•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.