Six years of dating Caelum Voss, and he slid a document across the table. I thought it was a mate registration form. I reached for the pen, ready to sign. The heading read: MISTRESS AGREEMENT. Three-year term. On call at all times. Renewal subject to satisfaction. My fingers went cold. "Caelum. What exactly is this?" He lit a cigarette with the ease of a man unbothered by anything, his voice light and careless and cruel all at once. "The pack elders have been pushing hard. My father already arranged a status-matched bond for me. I need to register a formal mate." "Then what am I?" My voice came out rough. He looked up and smiled, thin and without warmth. "Be fair to me, love." "Your father abandoned your mother and came crawling back sick. You supported him. Your ex drained you dry and left you with his debts. You paid those, too." "All I am asking is that you step into the shadows. That is not unreasonable." The terms sat on the page in clean, merciless lines. Party B shall remain available on demand and shall not inquire into Party A's whereabouts. Party B shall not display physical affection toward Party A in any public setting. Should Party B become pregnant, the matter shall be resolved at Party B's sole discretion. I stared at that last line. My hand moved to my stomach without thinking. My fingertips were ice. Caelum reclined on the sofa, smoke curling from between his fingers. His eyes drifted over me. "Sign it." He flicked the ash. "What are you waiting for?" I set the contract down. My voice shook with something I refused to call grief. "Caelum. We have been together six years." "So?" He almost laughed. "Six years, and you still have not walked through the front door, have you?" That landed exactly where he intended. Six years. He had taken me to pack functions and family gatherings too many times to count. The introduction was always: " My assistant.” His mother had pulled me aside more than once to suggest, warmly, that a woman my age ought to be thinking about settling down. I had believed she was nudging us toward a formal bond. She had been nudging me out the door in the most civilized way she knew. "Then what were these six years?" I asked. He crushed the cigarette out, stood, and crossed to me. "Mutual benefit." He reached out and ran his thumb along my jaw. "Sera. You gave me six years, and I covered six years of your life. How many medical bills did your salary actually cover? That debt your ex left behind, you cleared it on my account." He paused, then smiled. "You used me freely. Now I want to keep using you. That is an equal exchange." My eyes burned. I did not let a single tear fall. He had not said it before, but that did not make it untrue now. My father had walked out on my mother and come back broken and old. I had been too soft to turn him away. His care had emptied every account I had. As for my ex, he had barely been more than a stranger who called us official one month and disappeared the next. I only found out he had taken out loans in my name when the collectors showed up at the doors of pack headquarters. It had been Caelum who made that problem disappear. I had always known I owed him. I had not known he was keeping score. "So," I said, stepping back from his hand, "you are telling me these six years held no real feeling. Only investment." Caelum laughed once. "Investment? What investment value do you think you have?" He produced a card and set it beside the contract. "Five million. Sign, and it is yours." "Three years as my mistress. Renew after that if you want. Walk away if you do not. Either way, the money is yours." I looked down at the card. Five million. Enough to clear every debt. Not enough to buy me. That sentence circled three times in my throat and never came out. Because I thought of my father's care facility and the overdue notice already sitting in my bag. Caelum knew I had nothing left to pay with. That was why he could drop that card in front of me like he was tossing a bone and waiting to see if I would take it. "What is wrong?" He watched me go still, then lit another cigarette. "Not enough?" I said nothing. "Fair enough. Six years of your life, five million is not generous." He exhaled slowly, and the smoke drifted into my face, stinging my eyes. "But that is mistress pricing. Not mate pricing. That is the number your position is worth right now." He let that settle, then added, "Of course, you are free not to sign. If you do not, you cannot stay in the apartment either." Something clenched hard around my chest. Six years in that apartment. I had stopped thinking of it as his. The succulents on the balcony were ones I had chosen and tended pot by pot. The spice rack in the kitchen was arranged the way I liked it. The photo on the nightstand had always been the two of us. I had believed it was our home. It turned out I had always been a tenant he could clear out whenever he chose.
