Chapter 9: A Guy Who Rented a Car

Maya's POV

Cassandra's phone dropped several inches, her arm going slack, mouth half-open around a word she didn't manage to finish.

For one full second, I actually watched hope flicker across my own chest — watched Karen's face drain of color, watched the two of them look at Damon like he might actually be exactly who he so obviously was.

Then Karen laughed.

It wasn't a good laugh. It had a crack running through it, the kind of laugh people used when they were trying to convince themselves of something more than anyone else in the room.

"Supreme Alpha?" She pressed a hand to her chest, shaking her head like the very idea was beneath her. "Oh, sweetheart, no. Absolutely not."

Cassandra recovered fast, latching onto her mother's certainty like a life raft. "Yeah, right. The Supreme Alpha, standing on this street, in front of this house?" She gestured at the cracked driveway, the sagging gutter Dad had never gotten around to fixing, like the setting itself disproved the entire theory. "Please."

"The man who's supreme over every Alpha in the territory," Karen continued, warming to it now, clearly delighted with her own logic, "the one every pack answers to — you think he's got nothing better to do than chauffeur around a jobless wolfless girl and her broke mother?" She snorted. "He probably rented that car. People do that, you know. Rent something fancy for an hour, drive around, make some girl feel special so she'll—" she waved a hand vaguely in my direction "—do whatever it is you did to make him play along."

"That's a Belvedere Custom," Cassandra added, nodding sagely like she suddenly qualified as an expert. "My friend's ex rented one for prom. Two hundred dollars an hour. Anyone can look rich for an hour or two, dummies.”

"Exactly." Karen folded her arms, thoroughly pleased with herself now, some of her earlier confidence creeping back into her spine. "This is just some random guy. He can never be the Supreme Alpha. Never.”

I opened my mouth, half out of reflex, ready to correct her, but Damon's hand found my elbow — light, brief, unmistakably a request to let it go — and I closed my mouth again.

He still hadn't said a word.

He wasn't smiling either, not exactly, but there was something in the set of his jaw, something patient and faintly, dangerously amused, like a man watching two people build an elaborate house directly on top of a fault line and deciding it wasn't his job to warn them.

"You done?" he asked finally, mild as anything.

Karen blinked, thrown slightly by how unbothered he sounded. "Excuse me?"

"I asked if you're done." He glanced toward the suitcase still sitting untouched on the porch steps. "Because we have somewhere to be, and I'd rather not spend the morning listening to you workshop theories about my car rental habits."

"See?" Cassandra said triumphantly, like this confirmed everything. "Rented car guy doesn't even deny it."

"I don't explain myself to people who slap grieving widows in their own front yard," Damon said, and for just a second, something colder slid under the words, something that made even Karen's confident posture falter half an inch. "Get the bag, Maya. Your mother's had enough of this street for one lifetime."

I moved before either of them could recover enough to say anything else, crossing the lawn to where Mom stood frozen, still shaking slightly, staring at Damon like she couldn't quite decide whether to trust the last five minutes.

"Come on," I said gently, picking up the suitcase myself. "Let's go."

She let me guide her toward the car, though her eyes kept flicking back toward the house, toward Karen and Cassandra, like some part of her still expected the ground to shift again before we made it to the curb.

Damon opened the car door himself — no driver hovering, no assistant rushing forward — and helped her in with a careful, steady hand that seemed to ease something in her shoulders she'd probably been carrying since the divorce, since Dad died, since long before any of us knew what today would look like.

I climbed in after her. Damon slid into the front beside the driver this time, leaving the back seat entirely to me and Mom, which I noticed and appreciated more than I had words for in the moment.

As the car began to pull away, Karen's voice rose behind us, sharp and carrying, clearly unable to resist one final word.

"Enjoy your rented Alpha, Maya!" A cackle, Cassandra's laughter joining hers a beat later. "Come back when reality sets back in!"

"Tell your fake boyfriend we said hi to the real Supreme Alpha, if you ever actually meet him!" Cassandra called, practically shouting now to be heard over the engine. "Ask him for an autograph while you're at it!"

Their laughter followed us halfway down the block, ringing off the quiet houses, growing fainter and more distant with every passing second until it finally dissolved entirely into the ordinary hum of the morning.

Mom let out a breath beside me, long and shaky. "They really believe that."

"They really do," I said, watching the house shrink in the rear window, watching Karen's smug, satisfied posture as she turned back toward her stolen front door, utterly certain she'd won something.

From the front seat, without turning around, Damon spoke, quiet enough that it felt almost private despite the driver sitting beside him.

"They'll find out," he said, "exactly who they mocked. Soon enough."

Something in his tone made the hair rise slightly on my arms — not fear, not exactly, but something adjacent to it, something that made me suddenly, deeply grateful I wasn't the one who'd spent the morning laughing in his face.

Mom glanced at him, then at me, some of the earlier shock finally giving way to something quieter, more thoughtful. "He's really not just some guy with a rented car, is he."

"No," I admitted. "He really isn't."

"Then those two," Mom said slowly, a small, disbelieving laugh escaping her despite everything, "just spent the last five minutes insulting the most powerful man in the country to his actual face."

I thought about Karen's satisfied smile. I thought about Cassandra's little joke about autographs. I thought about the particular, patient stillness in Damon's jaw the entire time, the kind of calm that belonged to a man who never needed to raise his voice to be terrifying, because he already knew exactly how the story was going to end.

"Yeah," I said, watching the house disappear completely around the bend. "They really did."

Somewhere behind us, I imagined Karen still standing on that stolen porch, laughing, utterly convinced she'd come out ahead.

She had absolutely no idea what was coming.