A Fragile Delusion

Nadia

I sat at my desk, chewing hard on the battered pink eraser of my pencil. Before me lay the compatibility questionnaire my mother had pushed into my hands an hour ago, each printed line feeling like a fresh insult to my dignity.

"We don't have all afternoon, Nadia," my mother said from the doorway.

I didn't lift my gaze from the stiff cream cardstock. "I'm working on it."

"Staring at the paper is not working on it."

She stepped into the room, holding her porcelain teacup like a weapon. My mother, Luna of the Crestwood Pack, possessed two tones of voice: crisp efficiency and unconditional maternal control. Right now, she balanced on the razor edge of both.

One question in the middle of the page irritated me more than the rest. It asked whether I preferred my prospective mate to be verbally expressive or the strong, silent type. It sounded like an order form for custom bedroom furniture rather than a partner for life.

I pressed the pencil tip down and scrawled a note in the margin: *Breathing would be a good start.*

My mother leaned over my shoulder, read the graphite scribble, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Nadia. The Aldridge Alpha arrives tomorrow to inspect the territory. And you. This is not the time for sarcasm."

Flipping the pencil around to scrub away the snarky response, I met her gaze. "Sarcasm keeps my blood pressure down. My therapist claims humor is a valid coping mechanism."

"You do not have a therapist."

"I intend to hire one the moment this arranged courtship ruins my twenties."

I quickly penciled in a respectable, sanitized answer: *Open communication is valued.* It looked neat, sensible, and empty of anything resembling my real thoughts.

Satisfied enough to stop hovering, she snatched the questionnaire off my desk and gave me a pointed look. "Wear the sage dress tonight at dinner, and be downstairs by six sharp."

With that, she clicked down the hall, leaving me alone with the quiet hum of my bedroom.

Duty was a word carved into my bones from the day I took my first breath. As the only daughter of the Crestwood alpha pair, I understood that my life was never my own. Pack security always took precedence over personal desire. We were an old territory with vulnerable borders, and an alliance with the Aldridge Pack would secure our northern line for the next decade. If that meant standing in the parlor tomorrow while an intimidating alpha male evaluated me like a prize mare at an auction, I had to swallow the lump in my throat and smile through it.

I could handle the political games. I could endure the cold assessment of a visiting stranger.

What I couldn't handle was Corbin.

Corbin had been my best friend since childhood, and the boy I had loved in secret since I was seven years old.

Before I could bury my face in my hands, the bedroom door flew open with a bang, rattling against the doorstop.

Corbin stood in the frame, wearing a faded grey hoodie, worn denim, and an easy grin that made my pulse jump against my ribs. He possessed the kind of athletic grace that made every room feel too small for him, dark hair falling across his forehead in messy waves.

He didn't bother knocking. He never did.

Kicking the door shut with the heel of his sneaker, he tossed his keys onto my dresser. "What are you brooding about?"

I pulled my knees to my chest on the desk chair, glaring at him over the rims of my glasses. "Corbin, I could have been naked."

He snorted, sauntering over to my unmade bed and dropping onto the mattress like he owned it. "Then I would have turned around and waited in the hallway."

The words hit like a dull blade between my ribs. It was a throwaway joke, a light tease between childhood friends, but the casual dismissiveness sliced deep. To Corbin, my body was not something to desire or fear catching off guard. I was not a woman to him. I was his surrogate sister, his loyal sounding board, the girl who let him borrow her notes and split her lunch since grade school.

I looked him dead in the eye. "Would you really?"

He propped himself up on one elbow, rummaging through the pile of pillows for my TV remote. "Would I what?"

I hated the slight tremor in my voice, but I couldn't stop it. "Turn around. I am an actual girl, you know."

He paused, remote in hand, his warm amber eyes flicking to my face. For a heartbeat, I dared to hope he might see me. Really see me. Not just the tomboy who climbed pine trees with him, but the girl with strawberry blonde hair, dark eyes, and freckles dusting across her nose.

His brows pulled together in mild confusion. "Did someone say something stupid to you? Are you okay?"

I forced a tight, defensive smirk onto my face. "I'm fine. Totally not spiraling because a strange alpha arrives tomorrow to inspect me like pack collateral."

"You're spiraling."

