At that point, what was one more scandal on top of the pile?
I bent down again and pressed a kiss to Kieran Vale's cheek, slow and deliberate, while the whole booth watched. Then I looked up at Hugo and delivered the killing blow with a smile.
"For the record? He kisses better than you ever did."
Hugo's face went through three shades of terrible in two seconds. I watched the jealousy climb up his throat like something poisonous—and God, it felt good. Three years I'd fed this man my whole heart, and he'd graded it not worthy. Turns out the cheapest thing in the world was watching him choke on his own medicine.
Here was what Hugo didn't understand about Kieran Vale: nobody did. He'd come back from overseas two years ago, taken one look at our city's market, and started collecting companies like other men collected watches. Hugo had tried to investigate him once—hired the best firm money could buy. Every single investigator turned the job down within a day. Every one. Whatever Kieran Vale was, the city's entire supernatural underworld had agreed, without a word of coordination, not to touch him.
And now I'd straddled the man's personal space and called it revenge.
Hugo finally snapped. He lunged across the booth to drag me up by the arm—fine, let him manhandle me, it would only look worse—
His wrist never reached me.
Kieran's hand closed around Hugo's forearm, almost gently, and simply pushed. Hugo Vaughn, Alpha of the Blackstone Pack, a man who could bench-press a motorcycle and had once thrown a rogue through a wall, stumbled backward four full steps and caught himself on the arm of a sofa. His mouth opened and closed. Nothing came out.
The booth was so quiet I could hear the ice melting in my abandoned champagne.
I turned back to Kieran and let my fingers curl into that black silk hair, playing at intimacy I had absolutely no right to. Might as well be hanged for a wolf as for a pup.
"Mr. Vale," I murmured against his ear, "shall we take this somewhere else?"
I never expected him to agree. It was a line for the audience, a flourish, a door slammed in Hugo's face. But Kieran rose from the booth in one smooth motion and slid an arm around my waist, steadying me against his side like we'd rehearsed it.
"Good," he said.
Just that. One word, in a voice like still water, and every hair on my arm stood up.
I laughed and looped my hand through his elbow, and we walked out with our heads high, past Hugo's purple face, past twenty dropped jaws, into the night.
---
The moment we turned the corner and the club's neon sign slipped out of view, my legs gave out.
Not gracefully. Not cinematically. One second I was a femme fatale, the next my knees simply resigned, and the only reason I didn't hit the pavement was the arm clamped around my waist like a steel band.
"Careful," Kieran said.
Right. Him. The stranger I had just, entirely sober, assaulted with my mouth. Twice.
Heat crawled up my neck all the way to my ears. I peeled myself off him and put three careful feet of distance between us, straightening my clothes, my hair, my dignity.
"I'm sorry about all that, Mr. Vale." I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, fruitlessly. "I just—"
"Just used me as a prop to get back at your ex."
He said it without heat. Flat. Factual. Devastating.
"…Yes," I admitted, because lying to a man who could probably smell a lie was pointless. "It was rude, and I'm sorry. Thank you for playing along. I won't bother you again."
I turned and walked away before my face could combust, and I didn't look back.
Not at him. Definitely not at the way he watched me go, dark eyes unreadable in the streetlight, like a man doing math.
---
Home. Midnight. I stood in my apartment—the apartment Hugo paid for, because even my rent was part of his arrangement—and pulled a garbage bag out of the kitchen.
Everything he'd ever given me went in. The jewelry. The perfume. The stupid designer scarf he bought me at an airport because he'd forgotten my birthday that year too. I worked fast, before my hands could remember how to hesitate.
My phone lit up on the nightstand. Hugo.
I answered.
"ARIA." His voice was pure thunder, half rage, half something rawer underneath. "What the hell do you think you were doing tonight?"
"What does it look like?" I folded a shirt into the bag. "You're getting mated. A kept woman has to secure her next meal, right? And your friend Kieran Vale is quite the upgrade. You said it yourself—I have great taste in men."
"Enough." A breath, a pause, the sound of him reeling himself back. When he spoke again, his voice had gone low, coaxing, almost gentle. That was the voice he used when he wanted something. "I know you're hurt because I didn't tell you about the mating. That was careless of me. But Aria—be serious. Look at what you are. You're nothing, sweetheart. No pack would ever take you as Luna, and mine certainly won't. Even if I wanted to, my father would never allow it. Stay. Keep things the way they were. I take care of what's mine—you know that."
What's mine. Like a couch. Like a car. Like the champagne he made me chill with my own hands on my own birthday.
"Vivian can have the trash," I said. "I wish you both a long and happy mating."
"Wait—"
I hung up, blocked his number, and sat down on the floor of my half-emptied apartment, surrounded by three years of evidence that I had been an idiot.
Then I picked up my phone again and dialed the number I'd sworn, a week ago, I would think carefully about before using.
It rang once.
"Aria?" An old man's voice, careful and warm at the same time, like he was afraid of startling me. "Is something wrong?"
"Grandfather." My throat went tight around the word. It still didn't feel real. "I've thought about it. I'll come home."
The sound he made was half laugh, half sob. "Child—child, thank the Goddess. Your mother's spirit can finally rest. I'm still abroad wrapping up business; I'll fly back within the week and collect you myself. Meanwhile my lawyer will call you tomorrow—there are companies to transfer into your name, a residence prepared if you want to stay in the city, staff. Anything you need, it's already arranged. Anything."
"Thank you, Grandfather," I whispered. "Whatever you think is best."
We said our goodbyes. I sat in the dark for a long moment. Then I opened the drawer of my nightstand, took out the file that had been sitting there for exactly seven days, and unfolded it in my lap under the streetlight glow.
Verified. Probability of direct lineage: 99.998%.
One week ago, an old man had stopped me on a sidewalk outside a blood donation clinic, gone white as a ghost at the sight of my face, and asked me my mother's name.
Here's the joke, and it's a beautiful one: Hugo Vaughn has spent this entire year climbing toward the Moonridge heiress like it's the summit of his ambitions. Dinner parties. Gift audits. A mating contract drafted by three law firms. All of it aimed at Vivian—the polite, porcelain doll the Moonridge family parades at galas.
He toasts her at every event. "To the last great bloodline. To the future Lady of Blackstone."
He has no idea she's the adopted stand-in. And he has no idea that the wolfless nobody he keeps in a downtown apartment and grades not worthy—
—is the true heir of Moonridge.
I folded the file away and lay back on the cold floor, and beneath my ribs, that new warm thing stretched and rolled over, restless, sniffing the memory of smoke and cedar that clung to my lips.
Again, it whispered, shameless. Him again.
"Not a chance," I told it out loud.
My wolf—the wolf I'd waited twenty-five years to meet—huffed, curled up, and went on howling one name into the dark.
Kieran.