Chapter Seven Before She Knew My Name

Damian

Three years ago, Lucas walked into my office with that stupid grin plastered across his face.

Feet propped up on my coffee table, the one piece of furniture I actually gave a damn about leaning back like he owned the whole building.

"Bro." He pointed at me like I'd won something. "I met someone."

I was standing at the window. I didn't turn around.

"Her name's Ella. She's—" He laughed, shaking his head. "She's something else, man. Told me to go to hell basically the first time we talked. Took me two full weeks just to get her to agree to dinner."

He kept talking.

I kept my back to him.

Not because I wasn't listening. Because if I turned around, he'd see my face. And I didn't trust my face right then.

When he finished, I said two words: "Keep it appropriate."

That was it. Like the only thing running through my head was standard Blackwood protocol — pack members don't bring complications home.

That was my excuse to run the background check.

Duty. That's what I told myself. Not anything else.

Her file landed on my desk inside forty-eight hours. Clean record. No supernatural bloodline. Raised in a group home, working a regular job, kept mostly to herself. No red flags. Nothing that should've made me look twice.

I turned the page anyway.

And that's when I saw the photo.

It wasn't even a good picture. Grainy security footage, corner angle, slightly overexposed. She was standing outside a coffee shop, cup in hand, laughing at something her coworker said.

Afternoon sunlight cut through the window behind her and caught the edge of her shoulder.

I stared at that photo for five seconds.

And then everything inside my chest moved.

Not my heartbeat. Deeper. Like something that had been dormant for a very long time cracked one eye open, stretched its bones, and stood up.

My wolf.

She's ours.

I slammed the folder shut.

Sat very still in a very quiet office and stared at the wall.

Then I opened it again. Looked at the photo again. Told myself I'd misread the instinct. That my wolf was more reactive than most — Alpha sensitivity, heightened response, some kind of environmental trigger that would pass if I just—

She is our fated mate.

It didn't pass.

I locked the folder in the bottom drawer. Went home. Stood under cold water until my skin went numb and waited for the feeling to drain out of me.

It didn't drain.

The weeks after that were an exercise in slow, careful destruction.

I cancelled dinners. Rerouted my schedule around any event where Lucas might bring her. Filled every open hour with work — contracts, calls, meetings I didn't need to be in but attended anyway. Because silence was worse. Because silence meant I could hear my wolf pacing the inside of my chest like a caged animal.

You're running.

"I'm working."

You're a coward.

I put my pen down. Stared at the long ink streak across a document I'd just ruined. Threw it in the trash.

My wolf had never spoken to me that way. Ten years as an Alpha, and the thing in my chest had always been steady. Aligned with me. Obedient.

Not anymore.

She's your fated mate and you're hiding behind paperwork.

"She's Lucas's girlfriend."

Silence.

Then: That's not what I said.

I didn't answer.

What was there to say? That I knew? That I'd known from the second I'd seen that grainy photo? That every time my brother talked about her — and he talked about her constantly, with that easy smile, like he'd found the rarest thing in the world — I had to breathe through it like pressure behind a cracked rib?

He loved her.

And I couldn't tell anymore where protecting him ended and destroying myself began.

Then the dreams started.

First one was simple. A white room. Gardenias in the air, faint and warm. I was moving through pale light, and I knew — the way you know things in dreams — that she was close.

Second dream. Third. Fourth.

In those dreams, I wasn't Lucas's older brother. Wasn't the Blackwood Alpha. Wasn't the man who'd spent two decades building control out of sheer will.

I was just a man. Holding the woman who was made for me.

My hands found her waist and her back, the warmth of her skin coming through the thin fabric she's wearing. As my hands completely enveloped her chest, the nipple beneath the silky fabric of the pajamas became increasingly prominent, almost driving me to madness.

She said something against my mouth — quiet, half a sound — and I pulled up her pajamas.

My entire face was buried in two warm, soft breasts, like an unweaned child, suckling and touching at once—I was nearly lost in this tenderness, unable to pull away.

She moaned with pleasure, repeatedly calling out Damian, which I took as encouragement. My hand slid down from her waist to her buttocks. Her panties were already gone, allowing my hand to freely slip between her legs. And then — every single time — the door burst open.

Lucas was there. Eyes wide. An expression I'd never seen on him before. Not anger. Not shock. Something far worse than both. The look of someone who trusted you with everything they had, and is only now realizing they shouldn't have.

"What are you doing?"

His voice hit like a blade.

And I woke up.

I told myself the guilt was the point. That waking up to that image — Lucas in the doorway, that expression carved into his face — was proof that my conscience was still intact. Still working.

Then I figured out the truth.

In the dream, in that fraction of a second before the door opened — before his voice tore through everything —

I hadn't felt guilty at all.

What I'd felt was finally.

Finally touching her. Finally not holding back. Not a thread of regret. Not a single thought of my brother.

The guilt only arrived when I woke up.

Go to her, my wolf said.

"No."

You already know how this ends, Damian.

I pressed both hands against my knees and stared at the floor.

Maybe it did. Maybe I'd known since that first photo. Since the first time she is ours split through my chest like a fault line opening underground.

But knowing how something ends doesn't mean you have to be the one to light the match.

I stood up. Walked to my desk. Unlocked the bottom drawer.

Stared at the folder for a long moment.

My wolf was whispering in my soul.

Damian, admit it. You are shamelessly hoping that your brother and his girlfriend will break up right away.