dramatic punches thrown across a marble living room, no shattered glass, no shouting loud enough for neighbours to call security. George had always been far too controlled for that, even when his body was burning through every last piece of control it had left.
It started with a coffee mug.
Max had made tea because George kept forgetting to drink, and because water made him grimace like Max had personally offended several generations of Russells by suggesting it. He had set the mug on the low table near the nest and stepped back, giving him space, because that was what every article, every private specialist, every old locked forum thread said: give a newly presented Omega space, especially one forced into transition, especially one bonded to something he did not understand yet.
George stared at the mug.
Then at Max.
Then back at the mug.
“You think tea fixes this?”
His voice was rough from sleep and fever, but the sentence landed cleanly enough that Max paused by the kitchen island. George was sitting in the middle of the nest he had rebuilt three times in the night, wearing one of Max’s hoodies and looking like he wanted to crawl inside it and strangle Max with the sleeves at the same time.
“No,” Max said.
George’s eyes narrowed. “Wonderful. Then we are in agreement.”
“You need to drink.”
“I need my life back.”
Max’s jaw moved once.
George saw it. Of course he saw it, because George missed nothing when he was angry. Even now, half-starved, fever-soft, scent too sweet in the room and one hand pressed protectively against his lower stomach because the cramps had started again, he still noticed the smallest shift in Max’s face.
“Don’t do that,” George snapped.
Max tilted his head. “Do what?”
“That.” George pointed at him, hand shaking slightly. “The silent, guilty, violently repressed thing. I know what you look like when you’re thinking very hard about not saying something awful.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
Max looked at him for a long second. “Fine. I was.”
George laughed once, sharp and humourless. “Well, at least honesty survived the kidnapping.”
The room went still.
Max did not move.
George’s face changed almost immediately, not with regret exactly, but with the awful realisation that the word had left his mouth before he could decide whether he meant it. His scent spiked, bitter underneath the bergamot sweetness, and Max felt it hit him like a warning.
“George.”
“No.” George pushed himself up too quickly, swayed, caught himself on the edge of the sofa, and looked furious that his own body had betrayed him in such an obvious way. “No, don’t say my name like that.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“You’re dizzy.”
“And you’re observant. Congratulations.”
“George.”
“I said don’t.”
Max breathed in through his nose. Too much. The whole apartment smelled of them now, but under it there was fear. George’s fear. His anger. His humiliation. Something raw and exposed that made every instinct in Max demand he cross the room, put his hands on him, make it stop.
He didn’t.
George noticed that too.
That seemed to make him angrier.
“You brought me here,” George said, quieter now. “You took my phone. You turned things off. You let my family think I was missing.”
“I didn’t let them think anything. They called the police before I could—”
“Oh, how considerate. Were you going to send flowers?”
Max’s mouth tightened. “No.”
“Legal statement, then?”
“Yes.”
George stopped.
For one strange second, all the heat and anger flickered into confusion. “What?”
Max looked at him steadily. “Yes. A legal statement.”
George blinked, then laughed again, this time in pure disbelief. “You are unbelievable.”
“You said that already.”
“I’ll say it again because apparently once wasn’t enough.” George stepped out of the nest properly now, bare feet on the cold floor, one hand still gripping Max’s hoodie at his stomach. “You cannot legal-statement your way out of this.”
“I am not trying to get out of it.”
“You’re standing in your apartment with me half out of my mind and pretending this is a logistics problem.”
Max’s eyes darkened, not red, not yet, but close enough that George saw it and hated himself for the way some traitorous part of him wanted to move closer.
“It is not a logistics problem,” Max said.
“Then what is it?”
Max did not answer fast enough.
George’s face twisted. “Say it.”
Max looked away first.
That was the worst thing he could have done.
George moved before thinking. The shove landed against Max’s chest with almost no real force behind it, but Max let himself move back anyway. George shoved him again, harder this time, breath uneven, eyes too bright.
“Say it,” George repeated, voice cracking. “Say what you think this is.”
Max let the second push happen. Then the third.
“George—”
“No. Don’t gentle me. Don’t do the quiet Alpha voice like I’m something you need to talk down from the edge of a roof.” George shoved him again, and this time Max caught his wrists, not tightly, not enough to hurt, only enough to stop him from tipping forward when his balance failed. “Let go.”
“You’ll fall.”
“I said let go.”
Max released him instantly.
George stumbled back half a step anyway, furious at both of them, at the floor, at biology, at every invisible thing in the room making his heart pull toward the man he wanted to hate.
“I was fine,” George said, and it was such a terrible lie that Max almost closed his eyes. “I was fine before this.”
“You were disappearing.”
“I was coping.”
“You were nesting alone in an apartment without enough food, enough water, or enough medical care.”
“I was coping badly, then. Still not an invitation.”
“No.”
The agreement was too immediate.
George froze.
Max swallowed once. “No. It wasn’t.”
For a moment, George looked as if he had been hit.
Then his face shuttered.
“Good,” he said.
Max nodded. “Good.”
The silence between them shifted into something uglier.
George wrapped his arms around himself and looked toward the windows, even though the curtains were closed. “I want to call my sister.”
Max nodded again. “Okay.”
George looked back too quickly. Suspicious. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to argue?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to tell me it’s unsafe?”
“It is unsafe.”
George’s mouth opened.
“But you should still call her,” Max said, before he could speak. “Not from your phone. Not yet. The police will be monitoring it. The FIA might be too, if Lance was right. But we can call her through the lawyer.”
George stared at him.
Then, slowly, something sharp and intelligent came back into his eyes.
“The lawyer,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“You already have one.”
“I have several.”
“Of course you do.”
Max shrugged slightly. “I have Jos as a father.”
