Chapter 2: Kneel

•Lisa•

“Alpha, Luna is calling.”

Luna.

The word landed like a slap. He had found his mate. Of course he had. Five years was a long time long enough for a man like him, an Alpha now, to have built an entire life I knew nothing about. Did I really think he would spend half a decade waiting for a woman who vanished without a word? Of course he had moved on. Of course he had marked someone else, bonded with someone who hadn’t run from him in the middle of the night.

So why did the thought of it close around my throat like a fist?

He raised one hand, barely a flick of his fingers, and the man holding the phone silenced it instantly. Another gesture, and the rest of them filed out of the room without a word, the heavy door clicking shut behind the last one.

And then it was just the two of us.

I studied him in the sudden quiet, hating myself for how much I noticed.

Five years had sharpened everything about him, the line of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the stillness he carried now like armor. He’d been beautiful before. He was something else entirely now. Something colder. Something that made my wolf press up against my ribs, desperate and aching and utterly, stupidly hopeful that he might recognize her.

My heart pounded so loud I was sure he could hear it. If he knew who I was under this mask, what would I even say? Long time no see. How have you been? I’m sorry. Five years was enough time to stop being angry, wasn’t it? He had a Luna now. A new life. Maybe whatever I had done, whatever I had broken when I ran had healed over into something he barely thought about anymore.

Maybe I was nothing to him now but a stranger in a mask.

“Stand up,” he said. “Kneel.”

The words were flat. Commanding. Not a request.

I rose on legs that didn’t feel like mine and lowered myself in front of him, the carpet rough against my knees, my pulse a frantic drumbeat in my ears.

“As a stripper,” he said, leaning back into the sofa, spreading his knees apart with the ease of a man who had never once in his life doubted he would be obeyed, “if you can’t dance, and you won’t undress there’s one other way to please a customer.”

I froze.

I understood exactly what he meant. And beneath the understanding, underneath the cold dread pooling in my stomach, was a smaller, more devastating thought:

He doesn’t recognize me. He’s looking right at me and he doesn’t see me at all.

Five years, and I’d become a stranger to him. A body in a mask. Someone to be used and dismissed before the sun came up.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t.

He read my hesitation as defiance, and something in his expression sharpened. He reached into his jacket and produced a thick fold of bills, peeling several free and letting them drop onto the cushion beside him like they meant nothing at all.

“Do it,” he said. “Or I promise you, you won’t leave this room breathing.”

I stared at the money. I thought of Milo, his small chest rising too fast, his lips going that faint, terrifying shade of blue, the surgeon’s voice telling me soon, it has to be soon and something in me went very quiet and very calm, the way it does right before you do something you’ll regret.

Just get through it, I told myself. Just get through it before he realizes who you are. Get the money. Get home to your son.

My hands were shaking as I reached for his belt. I told myself it was just a task. A transaction. Nothing more than the hundred small humiliations I had already swallowed to keep Milo alive, the extra shifts, the landlord I had begged, the meals I had skipped so he wouldn’t have to. This was just one more thing to survive.

I undid the buckle. My fingers didn’t feel like they belonged to me anymore.

Even through the fabric, I could feel how large his cock was, how little softness there was left in this man who used to hold me like I was something breakable and precious. My hand moved to the waistband beneath, and for one suspended second I let myself go somewhere else entirely somewhere five years in the past, before any of this, before the running and the hiding and the mask.

I loosened his belt as I unzipped his pants trying so hard to feel the cock in my hands before any disturbance would make the little cents I'd get from him to pass me by.

I was ready to put it in my mouth and suck them till the juice drip from its hole just for my son.

My son was all my mind could think about and I was ready to do anything for him and sucking his cock was something I could do, besides I wore a mask and he wouldn't even recognize me.

He didn't stop me and I avoided eye contacts by all means.

As I drew his pants down, his hand closed around my wrist like a manacle, stopping me cold.

I looked up.

He wasn’t looking at the mask anymore. He was looking through it at my eyes, at whatever was left uncovered, at something in my face that five years apparently hadn’t managed to erase after all. The air between us went thin and sharp, and I watched the exact moment recognition detonated behind his eyes, replacing cold command with something far more dangerous.

“You left me back then,” he said, and his voice had changed completely, quieter now, and so much worse for it, “just to live this pathetic life? Little stepsister?”