Chapter Eight Something I'll Never Admit

Damian

I did something I will never admit to another living soul.

That night, I pulled up the security feeds near Lucas's apartment.

His building sits on the west side of the city. The entire security infrastructure runs through a Blackwood subsidiary. I have top-level clearance — no approval process, no paper trail, no one to answer to but myself.

A few keystrokes. The footage was on my screen in seconds.

First clip: the coffee shop downstairs. Just after eight in the morning. She walked out in a pale knit sweater, hair loose, no makeup. Cup in one hand. She was laughing at something the person beside her said, head tilted slightly, like the joke had caught her completely off guard.

I watched that one for longer than I should have.

Second clip: the lobby café, afternoon. She'd claimed an armchair by the window, legs tucked underneath her, one hand propped under her chin, reading. Then something on the page made her laugh — sudden, unguarded, the kind that gets out before you decide whether it's appropriate.

I watched that one twice.

Third clip: the apartment. Lucas came up behind her in the living room and looped both arms around her, dropped his chin onto her shoulder. She dodged sideways laughing, then turned around, pulled him down by the back of his neck, and kissed him.

Then things got out of control. Lucas lifted Ella's skirt, one hand cupping her face and continuing to kiss her, while the other hand slid under her smooth back into her underwear.

Damn.

I closed the screen immediately.

Sat very still.

This isn't normal.

I knew that. I'd known it the moment I typed in the access code. I knew it watching the second clip play again.

I knew it now, with my hands flat on the desk and my pulse loud in my ears and that last image burning a hole in the center of my chest.

I knew it.

I still did it.

And here's what's worse.

That wasn't even close to the worst of it.

I know she orders steak from a place called Owl Kitchen. I know she likes tiramisu. I know she has a shellfish allergy — there was an afternoon she got shrimp in a salad by accident, her throat went red, and Lucas called a doctor in a full panic while she sat there waving him off: "I'm fine, it just itches a little."

I know she hates bell peppers. Every time one shows up in her lunch, she picks them to the far edge of her plate, one by one, neat little pile, and leaves every single one untouched.

None of this is information I should have.

None of it.

She is my brother's girlfriend. I told myself I was watching out of responsibility. Lucas is Blackwood's Beta — young, wealthy, trusting. An Alpha protects his pack. That's what I told myself every single time I opened those feeds.

But she was clean and Lucas wasn't in danger. There was nothing to investigate.

The only thing I was protecting was the excuse.

Lucas’s text had been sitting in my messages for two days before I answered.

"Bro, when are you free? I want you to actually meet her."

I typed: Soon. Deleted it.

Typed again: Things are busy right now. Don't wait on me. Sent it.

Dropped the phone in my pocket and went back to a contract I hadn't been reading for twenty minutes.

The council meeting was on a Thursday.

Marcus opened it. Both hands folded on the table, voice measured, expression professionally concerned. "Alpha. Lucas's relationship with this woman has been ongoing for quite some time. We believe a formal review is warranted. And potentially — further measures."

He didn't define measures.

He didn't need to.

I looked down the table. Marcus was the senior member of the council — careful, strategic, never openly hostile. He specialized in packaging cruelty inside responsibility.

"That's enough," I said.

Quiet. Even.

Marcus paused. "Alpha, we only want to ensure—"

"Lucas's personal life is not council business."

I held his gaze. No raised voice. No threat made explicit. Just stillness — the kind that reminds people exactly who they're sitting across from.

"…Yes, Alpha."

No one else spoke.

I stood and left.

In the hallway, Grey fell into step two paces behind me. I stopped without turning.

"Grey. The surveillance access for Lucas's building — who holds it currently?"

"You and the head of security, sir."

"Revoke his access. Effective immediately."

A beat of silence. "…Understood."

I kept walking.

The irony was not lost on me. I'd just stripped the one other person who could see what I'd been watching.

Now I was the only one.

Real righteous of you, Damian.

Marcus's motion had done something I hadn't anticipated.

It dug up the question I'd been burying for three years and left it lying in the middle of the room where I couldn't step around it.

Why are you watching her?

I'd had my answer ready. Protection. Duty. Responsibility to the pack.

Standing in that corridor, the answer finally sounded like what it actually was.

A story I'd been telling myself because the truth was too ugly to look at directly.

The truth: I was obsessed with her.

One day, my wolf said, very quietly, you won't be able to stop.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall for one second. Just one.Then I kept walking.

My mother asked me something when I was around eighteen.

We were at the kitchen table, just the two of us. She set down her cup and said: "Damian — is there anything you'd rather die than let someone else know about you?"

I said no.

She smiled like she didn't quite believe me. Didn't push.

I thought it was a strange question back then.

I understand it now.

She must have had her own secrets. The kind that don't fit into any category you can put a name to. I think she was trying to tell me something — that if that day ever came for me, I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

I wish I'd listened better.

I drove home with every intention of going straight inside.

I don't know where the detour happened.

But when I came back to myself, I was on Lucas's street. Engine off. Parked at the curb three buildings down.

His apartment window was lit. The curtain wasn't fully drawn — there was a gap, maybe two inches wide.

I didn't look at it.

I sat there for a moment in the dark, both hands loose in my lap. Then I restarted the engine, told myself the GPS had glitched, turned around, and drove away.

I didn't look back.

That night, I lay flat on my back in the dark and made one quiet request to no one in particular.

Don't let me dream tonight.

My phone buzzed at seven the next morning.

Lucas.

"Hey. I'm bringing Ella to Dark Moon Club tomorrow night. Want to make it official — introduce her to everyone properly. You in?"

I stared at the message for a long time.

He was asking me to walk through those doors and meet the woman I'd been dreaming about for couple months. The woman my wolf had claimed before she even knew I existed. He was asking me with the same easy trust he'd had in me since he was one year old with a toy car in his fist.

He had no idea.

I thought about what saying no looked like. More excuses. More distance. More nights parked on streets I had no business being on, telling myself I'd taken a wrong turn.

I thought about what saying yes looked like.

It ends tomorrow, I decided. One way or another, it ends.

I typed a single word.

"Okay."

What I didn't know yet — what I wouldn't know until I was standing in that room, with her five feet away from me for the first time — was which version of ending I was actually choosing.