The words hung there.
George’s anger faltered, only for a second.
Max looked down at his own hands. “I know what it is like when someone tries to make your body evidence against you.”
George said nothing.
Max looked back up. “I won’t do that to you.”
George’s throat moved.
It would have been easier if Max had shouted. Easier if he had been smug, controlling, arrogantly certain that instinct made everything simple. George could have hated that without effort. He could have built a wall out of it and lived behind it until someone came to rescue him.
But Max looked tired.
Not weak. Never weak. But tired in a way George suddenly understood with a clarity that made his chest hurt.
This wasn’t only instinct for him either.
That made it worse.
George looked away first this time.
“I still hate you,” he said, but there was less force behind it.
Max nodded. “That’s fine.”
“It is not fine. It is actually quite emotionally inconvenient.”
“I can live with it.”
George closed his eyes for a second, breathing unevenly. “I can’t.”
Max’s expression changed.
George hated that he saw it. Hated the softness. Hated the way it made the room feel less hostile.
“I can’t,” George repeated, quieter. “That’s the problem.”
Max did not step closer.
George wanted him to.
George hated that most of all.
The second fight happened two days later because Max went to Milton Keynes.
It was necessary. That was what Max said.
George heard necessary and translated it into leaving.
He did not say anything when Max packed a small bag. He did not say anything when Max moved around the bedroom with the kind of quiet efficiency that made George want to throw something at his head. He sat in the nest, expression blank, watching Max put on shoes, check his phone, check the cameras, check the locked folder of documents he had been building.
Max stopped at the edge of the living room.
“I’ll be back tonight.”
George hummed.
Max’s eyes narrowed slightly. “George.”
“I heard you.”
“That is not an answer.”
George looked up slowly. “I’m sorry. Would you prefer a more enthusiastic farewell? Shall I wave a little handkerchief from the balcony while you abandon me for corporate espionage?”
Max stared at him.
George smiled without warmth.
“It is not corporate espionage.”
“Oh, my mistake. Legalised biological warfare with a paddock pass.”
Max rubbed both hands over his face. “I have to race.”
“I know.”
“I have commitments.”
“I know.”
“You also know I am coming back.”
George’s scent twisted.
There it was.
Max went still.
George looked away too late.
“I know that intellectually,” he said stiffly.
Max’s voice softened. “And not otherwise?”
George’s jaw clenched.
Max took one careful step closer. “Schat.”
“Don’t.”
Max stopped.
George pressed his hand to the bridge of his nose, the sleeve of Max’s hoodie falling over his fingers. “It’s humiliating.”
“What is?”
“This.” George gestured to himself, to the nest, to the apartment, to the invisible leash between them that tightened whenever Max moved too close to the door. “You leave, and my brain starts behaving like you’ve tossed me into the sea. I know you’re going to Milton Keynes. I know you have a job. I know rationally that you are not disappearing forever because you need to sit in a simulator and be unpleasant to engineers.”
Max’s mouth twitched.
George pointed at him. “Don’t you dare smile.”
“I didn’t.”
“You nearly did.”
“I controlled myself.”
“Poorly.”
Max looked at him for a moment, then crouched at the edge of the nest. Not entering. Not without being invited. That was new. George noticed it every time and pretended he didn’t.
“I can leave something,” Max said.
George’s expression went flat. “Like a chew toy?”
Max blinked. “No.”
“A blanket? A signed cap? Perhaps one of those horrifying cardboard cut-outs fans bring to races?”
“I was thinking a hoodie.”
George hated the way his fingers tightened around the fabric already in his lap.
Max saw it.
Of course he did.
George swallowed. “I don’t want to need that.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, actually.”
“I do.”
George’s eyes flashed. “No, you don’t. You were born like this. You know exactly what you are. People have spent your entire life making space for it or fearing it. I woke up one day and my body had staged a coup. I smell wrong. I think wrong. I can’t sleep unless your clothes are arranged in a stupid, obsessive little circle around me, and when you leave the room, I have to argue with myself not to follow you like some Victorian tragedy with legs.”
Max was quiet.
George’s face flushed, anger and embarrassment tangling until his voice dropped.
“I had a life,” he said. “A seat. A team. A future that didn’t involve lawyers discussing my uterus like it’s a contractual liability.”
Max’s eyes flickered down, just for a second.
George went very still.
“What?”
Max did not answer.
“What?” George repeated, sharper now.
Max stood slowly. “The doctor called.”
George’s hand moved from the hoodie to his stomach.
“No.”
“George—”
“No.”
“It is early, but—”
“No.”
Max stopped talking.
George’s breathing changed. Not panic at first. Something colder. The kind of fear that did not know where to go, so it stood perfectly still in the centre of the room.
“How early?” he asked.
“Early enough that we need another scan.”
George laughed once, empty. “Another scan.”
“Yes.”
“So there was a first scan.”
Max’s jaw tightened.
George stood so quickly the nest shifted under him. “When?”
“You were barely conscious.”
“And you thought I didn’t need to know?”
“I thought you needed to not die from dehydration first.”
“Very generous of you.”
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
George’s eyes filled, and that was what finally made Max flinch.
“Safe?” George whispered. “Max, I don’t know what part of me is still mine.”
The words cut through the room.
Max did not move.
George pressed both hands to his stomach now, like he could shield himself from the knowledge already inside him. “Is it true?”
Max’s voice was low. “Yes.”
George closed his eyes.
The silence stretched until it hurt.
Then George said, very softly, “Get out.”
Max looked at him.
George opened his eyes again, wet and furious. “I said get out.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
George’s scent spiked so hard Max almost stepped forward on instinct.
