The Announcement

LILA'S POV

I almost hadn't gone to that meeting at all. I'd stood outside the hospital that morning with the interview request still open on my phone, an address attached to it that made my stomach turn the second I looked it up.

“Blackwood Holdings “and I told myself it was just a coincidence, that Blackwood wasn't an uncommon name, and I went anyway, because rent didn't care about coincidences.

Now, sitting in the back of a car taking me home with a signed contract in my bag, I wondered if I'd just made the worst decision of my life or the first good one in five years.

The announcement went out Monday morning, exactly as Damien said it would, a short, clean press release from Blackwood Holdings confirming the engagement of Alpha Damien Blackwood to Lila Carter, formerly of Silver Fang Pack.

By that evening it was everywhere.

My old pack's name pulled up alongside mine in every article, the words “formerly of” sitting there like a wound someone kept pressing to check if it still hurt.

Elena texted first. *Is this some kind of joke?* I didn't answer. She called twice that night and once the next morning, and I let both go to voicemail, because there wasn't anything I owed her anymore. Not an explanation. Not a courtesy. Nothing at all.

Damien called once too, that first evening, his voice flat and businesslike over the phone, like we were discussing a merger instead of a wedding. "You'll want to ignore most of what gets written this week," he said. "None of it will be accurate."

"I've had five years of practice ignoring things people write about me."

There was a pause on the line, short enough that I almost missed it. "I imagine you have."

"Is that meant to be sympathy?"

"It's an observation, I don't do sympathy I do accurate."

"Comforting."

"I never said it would be comfortable. I said it would be honest." Papers shuffled somewhere on his end. "The stylist will come to your flat Thursday. Wear whatever you like to the fitting, it doesn't matter. What matters is Saturday."

"What's Saturday?"

"Dinner. My father wants to meet you before the wedding." A beat. "Don't let him rattle you."

"I don't rattle easily."

"No." Something almost like approval in it. "You confirm things instead of arguing them. I noticed that the first day."

And then, before I could decide if that had almost been a compliment, he hung up.

It was Mara who told me, weeks later, that Elena had locked herself in her room the entire first evening after the news broke, refusing dinner, refusing to speak to anyone, while every pack channel and gossip page ran the same headline over and over. The daughter Silver Fang threw away married higher than the one they kept.

I didn't feel triumphant when I heard that. I thought I might but I didn't. I just felt like the ground under my feet was finally mine, for once, whatever that turned out to be worth.

That feeling lasted exactly nine days. On the tenth day, a woman I didn't recognize stopped me outside the hospital, dressed like she belonged in Damien's world and not mine, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite place. Not hostile. Careful.

"You should know something before you go any further with this," she said. "He didn't choose you at that meeting. He'd been looking for you for three years. Long before you ever walked into that office."

"That's not possible," I said. "I only got the interview request last week."

"That's what he wanted you to think." She glanced past me, like she was checking who might be watching. "Ask him why he really needed a Moonlight Wolf, Mrs. Blackwood. Ask him what he's really protecting you from."

Then she was gone, folding into the crowd before I could get another word out, and I stood there on the sidewalk with my heart going too fast, turning her sentence over and over until it stopped making any sense at all.

I had no idea what that meant, but I intended to ask my husband exactly that, the moment I saw him again.

**Saturday**

The car ride to Damien's father's estate took forty minutes, and he didn't say a word for the first thirty of them. I sat with my hands folded in my lap, wearing a dress the stylist had chosen without asking my opinion, feeling the fabric pull tight every time I breathed too deep, while Damien sat across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee, looking out the window like the silence between us was nothing at all.

"You could talk to me," I said finally. "Since apparently we're married."

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About how much you should know before we walk in there." He turned his head, and in the low light his eyes looked more grey than blue. "My father isn't like me. He won't ask you questions to be polite. He'll ask them to see what breaks."

"Nothing's going to break."

"No." Something in his voice shifted, quieter than before. "I don't think it will either."