Turning back toward my desk and fiddling with my pencil, I corrected him. "I'm spiraling with grace. There's an art to it."

I watched him through the corner of my eye, holding my breath. I wanted him to frown. I wanted him to drop the remote, sit up straight, and say something possessive, something angry about another male coming to claim me. I wanted him to tell me that no outside alpha had the right to put his hands on me.

Corbin tossed the remote onto the duvet and flashed me that familiar, easy smile. "Just talk to him about eighteenth-century military treaties. You'll bore the poor bastard to death in ten minutes, and he'll run back to his territory."

A prick of hurt flared hot in my chest. "Are you calling me boring?"

"I'm calling you a nerd, Nadi. There's a distinction." He chuckled fondly, leaning his head back against my headboard.

Before I could throw an eraser at his head, his phone buzzed on the nightstand. The sharp chime cut through the air, and Corbin's casual demeanor vanished in a split second. He lunged across the bed, snatching the device and tapping the screen open with frantic thumb strokes.

A grin split across his face, wide and bright.

Corbin stared at the screen like he had just won the lottery. "Giselle said yes!"

My chest tightened until drawing air felt like pulling glass into my lungs. "She did?"

Leaping off the mattress, he practically bounced on his heels. "Friday night at eight. The quadratic formula trick you showed me worked. I walked her through the practice exam, acted like I understood parabolas, and she asked if we could celebrate over dinner."

"That's great. I'm glad my tutoring paid off." The words tasted like ash on my tongue, but I forced the compliment out anyway.

Giselle was his latest obsession. Tall, curvy, with dark cascading curls and the kind of sultry pout that had half the young wolves in the pack falling over their own paws. She barely knew basic algebra, which had given Corbin the excuse to spend every evening at my desk, begging me to teach him the material so he could look competent in front of her.

I had sat beside him for hours, inhaling the scent of cedar and rain on his skin, pointing at formulas while wishing his focus was on me instead of the girl across the hall.

Corbin closed the distance between us, hooked his hands under my arms, and hauled me out of the desk chair. "You're a lifesaver, Nadi!"

Before I could dodge him, he swung me in a dizzying circle, laughing out loud.

I clutched his shoulders as my glasses slipped down the bridge of my nose. "Corbin, let go! My glasses!"

He set me down on my feet but didn't let go immediately, his arms wrapped around my shoulders in a bone-crushing hug. He smelled like mint and autumn wind. For one agonizing second, I let my face rest against the rough cotton of his hoodie, breathing him in and memorizing the solid heat of his chest.

Then he pulled away, planted a loud, careless kiss on my cheek, and turned toward the bedroom door.

Jogging into the hallway, he shouted back over his shoulder. "I have to find a clean shirt. Love you, bye!"

"Love you too." I whispered the words into the empty doorway, quiet and hollow.

He didn't hear me. He was already halfway down the stairs, running toward a girl who hadn't spent a single second helping him become the man he was.

I sank back into my desk chair, pressing my fingertips against the spot on my cheek where his lips had touched my skin. The heat faded fast, replaced by the bitter chill of reality.

The hours dragged on into the evening. I sat by my window, staring at the dark pines lining the pack perimeter, waiting for my phone to ring.

Usually, his crushes fell apart fast. He would take a girl out, realize she had no sense of humor, and call me within ninety minutes complaining that she didn't get his jokes. Then he would drive over, climb through my window with a bag of cheap fast food, and we would laugh together until two in the morning.

Ten o'clock passed. Then eleven. Then midnight.

My screen remained dark. No calls. No texts.

The realization settled like lead in my stomach: the date was going well. Maybe she was laughing at his bad jokes. Maybe he had his arm around the back of her chair. Maybe he was kissing her right now, pressing her against the side of his truck the way I had imagined him holding me for eleven years.

I turned off the bedside lamp and pulled the quilt over my shoulders, staring up at the dark ceiling.

I hadn't agreed to this alpha inspection out of pure pack duty. Deep down, beneath all the diplomatic excuses and compliance, it had been a desperate, childish gamble. I had convinced myself that the threat of another alpha claiming me would finally shake Corbin awake. I thought seeing me on the auction block would make him realize he couldn't stand the thought of losing me.

I closed my eyes, clinging to that fragile, pathetic hope as sleep finally took over.

I was, as previously noted, catastrophically wrong.