“Then you’ll stand in the hall,” George snapped. “You’ll stand outside your own stupid apartment like a dramatic guard dog, because if you stay in here, I will either scream at you or crawl into your lap, and I cannot survive finding out which one happens first.”
Max stared at him for a second.
Then he nodded once.
“Okay.”
George looked almost startled.
Max went to the door, opened it, and stepped outside.
He did not leave.
George knew because the bond did not go distant. It stayed just on the other side of the wall, heavy and restless and controlled by a man who had spent his whole life learning how not to break things he wanted to keep.
George sank back into the nest.
For five minutes, he hated him.
For ten, he hated himself.
After twenty, he crawled to the door, opened it, and found Max sitting on the floor outside, back against the wall, phone in one hand, eyes already lifting to him.
George looked down at him.
Max looked up.
Neither of them said anything.
Then George, pale and furious and trembling, stepped over Max’s leg and sat beside him in the hallway. Not touching. Close enough. Max did not smile.
George appreciated that more than he could admit.
The lawyer was Swedish, called Ingrid Nyström, and George decided within the first thirty seconds that she was either the best person Max could have found or the sort of woman who could ruin their lives with perfect posture and one carefully worded email.
Possibly both.
She arrived in Monaco two days before Zandvoort, dressed in charcoal-grey trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a long coat that looked far too sensible for the climate. Her blonde hair was twisted low at the back of her head into a braid, her make-up minimal, her expression unreadable in a way that made even Max seem overly emotional by comparison. She carried one leather bag and a slim folder marked with neat tabs in different colours. Nothing about her suggested panic. Nothing about her suggested surprise. If anything, she looked mildly inconvenienced by the fact that biology, international motorsport politics, and a missing person investigation had decided to become one legal problem.
George liked her immediately.nMax, standing near the kitchen island with his arms folded and his jaw set, looked like he had decided to dislike her on principle. That made George like her more.
“You understand,” Ingrid said, sitting at Max’s dining table as if she had been summoned to discuss sponsorship clauses rather than forced secondary designation, an illegal disappearance, and George Russell sitting five metres away in a nest made mostly of Max’s clothes while visibly pregnant, “that this is not one case.”
George was wrapped in one of Max’s hoodies, the fabric stretched loosely over his stomach, though not loosely enough to hide anything anymore. That had become impossible over the last few weeks. His body had changed too quickly, too obviously, and every time he caught himself in a mirror, the shape of him still made his mind stutter for a second before catching up. Five months. He still wasn’t sure whether he believed it, even with the scans, even with the weight low in his abdomen, even with the strange protective instinct that made him keep one hand there when he felt overwhelmed.
Max looked at Ingrid. “I know.”
“I am not certain you do.” Ingrid opened the folder and removed a pen. “There is a missing person report filled with Interpol. There is a possible kidnapping inquiry. There is a medical interference issue. There is a sporting authority involved in private biological data collection. There may be unlawful designation manipulation. There may also be cross-border privacy violations depending on where the data was processed, who had access to it, and whether any of it left the FIA medical system.”
George stared at her. Then, because apparently his sense of humour had survived just enough to be deeply inconvenient, he said, “So it’s going well.”
Ingrid looked up at him over the edge of her glass. Her mouth moved slightly into something that resembled a smirk.
“It is going,” she said.
George nodded. “Wonderful.”
Max glanced at him, and George felt the bond pull with something warmer than worry for half a second before Max forced it down again. He did that often now. Tried to muffle what he felt so George would not drown in it. Sometimes George appreciated it. Sometimes he wanted to throw a pillow at his head and tell him that dampening a bond was not the same as emotional maturity.
Ingrid turned a page. “Before we discuss statements, I need facts. Not instinct. Not protective phrasing. Facts.”
Max’s expression changed.
George noticed immediately, because he knew that look now. It was the one Max wore when he was about to say something that had been sitting inside him for a long time, something ugly and precise. Ingrid noticed too.
“You are not an Alpha,” she said. “Am I right?”
George’s hand tightened over his stomach. Max went still.
The room changed.
Max looked at her for a long moment. “No.”
George swallowed.
Ingrid wrote one word on her paper. “Enigma?”
Max’s face gave away nothing. George’s did, because Ingrid looked at him briefly before returning to Max.
“Yes,” Max said.
The word landed flatly. Cleanly. Like a confession cut down to its bones. Ingrid did not flinch. “Confirmed medically?”
“No standard test confirms it. Standard tests break.”
George huffed before he could stop himself. Ingrid looked at him.
George lifted one shoulder. “Sorry. It is just incredibly Max that even medical equipment gives up.”
Max’s mouth twitched despite himself.
Ingrid wrote something else down. “Your hormonal profile?”
“Masked.”
“Since when?”
“Since I presented.”
Ingrid’s pen paused for the first time. George’s eyes moved to Max.
“Since you were a teenager?”
Max didn’t look at him. “Yes.”
George stared at him in disbelief. He had known part of it. Enough to understand. Enough for the specialist to explain why every standard assumption had been wrong. But hearing the length of it — hearing that Max had been living under a false designation for more than a decade, hidden inside a category everyone else had forced onto him because it was easier to understand — made something in George’s chest ache in a way he did not want to examine.
Ingrid leaned back slightly. “Who knew?”
Max’s jaw tightened. “A few doctors. Christian, he tried to keep my father as far from he as he could. I think my father was hoping for the outcome. Someone in his family was one years ago. He would probably try to control me with something.” The room went cold.
George looked down at his hand, still resting over the curve of his stomach.
He hated how much made sense when placed next to Max’s father. The violence. The control. The way Max still became too still when people tried to corner him. The way he spoke about his own body like it had been a weapon other people kept trying to register under the wrong name.
