MY MATE'S FATHER WANTS ME

The whiskey burns going down, and I let it.

I stare at my phone screen again , third time in the last five minutes, like maybe the images will rearrange themselves into something that makes sense. They don't. They never do. There's Liam, his head thrown back, eyes half-shut, and there's Chloe , my sister , her legs wrapped around his waist like she belongs there, like she's been there a hundred times before.

Because she has. The timestamps on the photos don't lie.

I set the phone face-down on the bar and wave at the bartender. He doesn't ask questions. That's why I picked this place , loud enough that no one notices if you're crying, dark enough that no one sees the way your hands shake when you reach for the glass.

"Another," I say.

The Scotch Malt that arrives is smoother than the last one, which means I've been here long enough that the bartender feels sorry for me and poured up. I take it in one go anyway.

Three years. Three years of telling myself I was paranoid, telling myself I was the problem. Three years of Liam looking me in the eye over dinner, reaching for my hand under the table, calling me his luna with that reverent voice that used to make something bloom in my chest.

Today was supposed to be our anniversary.

I pick up the phone again. Beneath the photos sits the message that accompanied them, from a number I've never been able to trace , the one Liam always dismissed as a jealous ex, a pack enemy, someone trying to destabilize us. The message is only four words long.

I told you so.

The smugness of it makes me want to hurl my phone across the bar. I'd thought of Mr. Anonymous as a coward once , sending photos in the dark, never showing his face. Now I think maybe he's the only honest person in my life.

Four months ago, the first message came in. A grainy screenshot of a text thread between Liam and Chloe, nothing explicit, but loaded with the kind of language you don't use with your brother's mate. I'd confronted Liam. He'd been gentle about it , that was the worst part. Not defensive. Just gentle, and a little sad, like I was the one who needed to be managed.

"You know how Chloe is," he'd said. "She's always been dramatic. She has feelings for me that I've never returned, Aria. You know I'd never."

And I'd believed him. I'd chosen to believe him, because the alternative was this , sitting at a bar on what should have been our anniversary night, drowning in Scotch and photographs.

I reach for my glass, but it's empty. I signal for another.

'You're better than this,' my wolf murmurs somewhere in the back of my skull. She's been quiet for most of the night, which means she knew before I did and had the decency to let me figure it out on my own. I love her for that. I hate her for it too.

I don't feel better than this. I feel like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

The bar is getting louder around me , it's one of those underground clubs that caters to our kind, all low lighting and mahogany and the low thrum of bass that settles into your sternum. There's a couple grinding on the dance floor to my left. A group of betas doing shots at the booth behind me. Normal pack life on a Friday night, the world turning on its axis without a single acknowledgment of the fact that mine just cracked straight down the middle.

The bartender delivers my fourth , or fifth , drink. I don't correct my count.

I pick up my phone one more time, pull up the photos, and make myself look at them properly. Look at it. Don't flinch. Chloe's face is turned toward the camera in one shot, almost like she knew it was there. She looks like she's smiling.

My half-sister has Liam's scent on her. Probably has for months. I've been sleeping next to a man whose body carries the trace of my sister, and I was too trusting , too stupid , to catch it.

I press my thumb and index finger against the bridge of my nose.

'The mate bond would've told you,' my wolf says quietly. 'If he was truly yours.'

She means that the ache I feel right now, sitting in this bar , this is grief, not the soul-shredding agony of losing a fated mate. Liam and I are a chosen bond. We chose each other. And apparently, he chose Chloe too, just without the courtesy of letting me know.

I drain the glass and set it down harder than I mean to.

I don't hear him coming. That's the thing about Damien Thorne , he moves like a man who's spent decades convincing the universe to accommodate him, and the universe, apparently, has agreed. One moment I'm reaching for my next drink. The next, a large hand wraps around the glass and the glass is gone , lifted from the bar and set down on the far side of the bartender's station with a quiet, definitive clink.

I turn.

He's wearing charcoal tonight, jacket open over a white shirt, no tie. He looks like he just came from somewhere important, or is on his way there, and stopping for me is barely an inconvenience. His jaw is set. His dark eyes move over me once , a single sweep, top to bottom , and whatever he finds makes the line of his mouth harden.