"Caelum." My voice was still unsteady. "If you have no real feeling for me, we can end this cleanly. You do not need to humiliate me to do it." "Feeling?" He said the word as he had never heard it used seriously before. "Sera, did your father have feelings for you?" "Did your ex?" "All those people you gave everything to. Did any of them have feelings for you?" He needed me to say it out loud: every bond I had ever stretched myself thin for had never truly held. "Probably," he answered himself, and his voice went quieter. "At least at the start." My tears finally fell. Not because he was cruel, but because somewhere inside what he had just said, I recognized something true. "Are you signing or not?" He held the pen out, patience gone. I reached out and took it. I turned to page two, clause five: Should Party B become pregnant, the matter shall be resolved at Party B's sole discretion. My hand paused. Caelum added offhandedly, "Do not worry. I will not let that happen. My intended mate's family is traditional. No pups born outside a registered bond." Intended mate. The title I had waited six years for, and it had never once belonged to me. "Caelum, what if I told you I was already..." The words reached my lips, and I swallowed them back. There was no point. I looked down and said, very quietly, "What if I told you I had already spoken with my mother and arranged a bonding ceremony for early next month. Would you still make me sign this?" "Your mother?" He almost laughed. "The one who threw herself into the river? Who exactly did you consult?" He exhaled slowly, and the smoke blurred the lines of his face. "Even without all of this, I had no intention of registering a bond this young." "Early next month. You have quite an imagination." I closed my eyes. Six years. We were both nearly thirty. That was not young. The bond that could never happen had been impossible from the very beginning. When I opened my eyes, my fingers had stopped shaking. I signed the final page. "Good girl." Caelum lifted the agreement, satisfied. "Everything stays the same. The only difference is, from now on, you call me Alpha Voss." He leaned down and pressed a cold kiss to my forehead. "Good." He left. The door closed behind him without a sound. I stood there looking at the card on the table. Slowly, I folded down until my face was buried in my knees. Outside, rain had started. The same kind of rain that was falling the night he pulled me in off the street six years ago. That night, he had been the one holding the umbrella. Now he was the one who had pushed me back out into it. I do not know how long I stayed like that, until my legs went numb and there were no tears left. I stood slowly, walked to the bathroom, turned on the cold tap, and pressed the water against my face. I held it there until the face in the mirror was steady again. Then I picked up my phone and dialed. "Mom. You were right. I lost." "That thing you mentioned before. You do not have to wait anymore. I am ready." There was a pause on the line. "Are you certain? Once we begin, there is no going back." I looked out at the rain. "I am certain."
The next morning, I went to the care facility first. My father was in his wheelchair, being pushed through the courtyard by an attendant, letting the morning sun fall on him. He had aged past recognition. His hair had gone entirely white, and he looked like a tree hollowed out from the inside. I held out the card. "This card has five million on it. Enough for the best care facility, enough for a private nurse. I will not be coming back after today." "Because she asked me to come to her clean." His lips trembled. He looked as though he had a hundred things to ask. I did not give him the chance. Some memories I have no wish to touch again. "But the moment I turned to leave, the past came flooding back anyway." I remembered the year his business collapsed, the way he knelt in front of me and asked if I could forgive him. I found it funny, in a hollow sort of way. My mother had spent herself fighting to hold on to a man, and in the end, all she received from him was one cheap word of regret. So I had promised myself I would never do what she did: beg, cling, and lose everything in the end. I was about to tell him I did not forgive him when a flash of white crossed the edge of my vision, and a van with no control came straight for me. The next second, something massive shoved me out of the way. I hit the ground hard. When I turned back, he was lying in a pool of blood, the front of the van buried into the left side of his body. He had taken the impact meant for me. That was the only reason he had ended up in that facility. The five million was not because he was my father. It was because I owed him a life.
After that was done, I went to pack headquarters as usual. Caelum walked into the operations wing while I was sorting files. He looked at me once, nothing in his expression. "Sera. Bring this quarter's report to my office." "Of course, Alpha Voss." I said it without thinking twice. He stopped for just a beat. "You adjusted quickly." He said it quietly, almost to himself. He passed me and let his fingers graze the back of my hand as he went. I did not pull away. I did not respond. Their relationship had never been a secret inside pack headquarters. Six years of him walking me out after shifts, six years of appearances at pack functions together, and everyone had known without it ever being said out loud. But because it had never been made official, his calling me Sera and my calling him Alpha Voss looked, to everyone else, perfectly appropriate. That evening, he sent me a location. I took a car there. When I pushed open the suite door, rose petals covered the floor, and a silk slip hung from the rack by the wardrobe. "She was gone, but her perfume still lingered in the air." Behind me, Caelum's voice came from the doorway. "Seen enough?" I turned around. He leaned against the frame, cigarette in hand, watching me with something that was not quite a smile. "The bonding ceremony is next week. I need you there to help manage the guests."