Ingrid wrote slowly. “Red Bull?”
“Not officially.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Laurent knows now. GP knows enough. The old structure probably had pieces.”
“FIA?”
Max laughed once. There was no humour in it.
“The FIA has no idea what it is measuring half the time.”
Ingrid looked at him calmly. “That may be useful later. Continue.”
George shifted in the nest, uncomfortable now, not physically — although that too, because sitting still too long had become ridiculous — but because the conversation had turned into something too clinical. Max was discussing himself like evidence. Like a file. Like Exhibit A: born wrong, labelled wrong, dangerous enough to hide, useful enough to exploit.
George hated it. Max must have felt that through the bond because his eyes moved to him. For a second, the sharpness eased.
“I’m fine,” George said automatically.
Max looked unconvinced.
“I am moderately fine,” George corrected.
Ingrid glanced between them. “Good. Then we continue.”
George blinked. “You are terrifying.”
“Yes.”
Max almost smiled. Ingrid folded her hands over the folder. “Explain the mate selection. In your email you mentioned about it. Seemed pretty important.”
George’s stomach tightened.
Max’s expression closed.
“No,” George said suddenly.
Both of them looked at him.
George pushed himself up straighter, one hand braced against the edge of the nest, the other still protectively over his stomach. “No, if we’re doing this, we are not calling it mate selection like I’m a horse at auction.”
Ingrid nodded once, without offence. “Fair correction. Explain how the bond formed.”
Max looked at George. George held his gaze. There were still days when he could not look at him without anger. There were still mornings when he woke up and hated the shape of his own need before he hated Max for being the centre of it. There were still moments when he remembered his apartment, the fever, the missing hours, his family probably terrified out of their minds, and the resentment came back so sharply he had to leave the room before he said something designed to wound.
But there were also moments like this. Moments when Max waited.
Not because he lacked an answer. Max always had an answer. Usually a blunt one. Usually, one that made George consider decorative violence. But he waited now because this was George’s body too, George’s life too, and the fact that he had learned that late did not mean he had not learned it.
George nodded once; Max turned back to Ingrid.
“Enigmas don’t choose the way Alphas choose,” he said. “That’s the first mistake everyone makes.”
Ingrid’s pen moved.
“An Alpha can want. Can fixate. Can pursue. Can posture. It is still mostly conscious, even with instinct involved.” Max’s voice stayed even, but there was something underneath it now, something older. “For Enigmas, it is different. It is recognition first. Not decision.”
George looked at him, unable to stop himself.
Max didn’t look back.
“You recognise what fits,” Max continued. “Not because it is convenient. Not because the person is weak. Not because they’re already Omega. That part does not matter.”
George’s fingers curled slightly into the hoodie.
“What matters?” Ingrid asked.
Max took a breath. It was the first time he seemed to need one.
“Compatibility,” he said. “Resistance. Balance. What the bond can build from. It is difficult to explain without sounding insane.”
George murmured, “Too late.”
Max glanced at him. George’s mouth twitched despite everything.
Max looked back at Ingrid. “George was never weak. That is why it chose him.”
The sentence hit George harder than he expected. He looked away quickly.
Ingrid, mercifully, did not. “It?” she asked.
“The instinct. The Enigma. Whatever word you want.” Max’s fingers flexed once against his folded arm. “I noticed before the meeting. Not fully. There were signs during the season. His scent did not behave like a Beta’s should around me. Not always. Small shifts. Too small to prove.”
George’s eyes sharpened. “You knew?”
“No,” Max said immediately. “I suspected something was wrong. Not this.”
“That is a fairly large distinction.”
“I know.”
“You might have mentioned I was apparently biologically flirting with catastrophe.”
Max’s jaw moved. “I didn’t know what it was.”
George watched him for another second, then looked away again, because the worst part was that he believed him.
Ingrid said, “But at some point, you understood.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The FIA meeting.” Max’s voice dropped slightly. “When they discussed inconsistent readings. Then lunch. George looked sick. His scent had changed. It wasn’t just stress.”
George remembered that lunch not clearly enough. The lights too bright. The room too loud. Carlos taking the wrong glass out of his hand. Max was watching him from across the table with the face of a man putting together something nobody else had noticed yet.
Ingrid tapped her pen once against the page. “And after that?”
“His body started shifting.”
“You caused it?” George’s scent spiked before Max could answer.
Max’s head turned immediately. George hated that Ingrid noticed.
“Yes,” Max said. “My proximity caused it. Or started it. Or triggered what was already unstable. I don’t know the exact mechanics. No one does.” His eyes returned to Ingrid. “But I did not drug him. I did not ask anyone to interfere with his readings. I did not arrange the FIA meeting. I did not know he would change that fast.”
“What about the obvious elephant in the room?” Ingrid asked, her eyes sliding over to George.
Max took another breath, slower this time. “Enigma bonds are reproductive by nature. That is in every old record. Almost always immediately. Always successfully. The bond would push toward it if the first mating didn’t succeed.”
George closed his eyes.
He had known. Of course, he had known. The books and forums, the ridiculous theories mentioned that Enigmas were seen as the perfect breeders. The scans had confirmed the impossible timing, the accelerated development, the way his body seemed to be operating on rules that had gone extinct in respectable medicine and survived only in locked archives and forums full of people everyone else called hysterical.
Still, hearing it in Max’s voice made it real in a different way.
“So my mate got chosen,” George said, eyes still closed, voice carefully level, “my designation got rewritten, and now I’m five months pregnant because your biology read me like a compatibility form and decided I was suitable.”
Silence. Then Max said, “I would not put it like that. You sound like a love interest from teenage book.” George opened his eyes and looked at him.
