Dno't Be His Forbidden Mate

I found it by accident.

That's the worst part. I wasn't snooping. I wasn't suspicious. I was just reaching across the nightstand for my water glass when his phone lit up, and the preview was right there, and my name was in it, and I made the mistake of picking it up.

Darius had left his screen unlocked.

The group chat was called The Boys. Twelve members. Hundreds of unread messages. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, a pixelated image that I recognized — not because I could see it clearly, but because I recognized the sheets. Our sheets. The pale gray ones I'd picked out myself from the store on Fifth.

My hands went cold.

I scrolled up. I don't know why. Some part of me needed to see the full shape of it, needed to hold the whole ugly thing in my hands before I could believe it was real. The messages went back weeks. Months, maybe. Jokes I didn't understand at first, and then understood too well. Timestamps that matched nights I remembered. Nights I had thought meant something.

*Seven times and she passed out.*

*Easier than a doll, bro.*

*Send more lmaooo*

Laughter. Emojis. One guy asking if she — if I — knew. Another saying it didn't matter.

And then Darius, responding to someone who'd asked if he felt bad about it, with the four words that split me open clean:

*Relax. She's nothing.*

I set the phone down very carefully. I remember that. I remember being deliberate about it, placing it face-down on the nightstand like it was fragile, like I was still a person who handled things with care. Then I sat on the edge of the bed in his apartment — in the apartment I had spent the night in forty, fifty, sixty times — and I stared at the wall.

The wall had a poster on it. Some band I didn't know. He'd never told me who they were.

I realized I was shaking.

---

I don't remember leaving. I remember the elevator, the lobby, the cold air outside hitting my face like a slap. I remember walking, and then walking faster, and then standing in front of a bar I'd never been to because it was simply the first door I reached.

The bar was loud and dim and smelled like spilled beer and something fried. I sat at the counter and ordered whatever was cheapest and drank it without tasting it. Then I ordered another.

Darius Kane. Heir to the Ironhaven Pack. Golden Alpha with the easy smile and the voice that had once said *my Luna* like it meant something sacred.

I had believed him. That was the thing I kept circling back to, the thing that made my chest feel like it was caving in. I had believed every word. I, Elara Thorne — wolfless, packless, the girl everyone in Ironhaven looked through like glass — had believed that he saw me. That I