I pulled out the calm I had been training into myself all week. "Help how?" They had hired a full professional coordination team for the engagement party. The last thing they needed was me, a former girlfriend, getting in the way. "Receive the guests. You know the pack members. Keep things running smoothly." He exhaled slowly. "Vivienne also feels you must witness our happiness." I laughed once. That second part was the real message. "Fine." I took out my phone to make notes. "I will confirm the details with you at headquarters tomorrow. If there is nothing else, may I go?" Vivienne had only just left. He would not need me to stay the night. A mistress, after all, exists only to serve one particular kind of need. He narrowed his eyes. "You are not upset?" "Does Alpha Voss want me to be?" He said nothing. He stubbed out the cigarette, crossed to me, and caught my jaw between his fingers. "Sera. You have changed a great deal lately." "Changed into something," he tightened his grip two degrees, "that I find quite irritating." I kept my eyes down. "Tell me what you would prefer. I can adapt." What had drawn him to me, once, was exactly this: I had been close enough to reach for him every single day, and I never had. He had called it discipline then. Now he called it irritating. The one who had changed was never me. "Never mind." He stared into my eyes for a long moment, then released me. "Go." I turned to leave. He pulled me back from behind, arms wrapping around me. His chin came down on my shoulder. His voice was low. "Do you know why I would not let you go?" He meant the agreement. The one that kept me tethered. I did not know either. I had believed that without feeling, a clean ending was still possible. "Because you are too easy. You never put me in an impossible position. You never cause scenes, never ask where I have been or who I was with. Not like her, watching my every move." His arms tightened. "Sometimes I think, if only you had come from a stronger pack line, I would not need to bond with anyone else." I almost laughed. In the end, he was blaming my bloodline. He had forgotten that he was the one who had first reached for a woman with no powerful pack behind her. "Alpha Voss." I gently pried his hands away. "What color do you want me to wear to the engagement party? I will prepare in advance." His hands hung in the air between us. He was perhaps too drained from the evening to keep pulling. He let me go. Outside the hotel doors, I found that my palm had been cut by my own nails.
On the day of the engagement party, I stood at the hall entrance managing the guest registry. A glass of champagne in my hand. My eyes would not leave the pair that everyone was congratulating. In a daze, I thought back to the day I signed the Mistress Agreement. I had quietly slipped a pregnancy report into the study drawer. I had told myself that when he found it, the next step would follow naturally. A formal bond. A real future. So when he produced that document, my heart had leapt. I had been certain it was a mate registration form. High-pack alliances came with paperwork. Signing made sense. I had been willing. Because all I had ever wanted was him, not the status that came with him. I had not imagined that six years would close into a joke, and I would end up as a mistress who could not see the light of day. Near the end of the reception, Vivienne stopped in front of me with a wide smile. "You must be Sera?" I nodded, caught off guard for just a moment. "Caelum has mentioned you. He said you have been with the pack operations team for years. Very capable." I said something polite in return. "By the way, I will not be letting him stay in that apartment from next week. We have already found our new home." "I imagine it is not very convenient for you there anyway. You might want to start looking for somewhere else soon." My fingertips went sharp with cold. The heat behind my eyes almost broke through. I bent over the registry instead and swallowed it back. "Of course. I will make arrangements." Before the words had fully settled, she reached across and lifted the champagne glass right out of my hand. I had not processed it yet when she screamed. "You threw that on me!" A slap caught me across the face before I could move. When I looked up, I saw her standing there, soaking wet, eyes red, every line of her face performing injury. Half the hall had turned to look. Caelum appeared with his brow drawn. "What happened?" Vivienne pressed herself against him at once. "Caelum, I only told her nicely that you would not be at the apartment anymore and asked her to find somewhere else to go. And she threw champagne at me." "Sera." "I did not." My voice had gone rough. "Are you saying she poured it on herself and then slapped you?" His logic was airtight. No one was going to believe a future Luna staged a scene at her own engagement party. And he had already decided I was defending territory that was not mine. "Apologize," he said, cold and flat. I did not move. "Do not make this harder than it needs to be. You know what today is. If this gets bigger, it will only hurt you. Apologize, or do not come to headquarters tomorrow." I looked at him. Six years ago, he had pulled me in off the street and told me no one would dare touch me while he was there. Six years later, he had the person who touched me pressed to his side, and he was asking me to apologize. Something freshly healed inside my chest tore open again. I lowered my head. "I am sorry. I should not have done that." Caelum was not fully satisfied. But he turned and dispersed the crowd. "Nothing to see here. Everyone, go back." Before he walked away, he looked at me one last time. "Go clean yourself up. Do not stand here embarrassing everyone." I touched the swollen side of my face and the loose knot of hair the slap had scattered. He was right. What an embarrassment. But the most embarrassing thing of all was that the man I had loved for six years had convicted me in front of everyone without asking a single question. I picked up my phone and typed a message: I want to move up the timeline. Then I laughed through the tears I still had not let fall.
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