•Lisa•

"Alpha, Luna is calling."

Luna.

The word landed like a slap. He had found his mate. Of course he had. Five years was a long time long enough for a man like him, an Alpha now, to have built an entire life I knew nothing about. Did I really think he would spend half a decade waiting for a woman who vanished without a word? Of course he had moved on. Of course he had marked someone else, bonded with someone who hadn't run from him in the middle of the night.

So why did the thought of it close around my throat like a fist?

He raised one hand, barely a flick of his fingers, and the man holding the phone silenced it instantly. Another gesture, and the rest of them filed out of the room without a word, the heavy door clicking shut behind the last one.

And then it was just the two of us.

I studied him in the sudden quiet, hating myself for how much I noticed.

Five years had sharpened everything about him, the line of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the stillness he carried now like armor. He'd been beautiful before. He was something else entirely now. Something colder. Something that made my wolf press up against my ribs, desperate and aching and utterly, stupidly hopeful that he might recognize her.

My heart pounded so loud I was sure he could hear it. If he knew who I was under this mask, what would I even say? Long time no see. How have you been? I'm sorry. Five years was enough time to stop being angry, wasn't it? He had a Luna now. A new life. Maybe whatever I had done, whatever I had broken when I ran had healed over into something he barely thought about anymore.

Maybe I was nothing to him now but a stranger in a mask.

"Stand up," he said. "Kneel."

The words were flat. Commanding. Not a request.

I rose on legs that didn't feel like mine and lowered myself in front of him, the carpet rough against my knees, my pulse a frantic drumbeat in my ears.

"As a stripper," he said, leaning back into the sofa, spreading his knees apart with the ease of a man who had never once in his life doubted he would be obeyed, "if you can't dance, and you won't undress there's one other way to please a customer."

I froze.

I understood exactly what he meant. And beneath the understanding, underneath the cold dread pooling in my stomach, was a smaller, more devastating thought:

He doesn't recognize me. He's looking right at me and he doesn't see me at all.

Five years, and I'd become a stranger to him. A body in a mask. Someone to be used and dismissed before the sun came up.

I didn't move. I couldn't.

He read my hesitation as defiance, and something in his expression sharpened. He reached into his jacket and produced a thick fold of bills, peeling several free and letting them drop onto the cushion beside him like they meant nothing at all.

"Do it," he said. "Or I promise you, you won't leave this room breathing."

I stared at the money. I thought of Milo, his small chest rising too fast, his lips going that faint, terrifying shade of blue, the surgeon's voice telling me soon, it has to be soon and something in me went very quiet and very calm, the way it does right before you do something you'll regret.

Just get through it, I told myself. Just get through it before he realizes who you are. Get the money. Get home to your son.

My hands were shaking as I reached for his belt. I told myself it was just a task. A transaction. Nothing more than the hundred small humiliations I had already swallowed to keep Milo alive, the extra shifts, the landlord I had begged, the meals I had skipped so he wouldn't have to. This was just one more thing to survive.

I undid the buckle. My fingers didn't feel like they belonged to me anymore.

Even through the fabric, I could feel how large his cock was, how little softness there was left in this man who used to hold me like I was something breakable and precious. My hand moved to the waistband beneath, and for one suspended second I let myself go somewhere else entirely somewhere five years in the past, before any of this, before the running and the hiding and the mask.

I loosened his belt as I unzipped his pants trying so hard to feel the cock in my hands before any disturbance would make the little cents I'd get from him to pass me by.

I was ready to put it in my mouth and suck them till the juice drip from its hole just for my son.

My son was all my mind could think about and I was ready to do anything for him and sucking his cock was something I could do, besides I wore a mask and he wouldn't even recognize me.

He didn't stop me and I avoided eye contacts by all means.

As I drew his pants down, his hand closed around my wrist like a manacle, stopping me cold.

I looked up.

He wasn't looking at the mask anymore. He was looking through it at my eyes, at whatever was left uncovered, at something in my face that five years apparently hadn't managed to erase after all. The air between us went thin and sharp, and I watched the exact moment recognition detonated behind his eyes, replacing cold command with something far more dangerous.

"You left me back then," he said, and his voice had changed completely, quieter now, and so much worse for it, "just to live this pathetic life? Little stepsister?"

•Lisa•

"You left me back then... just to live this pathetic life?"

My blood ran cold.

He recognized me. He had recognized me and made me kneel anyway, made me reach for his belt anyway, let me humiliate myself before he said a single word about it. Since when? From the moment I walked through that door? Or had he known before that, had he come to this club, to this booth, because some part of him already knew I'd be here?

The questions didn't get to finish forming before his hand moved.

He swiped the mask from my face in one sharp motion, the edge of it dragging hard against my cheek on the way off. Pain bloomed bright and immediate, a thin line of fire where the plastic had cut my skin, and I felt the warm sting of a shallow scratch welling up beneath it.

"Ro..."

I started to say his name. I didn't even get past the first sound of it before his hand closed around my chin, hard enough that the rest of the word died somewhere in my throat.

"Don't say my name."

His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It was worse than loud, it was flat and cold and final, the voice of a man who had already decided something and wasn't interested in hearing an argument against it.