Max’s mouth tightened. “But if the shoe fits.”
George stared. Then he laughed.
It was close to hysterical laughter that George used to get when he saw a video of animals falling. It loosened something in the room. Ingrid watched him carefully.
“It is also deeply insulting that my body was apparently persuaded by you.”
Max blinked and smirked. George pointed at him. “Do not look pleased.”
“I’m not.”
“You are slightly pleased.”
“I am not pleased that you’re upset.”
“That is not what I said.”
Max looked away, but both George and Ingrid could see that the smirk didn’t leave his face.
George made a small sound of disbelief. “Unbelievable.”
Ingrid waited until the silence settled again before speaking. “For legal purposes,” she said, “we need to separate what happened biologically from what happened after. Biology may explain the bond. It does not automatically justify concealment, removal from your apartment, withholding communication, or decisions made while Mr Russell was impaired.”
Max nodded once. “I know.”
Ingrid turned to him. “Mr Russell.”
George raised his eyebrows. “That sounds dreadful.”
“It is. I need to ask directly. Do you intend to accuse Max Verstappen of kidnapping you?”
Max went completely still. George looked at him for a second before looking down at the nest. There it was. The question that had been sitting under everything like a loaded gun.
Did he?
Some days, yes.
Some days, no.
Some days, the answer changed depending on whether Max had left the room for longer than ten minutes or whether George had remembered Cara’s face in a photograph and realised his sister had probably imagined him dead.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
Max’s eyes closed.
George’s voice came out quieter. “I don’t know. I was in heat, or transition, or whatever elegant legal nightmare we’re calling it. I remember calling for him. I remember wanting him there. I remember leaving with him. I do not remember making a rational decision.”
Ingrid nodded slowly.
George swallowed. “But I don’t want him arrested.”
Max looked at him then. George met his eyes.
“Not because everything was fine,” George added sharply. “It was not fine. It is still not fine. But if you remove him from me now, you don’t fix anything. You make it worse. For me. For the baby. For the case. For everyone.”
Ingrid wrote that down.
George looked at her. “Please don’t write it in a way that makes me sound like a medically compromised idiot with Stockholm syndrome.”
Ingrid’s mouth moved very slightly. “I will use more precise language.”
“Thank you.”
Max’s voice was rougher when he spoke. “George.”
“No.” George finally looked at him. “You don’t get to make that face. I can be furious with you and still know what I need.”
Max nodded slowly.
“Good,” George said, though his voice shook. “Excellent. Progress. Horrible, emotionally devastating progress of finding out I might actually love you despite all of what you did.”
Ingrid closed the folder halfway. “Then this is the position. George Russell is alive. George Russell is receiving private medical care. George Russell disputes any suggestion that he is being held against his will, but he also states that he was medically compromised during the period of his disappearance and that all circumstances remain under legal review.”
George frowned. “That sounds awful.”
“It is supposed to sound controlled.”
“It sounds like everyone involved needs sedatives.”
“That may also be true.”
Max exhaled through his nose.
Ingrid looked at him. “As for another unpleasant action. I would advice you to appear somewhere together, the impact will be enormous. People would see you’re fine.”
George said, “Good.”
Max turned. “George.”
“No.” George pushed himself up again, slower this time, because his back hurt and his abdomen pulled uncomfortably when he moved too quickly. Max shifted forward on instinct, grabbed his back, then his arms, then for some reason both. George would have found it funny if he wasn’t exhausted. “No, I’m tired of being discussed as if I’m already gone. I am not dead. I am not hidden. I am not some tragic little Omega locked in a tower.”
“I made everyone believe you’re missing. Told the police the same thing. True, we have some legal backing now, but it’ll be an absolute shitshow once they see you.” Max said quietly, eyes jumping between George’s face and abdomen.
George’s expression changed. For a moment, the fight drained out of him.
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
Max looked at him.
George’s voice softened, though not enough to lose its edge. “I was missing. And if I don’t appear, then that is all I remain. Missing. Rumoured. Speculated about. Reduced to a police report and whatever nonsense fans have invented on Reddit by breakfast.”
Ingrid watched him with new interest.
George lifted his chin. “They need to see me.”
Max’s scent shifted, darker with worry. “You’re five months pregnant. You’re newly shifted. The bond is unstable in public. Zandvoort is loud, crowded, emotional, and full of people who will try to photograph you from every possible angle.”
“Yes,” George said. “I have been to a Formula 1 paddock before.” He added with an eye-roll.
“That was before.”
“Yes.” George looked down briefly at himself, then back up. “And now they can stare at the consequences.”
Max went quiet. Ingrid clicked her pen once.
“Then,” she said, “we prepare for maximum exposure and minimum speech. You walk in together. You do not answer questions. You do not separate unless necessary. Red Bull security keeps a controlled perimeter. Mercedes must be notified before the public appearance, or they will respond emotionally and possibly stupidly.”
George’s mouth twitched. “That is generous phrasing.”
“Swedish legal training.”
“Very efficient.”
“Yes.”
Max looked toward the windows.
George watched him for a long moment. “I know you don’t like it.”
“No,” Max said.
“I know you want me kept somewhere quiet until the case is controlled.”
“Yes.”
“I know you think everyone is a threat.”
Max looked back at him. “They are.”
George softened slightly. “Maybe,” he said. “But I cannot start the rest of my life by hiding behind your shoulder.”
Max looked at him, eyes dark and tired and full of things George still did not have names for.
Then George added, quieter, “Standing beside it is different.”
Max’s face changed.
Ingrid looked down at her notes, suddenly very interested in legal tabs.
Max crossed the room slowly. He stopped at the edge of the nest, not entering, still waiting for permission even now. George hated how much that mattered.