Damien Thorne. Fifty, maybe, but built like a man half that age. Former Alpha, retired from active leadership but never from the weight of it. My father-in-law.

My father-in-law.

"What are you doing here?" His voice is low, controlled, carrying that particular register that alphas develop , the one that lands in your chest and makes your wolf instinctively lower her head.

I don't lower mine.

"Drinking," I say. "Or I was, until someone stole my glass."

"Liam lost your location." He pulls out the stool next to me and doesn't sit in it , just rests one hand on the back of it, a territorial claim on the airspace. "He asked me to find you."

'Of course he did,' I think. 'Because actually looking for me himself would require effort.'

Out loud: "I'm fine. You can go tell him I'm fine."

"You're four drinks in, alone, at a club that had a rogue incident last month." His gaze flicks around the bar with the practiced ease of a man cataloguing threats in real-time. "You're not fine."

"Rogue incident." I almost laugh. "I'm not afraid of rogues, Damien."

"You should be." He straightens. "Get up."

And there it is , that absolute authority, the voice that isn't asking. I've heard it directed at betas, at warriors, at packmates who've stepped out of line. I've never had it aimed at me directly, and my body's response is immediate and infuriating: my wolf perks up, spine stiffening with something that isn't entirely fear.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say.

I'm aware of how I must look , hair slightly disheveled, mascara that's probably migrated somewhere it shouldn't be, the kind of bright-eyed, slightly unfocused look that comes with four Scotches. I'm aware, and I find I don't much care. Tonight, I've earned the right to be a mess.

Damien leans down. It's a small movement, barely an inch, but it closes the distance between us enough that I can smell him , cedar and something sharper underneath, the unmistakable scent of a dominant wolf. It hits me low in the stomach.

I've been avoiding acknowledging that particular problem for two years.

Damien Thorne is a problem. Not because he's done anything wrong , he hasn't. He's been nothing but correct, nothing but the dutiful patriarch, the supportive father-in-law who calls me Luna at pack functions and speaks to me with impeccable formality at every family dinner. He's done everything exactly right.

And I have spent two years noticing the exact angle of his jaw, the way his hands move when he's thinking, the quiet precision of everything he does. I've spent two years being ashamed of it.

"Aria." My name in his mouth is different from how everyone else says it. I can't explain why. "This isn't a request."

"Then what is it?"

Something shifts in his expression , barely visible, gone before I can name it. "It's a warning," he says. "Last one."

I meet his eyes for a beat too long. "Or what?"

He doesn't answer the question. Instead his hand closes around my upper arm , firm, not rough, but not gentle either , and he straightens, pulling me off the barstool with a force that is entirely unapologetic. My feet hit the floor. The room tilts pleasantly.

"Damien."

"You want to make a scene?" His voice drops, and now it's only for me, intimate and dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with pack hierarchy and everything to do with the six inches of space between his chest and my face. "In front of everyone here? Is that what you want them seeing , their Luna, drunk and alone, throwing a fit?"

Luna. The word lands like a hand on the back of my neck, pressing down.

My wolf goes very still.

He's right, and we both know it. Whatever I am privately, in public I am Liam Thorne's mate, which means I am this pack's Luna, which means my behavior reflects on every member of this community. I hate it tonight more than I have ever hated anything.

"This is," I start.

"Don't." He steers me toward the exit, one hand on my arm, his body angled between me and the rest of the room with the unconscious protectiveness of someone who's been keeping things safe for thirty years. "Don't tell me it's not fair. I know it's not."

That almost stops me. The acknowledgment of it , the I know , cuts through the whiskey fog in a way nothing else has tonight.

We're almost at the door. I pull against his grip, a last instinct, and he leans down to my ear. His breath is warm.

"Keep fighting me," he says quietly, "and all I'm gonna want to do is spank that ass of yours."

Every coherent thought in my head evaporates.

My face goes hot. My wolf makes a sound that I refuse to examine. My feet stop fighting and start moving.

He pushes the door open and we step out into the night air, and his hand doesn't release my arm, and I am walking next to Damien Thorne toward his car with a mind full of images I should absolutely not be having, and the worst part , the very worst part , is that for just a moment, thinking about those images, I forget entirely about the photographs on my phone.

I hate him for that. A little. I hate myself more.