"How," he said, each word deliberate, dropped like stones into still water, "can someone who died falling off a cliff five years ago still say my name?"

The words hit harder than the cut on my cheek. *Died.* He thought I had died. Not left. Not run. *Died.*

Five years of thinking I had chosen him over nothing, and he'd spent them believing I was gone. Actually gone. Grieving a version of the truth that was almost kinder than the real one, and now here I was, breathing and warm and kneeling in front of him in a stripper's outfit, close enough to touch, proof that everything he'd mourned had been a lie.

His grip on my chin tightened, his thumb pressing hard enough into the hinge of my jaw that pain shot down into my neck.

"P-please," I managed, the words scraping out of me in pieces. "I can't- can't bre... athe."

For one endless second he didn't move at all, and I watched something, war behind his eyes fury and disbelief and grief all colliding at once, none of them winning. Then his hand fell away like I'd burned him, and without that grip holding me up, my body folded. I hit the floor hard, the impact jolting up through my knees and palms, my breath coming back in a ragged, humiliating gasp.

I stayed there a moment, staring at the carpet, at my own trembling hands, gathering whatever was left of myself before I could make myself look up at him again.

When I did, he had risen from the sofa. He towered over me now, jacket still hanging open, every line of him coiled tight with something that hadn't decided yet whether it wanted to be rage or devastation.

"Five years," he said quietly. "Do you have any idea what those five years were like? Do you have any idea what I did.... what I became... because I thought you were dead?"

I opened my mouth, but nothing came. What was there to say? *I'm sorry* felt obscene, a pebble tossed into a canyon. *I had no choice* would only make it worse, because from where he stood, I'd clearly had every choice in the world, I'd simply chosen a stripper's mask and a stranger's money over ever coming back to him.

"I searched the base of that cliff for a week," he continued, and his voice had gone rougher now, cracking at the edges in a way that hurt more than the cold flatness had. "I had men diving in freezing water for your body. I told my own father I had failed to protect you, and he told the whole pack you were dead, and I stood there and let them mourn a lie I didn't even know was a lie."

"I didn't..." My voice broke. I tried again. "I didn't want to leave you."

"Don't." The word cracked like a whip. "Don't you dare tell me what you wanted. You're on your knees in a mask in a stranger's club, about to sell yourself to whoever bought the room tonight. Don't tell me what you wanted."

It landed exactly as cruelly as he meant it to, and I felt my face crumple before I could stop it. He wasn't wrong. From where he was standing, there was no version of the truth that didn't look exactly as ugly as what he had just described. He didn't know about Milo. He didn't know about the surgery, the fever, the blue tint that crept into my son's lips whenever his small heart worked too hard to keep up with him. He didn't know any of it, and I couldn't tell him not here, not like this, not kneeling on a floor with my cheek bleeding and my dignity in pieces around me.

"You don't understand," I whispered.

"Then make me." He crouched suddenly, bringing himself level with me, close enough that I could see every year that had hardened his face since the last time I'd been allowed to look at it this closely. "Five years, and the first thing out of your mouth isn't an explanation. It's my name. Like nothing happened. Like you get to just say it, and I'm supposed to forget the rest."

"I never forgot you," I said, and it came out smaller than I meant it to, more honest than I meant it to be. "Not for one single day."

Something flickered across his face, pain, maybe, or the ghost of the man I used to know before all of this, before Alpha and Luna and five years of a grief he'd built an entire life around. But it didn't stay. It hardened back into something unreadable almost as fast as it appeared, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and dangerous in a way that made my wolf go very still.

"You don't get to say that to me," he said. His eyes never left mine.

"Why did you do it?" he asked.

The question hit harder than every cruel word he'd thrown at me tonight.

I lowered my gaze. My throat tightened until it hurt to swallow, but I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell him about Milo. I couldn't tell him about the hospital bills, the surgeries, or the promises I'd made over a tiny hospital bed.

Silence became my only answer.

A bitter laugh escaped him.

"So that's it?" he mocked. "You disappeared five years ago... just to end up living like this?"

Every word sliced through me.

He took another step closer.

"Look at me."

I refused.

"I said look at me."

Slowly, I lifted my head.

There wasn't a trace of the man who used to smile at me. Only the Alpha remained.

"If you begged," he said with a cold smile, "maybe I'd be generous enough to pull you out of this miserable hole you've buried yourself in."

My fingers curled into fists.

"I don't need your pity."

His brow lifted.

"I've never regretted leaving," I whispered, even though the lie tasted like poison. "It was the right choice."

For a heartbeat, something shattered behind his eyes.

Then it froze.

"So that's how it is."

His voice became frighteningly calm.

"If you're so proud of your choice..."

He glanced at the stage outside the VIP room, then back at me.

"...then do what women like you came here to do."

The words struck harder than a slap.

My chest tightened, but I forced myself not to cry.

He turned away from me as though I disgusted him.

"Show me," he said without looking back. "Convince me this life was worth throwing ours away."

My heart stopped.

The room fell into a suffocating silence.

And for the first time since walking into the club...

I realized seeing Ronan again hurt far more than losing him five years ago.