After a second, George held out his hand. Max took it. The pull in George’s chest settled at once, embarrassing and undeniable.
Max crouched in front of him. “If you panic, we leave.”
“I know.”
“If the baby reacts badly, we leave.”
George’s hand tightened. “I know.”
“If anyone touches you—”
“I assume you’ll become wanted in the Netherlands, banished by the King, and we will need to move to Switzerland.”
Max’s mouth twitched. “Probably.”
George sighed. “Try not to. Ingrid looks expensive. And I really dislike Germanic languages.”
“She is.”
Ingrid did not look up. “Correct.”
For the first time in days, George laughed freely. It startled Max so badly that George nearly laughed again.
Zandvoort did not notice them immediately.
That was the strange part.
The paddock was already busy, already loud, already wrapped in orange and expectation. Cameras tracked mechanics pushing some tyres. Reporters stood in half-circles rehearsing sentences that sounded spontaneous only if you had never heard a reporter speak before. Fans pressed against barriers, waving caps, flags and phones. The air smelled of fuel, coffee, rain somewhere far off, and thousands of people waiting for Max Verstappen to appear. Home race was important for every driver.
George sat in the back of the car with Max’s hand wrapped around his and thought, with an absurd clarity, that this was a terrible idea.
Max glanced at him. “We can still turn around.”
George looked at him. “Absolutely not.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m furious. It’s different.”
“You’re frightened.”
George’s jaw tightened. “That too.”
Max nodded once, like he had expected honesty and was relieved to receive it. That annoyed George, naturally, whose moods were already as unbalanced as they were.
“I hate that you’ve become patient,” George muttered.
“I was always patient.”
“You absolutely were not.”
“With racing maybe not. With you? And that little one,” He looked down at the stretched t-shirt.
“So we’re acting as stress balls? Nice.”
The car slowed. Outside, the security detail shifted into place. Red Bull staff. Two private security officers Ingrid had insisted on. One FIA liaison looking deeply uncomfortable, which George enjoyed more than he probably should have.
Max leaned closer, voice low. “You stay with me.”
George looked down at their joined hands.
“I know.”
“If it becomes too much—”
“Max. I know. I’ll tell you or simply lock myself in your motorhome.”
Max stopped. George looked at him properly then. The dark t-shirt, the set of his shoulders, the tension around his mouth. He looked like a man preparing for battle, which was ridiculous because technically, they were only getting out of a car. Then again, George had been missing. He had been declared missing by his family. Police had searched his apartment. His name had been on reports. Drivers had probably called every person they knew. Mercedes had replaced him publicly enough that the absence had become impossible to soften. Fans had built theories because the truth sounded too unbelievable.
And now he was about to walk into Zandvoort visibly pregnant in a Red Bull jacket, holding Max Verstappen’s hand. The same person who lied to the police, whose designation made George change his, and… his mate and the father of the child he was carrying. Perhaps battle was not entirely inaccurate.
George inhaled slowly.
“Do not let go,” he said.
Max’s expression changed.
“Never,” he said.
George swallowed, then immediately looked annoyed with himself for being moved.
“Good. Very dramatic. Let’s go before I become emotional and ruin both our reputations.”
The door opened. The noise rushed in. For three seconds, nothing happened.
Max stepped out first, and the expected wave hit immediately: shouting, cheering, phones lifting, orange moving like fire behind the barriers. George heard Max’s name in every direction. Verstappen, Max, Max, Max, a chant starting somewhere and dying because something changed.
Because Max turned back toward the car.
Because he held out his hand.
Because George took it.
And then George Russell stepped out.
The silence did not fall all at once. It travelled.
The nearest photographers noticed first. One lowered his camera in shock. Another forgot to press the shutter. A reporter halfway through a live segment turned, saw George, and stopped mid-sentence so abruptly her colleague looked genuinely alarmed.
Then the fans saw him.
Phones lifted higher.
Then dipped.
Then lifted again, because nobody could decide whether filming a man who had been missing for months and now looked glowing, visibly pregnant, and tethered to Max Verstappen by the hand was journalism, history, or something they should not be looking at too closely.
George felt the first flash catch the side of his face. Then another. Then too many.
His grip on Max tightened. Max looked at him, his thumb pressed once against George’s knuckles. Steady. There. Not leaving. The crowd noise changed into something raw and confused.
“Oh my God, that’s George.”
“George?”
“Is that Russell?”
“He’s alive?”
“Why is he with Max?”
“Is he—”
Someone gasped so loudly that George heard it through the security line. The words started moving faster than the people could understand them.
Missing. Pregnant. Omega. Max. Red Bull. What happened. Where has he been. Is Mercedes here. Did they know. Is that. Oh my God, that’s him.
George kept walking.
His legs felt strange. Not weak exactly, though his body was certainly considering betrayal as an option. More like every step had to be chosen individually. He had spent years walking through paddocks with cameras on him, but this was different. This was not attention. This was an impact. This was twenty thousand people realising at once that the story they had been consuming as speculation had a living, breathing centre. And then at the centre had a bump under his clothes. A visible one.
There was no hiding it. The material sat soft over his abdomen, the Red Bull jacket open around it, and George could feel every gaze drop there eventually. Some quickly. Some not quickly enough.
Max felt it too. His scent sharpened, almost imperceptibly under the controlled blockers, but George felt the bond react. Warning. Possession. Protection. Something older than Alpha, older than the labels people understood.
“Max,” George murmured.
“I know.”
“Do not kill anyone.”
“I know.”
“That sounded unconvinced.”
“It was.”
Despite everything, George smiled.
They had barely made it past the first barrier when the first driver saw them.
