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Her handwriting on a sticky note attached to my refrigerator.

EAT THE LEFTOVERS BEFORE THEY BECOME A BIOLOGY PROJECT.

I stood in front of it for a long time.

Everything made me angry. The lie itself was only one part.

I had fallen in love with a woman I didn’t know. That truth kept circling back no matter how I tried to frame it.

Was her name even Sloane? Was she twenty-six? Did she truly work as a graphic designer? Were her parents real? Was what she’d told me about them real? Was the cousin she avoided real?

Had she struggled financially, or had that been another detail selected to make the rest believable?

I thought those parts were true. I had seen her apartment. Her client emails. Invoices. The old car with the check-engine light that had become a permanent passenger.

None of that proved her identity, though.

My humiliation deepened each time I considered what I had told her. My father. My fear of becoming him. The pressure I carried as future alpha. My exhaustion. My insecurities about leading the pack.

She knew me, and I only knew what she’d allowed me to know.

Had she laughed because she found me funny or because laughter supported the performance? Had she cared about Caldwell? That answer felt obvious. Yes.

But certainty had failed me once already. I couldn’t rely on it.

The worst question came later. Had she truly cared for me? Romantically? Even now, beneath the anger and doubt, part of me still believed it. That part made me feel like a fool.

I slept little, and the next morning, I started working. Not normal work that came and went throughout the day with various tasks and requests from pack members. I focused on everything. I checked the eastern property line before sunrise. Repaired a section of fencing that really could’ve waited. Replaced the hall’s exterior light bulbs. Reviewed rental maintenance requests. Updated the winter supply inventory even though winter was months away.

By noon, Jason found me beneath Grandma Ruth’s porch replacing a pipe bracket.

He crouched near the opening. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing this.”

He watched me crawl out. “You were supposed to meet me at the lower cabins.”

“I was there already.”

“You did my inspection?” Jason asked.

“Yes.”

“I said I would handle it.”

“I was nearby so I took care of it.”

“You weren’t nearby. You drove past two other properties to get there.”

I sighed. “The inspection is done. That’s all that matters.”

“That’s not the point.”

I wiped my hands on a rag. “What is the point?”

“The point is you keep taking jobs from everyone because you don’t want to sit alone with yourself.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”