The estate came into view a few minutes later, all stone and ivy and old money, lit up like it had something to prove. Damien got out first and came around to open my door, which surprised me enough that I hesitated before taking his hand. His grip was warm, steady, and it shouldn't have meant anything.

Dinner went the way he'd warned me it would. His father asked questions with edges on them, about Silver Fang, about my mother, about how convenient it was that a Blackwood Alpha had found himself a bride so quickly after deciding to marry at all, and I answered each one flat and even, the way five years of surviving on my own had taught me to answer anything that wanted to draw blood. By the time we left, my jaw ached from holding it still.

Damien didn't say anything until we were back in the car and the gates of his father's estate had shrunk small behind us. "You did well," he said.

"I don't need your approval."

"I know." He was looking at me again, that same unreadable weight in it. "I gave it to you anyway."

Something about the way he said it landed harder than it should have, and I looked away, out the window, at the dark trees blurring past, telling myself the heat climbing up my neck was just the dress, just the wine at dinner. Nothing else had any right to be in my chest right then.

We didn't speak again until the car pulled into the garage beneath the house. I got out too fast,

my heel catching on the edge of the door, and his hand shot out and caught my arm before I hit the concrete, pulling me upright in one motion, and I ended up closer to him than I meant to be, close enough to feel the warmth coming off him through his jacket, close enough to catch whatever he wore, something dark and expensive I hadn't let myself notice until right now.

"Careful," he said, low.

"I'm fine."

"You're not steady." His hand hadn't let go of my arm yet. "You haven't been steady all night."

"That obvious?"

"To me." His thumb moved once, barely, against the inside of my wrist, and my pulse betrayed me by picking up right under his touch. "I notice things about you I shouldn't have this fast."

I should have stepped back. I had every reason to, a contract, a year, a man I'd known for exactly nine days who'd bought my name and my time and nothing else, but I didn't move, and neither did he, and the garage around us had gone very quiet, the kind of quiet that makes you aware of every breath you're taking.

"This isn't part of the terms," I said, rougher than I meant it to sound.

"No." He didn't step back either. "Terms were the plan. This is the part where the plan stopped working."

His free hand came up slow, giving me every chance to pull away before his fingers reached my jaw, and when I didn't move he tilted my face up toward his like he needed to see it properly. Up close, the cold in his eyes wasn't cold at all. It was something held very tightly in place.

"Tell me to stop," he said, quiet enough that it barely reached me, "and I will."

I didn't tell him to stop.

He kissed me like he'd been holding himself back from it all night and had finally run out of reasons to keep doing it, one hand sliding into my hair

the other still braced at my waist where he'd caught me, and I felt the garage wall meet my back as he crowded in closer,

unhurried and certain in a way that made my whole body forget the contract, the rules, every line he'd drawn across that desk on the first day.

I fisted my hand in the front of his shirt and pulled him in instead of pushing him away, and he made a low sound against my mouth like that undid something in him.

"Damien." His name came out of me before I decided to say it.

He pulled back just enough to look at me, breathing harder than his usual careful calm allowed, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. "This wasn't the deal," he said again, but it didn't sound like an objection anymore. It sounded like something he was trying to talk himself out of and losing.

"No," I said. "It wasn't."

Neither of us moved. For a long moment we just stood there in the dark garage, his hand still in my hair, my heart slamming hard enough that I was sure he could feel it through my dress, both of us caught in the space between the contract we'd signed and whatever this was instead.

Then, somewhere upstairs, a door opened and closed, and the sound broke whatever had held us there.

Damien stepped back first, straightened his jacket, and by the time he looked at me again his face had gone carefully, deliberately blank, like the last five minutes hadn't happened at all.

"Goodnight, Lila," he said, and walked toward the house without waiting for me to answer, and I stood alone in the garage with my back still warm from the wall and my mouth still tasting like him, wondering what exactly I'd just signed myself up for.