Pierre was standing near Alpine hospitality, phone in one hand, talking to someone George didn’t recognise. He looked over casually, probably because the sound had changed, and his entire face went blank. Completely blank. Then all the colour left it.
“George?”
The name came out too loudly. People turned.
Pierre started forward, then stopped when security shifted. His eyes flew from George’s face to Max’s hand around his, then to George’s stomach, then back up, and whatever he saw there made his expression crack.
“Mon dieu,” he whispered.
George lifted his free hand slightly. “Hi.”
It was a terrible thing to say. Absurd, really.
Pierre looked like someone had dragged a ghost out of a medical file and dressed it in Red Bull clothing.
Then Lando appeared.
Or rather, Lando almost collided with Oscar because he had been walking backwards while talking, saw Pierre’s face, followed his gaze, and made a noise so high and strangled that several nearby mechanics turned in alarm.
“No,” Lando said.
Oscar, who had walked into him, frowned. “What—”
Then he saw. His face changed instantly.
Lando’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
For once, nothing came out.
George stared at him.
“Lando Norris silent,” George said faintly. “I should disappear more often.”
Max’s head turned sharply toward him. George winced. “Bad joke?”
“Yes,” Max said.
Lando made a broken sound. “You absolute—George.”
The name came out wrong. Too soft. Too relieved. Too angry.
Alex arrived seconds later, almost running.
Someone must have messaged him. Or maybe the paddock had simply shifted around the fact of George so violently that Alex had felt it from Williams.
He looked terrified. That was what got George.
Not the cameras. Not the fans. Not Pierre frozen ten metres away or Lando looking like he might cry in public and blame allergies. Alex’s face — open, panicked, devastated with relief — hit him straight in the chest. Alex stopped just outside the security line.
For one awful second, he looked at Max like he might try to go through him.
Max did not move to stop him but nodded at the security to let the Williams’ driver through.
“Alex,” he said.
Alex’s eyes snapped to him. The anger faltered.
“You’re alive,” Alex said.
George’s throat closed. It was different hearing it like that. They had imagined things. They had probably imagined the worst because drivers understood crashes, fire, locked rooms, bodies that did not come home when they were supposed to. George swallowed.
“Yes.”
Alex laughed once, but it broke halfway through. “You absolute fucking nightmare.”
George’s eyes burned.
Lando made an offended noise. “That was going to be my line.”
Oscar said quietly, “Maybe don’t.”
Lando covered his mouth with one hand and looked away.
Alex’s gaze dropped to George’s stomach, and George saw the exact moment he understood that this was not rumour, not camera angle, not loose fabric. Alex’s face shifted again, this time into something so painfully careful that George almost snapped at him for it.
Almost.
“George,” Alex said, quieter now. “What happened?”
George’s hand tightened around Max’s. Not because he wanted Max to answer. Because he needed something solid while he did.
“I can’t explain it here,” George said.
Alex looked at their hands. Then at Max. His jaw clenched. Max held his gaze without apology, but there was no challenge in it either. That was probably the only reason Alex did not say something catastrophic in front of twenty cameras.
“You could have called,” Alex said, and there was hurt under it. Real hurt. “Anything. One word. A text. I thought—” He stopped himself.
George’s face crumpled for half a second before he forced it back into place.
“I know,” Max answered. “And for that I apologise. But I needed to protect him, them.”
Alex breathed hard through his nose.
Lando wiped at his face and pretended he had not. “We thought you were dead, you complete posh idiot.”
George laughed softly, but it hurt when Lando looked at him with teary eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
That seemed to make it worse.
Lando’s expression twisted. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Sound like that.”
Oscar put a hand between Lando’s shoulder blades, steadying him.
George looked at them, at Pierre still hovering nearby, at Alex trying and failing not to look like he wanted to drag George away and hide him somewhere safe, at the cameras gathering like vultures who had learned to wear accreditation badges.
Max’s hand was still around his. The bond hummed, dark and steady. George drew one careful breath.
“I’m alive,” he said again, firmer this time. “I’m not answering questions here. Not yet. Go and drive. We will have time after to talk.”
Alex looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded once. “Okay.”
Lando looked like he disagreed with every atom in his body.
Oscar answered for him. “Okay.”
Pierre swallowed and nodded too.
Max took a step towards him, pressed his lips to the crown of his hair and stayed there for a moment. George wasn’t sure if he did it for him or himself.
The Red Bull garage was worse. Not because people were cruel. George had braced for that, almost wanted it, because cruelty would give him something clean to fight. But the garage did not react with cruelty. It reacted with shock.
The mechanics went quiet one by one as they noticed him. Conversations died mid-sentence. Someone dropped a wheel gun attachment with a metallic clatter that made George flinch. GP turned from the pit wall monitors, saw Max first, then George, and his face went through three expressions before settling on something carefully steady.
Laurent emerged from the back of the garage already pale, which meant someone had warned him and it had still not been enough.
For a heartbeat, nobody spoke.
George felt every eye on him. On his face, thinner than before. On Max’s jacket over his shoulders. On their joined hands. On his stomach.
Especially there. His fingers twitched.
Max moved half a step closer, not in front of him, not blocking him, but enough that anyone looking would understand the line.
GP recovered first, took off his headset and crossed the distance between them faster then Max ever saw him.
“George,” he said, voice low and very gentle. “It’s good to see you.”
George’s throat tightened again. He was starting to hate that sentence. Not because it was wrong. Because it was too right.
“Thank you,” he managed.
A junior mechanic near the tyre racks looked like he might cry. George did not know what to do with that, so he looked away.
Laurent approached slowly, stopping at a respectful distance. His eyes flicked to Max, then back to George.
“Everything is arranged,” he said. “Private room. Medical staff independent from FIA access. Ingrid approved the security protocol. No one enters without your consent.”
George stared at him. Then at Max. Max was looking at the screens as if sector times had suddenly become fascinating despite there being no cars on track.
George sighed. “You are very annoying.”
Max looked at him. “I arranged medical support.”
“Overbearing. Controlling. Thick-headed.”
Laurent’s mouth twitched.
GP looked down at his tablet with the concentration of a man avoiding accidental involvement in domestic politics. A broadcast monitor near the garage entrance replayed the paddock arrival. George saw himself on screen before he could avoid it. The image looked unreal. Max stepping out. Turning. Reaching. George taking his hand.
The crowd realising.
The commentators had gone quiet over the footage for just long enough that the silence itself became commentary. Then one of them spoke, voice careful.
“We are seeing extraordinary pictures from the Zandvoort paddock. George Russell, who has been absent from Mercedes duties and was subject to a missing person report earlier this summer, has arrived with Max Verstappen. Russell appears to be walking unaided, though clearly under close protection. We are not going to speculate on private medical matters, but viewers will notice significant physical changes. And possible congratulations to both drivers. A legal representative has confirmed only that Russell is alive, receiving care, and requesting privacy.”
The second commentator sounded shaken. “This is one of the most unexpected paddock appearances we have ever seen. There will be serious questions for the FIA, for Mercedes, possibly for Red Bull, and about the designation screening controversy that has surrounded the sport this season. But the immediate news is simple and important: George Russell is here, and he is alive.”
Max’s hand brushed his lower back. Slightly possessive. A clear signal to people around them. George leaned into it before he could think better of it. The garage noticed and immediately pretended not to, with varying levels of success.
Then Toto Wolff appeared at the entrance to the Red Bull garage.
Everything stopped again.
George felt Max go very still beside him.
Toto looked like he had aged ten years and slept for none of them. Susie was beside him, one hand already gripping his arm as if she had anticipated a diplomatic incident and intended to physically prevent it. Next to them, Marcus gripped his tablet as if he might break it. Kimi stood slightly behind them, wide-eyed and pale, half-hidden by Bono, who looked like he had seen enough in motorsport to know this was not the moment for sudden movement.
Toto’s eyes found George.
For one second, all the anger left his face. Only relief remained.
“George,” he said.
George’s chest hurt.
“Hi, Toto.”
Toto took one step forward. Max shifted. Susie’s hand tightened around Toto’s arm. George lifted his own hand before the whole garage could become a crime scene.
“Don’t. Max, it’s Toto.” he said softly.
Toto stopped. His eyes dropped briefly to George’s stomach.
George saw him realise. Really realise. The carefulness that followed was almost worse than shock.
“My God,” Toto whispered.
George’s fingers curled into Max’s sleeve.
Toto looked back up, and this time his gaze moved to Max with something lethal in it. “What did you do?”
The garage froze. Max’s eyes darkened. George stepped forward. Not much. Just enough.
“Don’t,” George said again, sharper now.
Toto looked at him, visibly struggling. “George—”
“No.” George’s voice shook, but it held. “Not here. Not in front of cameras. Not in front of the garage. Not when every person in this paddock is waiting for someone to say something they can turn into a headline.”
Toto’s jaw clenched.
Susie spoke quietly. “He’s right.”
Toto did not look away from George. “You were missing,” he said, voice rough. “We searched. Your family—”
George flinched. Max’s hand found his again instantly, pushing slightly at his pulse. Toto saw it. So did everyone else. George forced himself to keep breathing.
“I know,” he said, and this time the words broke slightly. “I know, and I can’t fix that in the middle of the Red Bull garage.”
For a moment, Toto looked as if he might argue.
Then his face shifted. Not softened exactly. Toto rarely softened in public. But something in him recalculated around George’s exhaustion, his visible pregnancy, the grip he had on Max’s hand like letting go might tear something loose.
“We will speak,” Toto said.
George nodded. “Yes.”
“With lawyers.”
“Yes.”
“With your family first.”
George swallowed hard. “They already know.”
Toto’s eyes moved to Max one more time.
The anger was still there. Of course it was. George could feel Max preparing for it, the old violence under his skin, the thing that made him not Alpha but more than Alpha, dangerous in ways that no one was preapared for. But Toto did not say anything else.
Susie gently pulled him back. Kimi, still pale, lifted one awkward hand toward George. George’s mouth trembled. He lifted his hand back. Kimi looked like he might burst into tears, which was so alarming that George immediately said, “Don’t you start. Lando’s already used up the paddock’s emotional allowance.” It was enough for the Italian Omega to basically materialise in front of George and wrap himself around the older Omega.
Max smiled, eyes softening slightly.
Somewhere near the garage entrance, Lando shouted, “I heard that.”
The sound that moved through the garage was not quite laughter. Not properly. But it was close enough that George could breathe again.
Max leaned slightly toward him. “Private room?”
George looked around: at the mechanics pretending not to stare, at GP watching with quiet concern, at Laurent already speaking into a headset, at Toto still visible just beyond the garage entrance, at Alex hovering with Lando and Oscar like they were one bad headline away from storming Red Bull hospitality.
Then he looked at Max. His mate. The word still felt strange. Too dramatic. Too binding. But it no longer felt entirely wrong. George tightened his hand around Max’s.
“In a minute,” he said. “Let them see me first.”
Max’s eyes searched his face. George lifted his chin, Kimi’s curls tickling it slightly. Max nodded once.
And this time, when the cameras caught them from the pit lane — George Russell in the Red Bull garage, hand linked with Max Verstappen’s, chin raised like he was daring the entire sport to decide what to do with him — George did not look away.