Chapter 4 He is another Steele
1184 Words
Sophia's POV
I set the deed back down.
Next to it, a second phone.
I unlocked it. Found a messaging app I didn't recognize, full of names I didn't know.
[That night on the cruise. I still think about it.]
[Wyatt, when are you coming back to see me?]
None of them had replies. Except one. A contact saved as Ivy.
I tapped her name. Pulled up her profile photo.
She looked a little like me.
[I miss you.]
[I'm in your city. It's been so long. Don't you want to see me?]
[Whatever your girlfriend won't give you, I will.]
The messages after that were photos. One worse than the last.
And then, at the bottom, one reply from Wyatt:
[Ten o'clock. Hotel. I'll be there.]
I read through it all twice. The ice that had settled in my chest since last night spread a little further.
At least I had never slept with him.
And then I remembered what I had done instead, and my stomach dropped.
That man last night — what if he was the same kind of person? What if —
I needed to get tested. Now.
I saved every piece of evidence to a cloud drive. Every message, every photo.
Then I pulled up Elder Thomas's contact. Deleted the message I'd drafted last week — the one where I said I was bringing my boyfriend home. Started a new one.
[Elder, I've met my targets ahead of schedule. Coming home next week.]
Before I left the city, I had one last thing to take care of.
I called my assistant. "I need you to put together a medical file. Fake. Stage-four cancer diagnosis. Someone's name, someone credible, I'll tell you whose."
"Sophia, what are you —"
"Don't ask. Just do it."
My mother died teaching me that a woman's tears are only useful as a weapon. So I was done crying.
I had a future to rebuild. And before I left, I was going to give Wyatt exactly what he deserved.
By the time evening came, I had cleaned every trace of the last twenty-four hours out of Wyatt's apartment and cooked myself a proper dinner. Something good. Something that tasted like moving forward.
But when night settled in, my mind drifted back to the stranger.
I thought about it longer than I wanted to. I was scared of meeting someone like Wyatt again — someone practiced at lying, someone who knew how to make you trust them.
I drove to the hospital.
By the time I arrived, there was only a duty doctor on the floor — a woman, young, brisk, no-nonsense.
"Pants down on one side," she said without looking up. "Feet up."
I obeyed, face hot.
As a woman who had been untouched until last night, I had never been examined like this. But I was afraid. I had no better option.
The doctor noticed my awkwardness and drew the curtain between us, snapping on gloves, swab in hand.
I shut my eyes.
"Honey," she said, before she'd even made contact, "you need to pace yourself. There's tearing here. I'm going to put some medication on it, just so you know. Be more careful next time."
I wanted to disappear into the examination table. "Yes. Thank you."
"Wait there — I've got another patient, back in a minute." And she was gone, leaving the curtain half-open and me lying on the table with nothing but my own embarrassment for company.
A minute passed.
Then the sound of a door opening.
"Someone just came in," Aurora said, and then went very quiet. "Wait. That scent —"
"Doctor," a man's voice said, calm and unhurried, "I'm in some pain. Could you apply the medication?"
Cool ointment touched the area where the doctor had been working.
My heart jumped into my throat.
"Is there any chance of infection?" I asked, because I needed to say something, because the alternative was silence, and silence was worse.
And then that voice — that specific voice, low and composed and completely unbothered — said:
"Don't worry. I'm clean."
"THAT'S HIM!" Aurora's howl nearly blew out my eardrums. "Last night's Alpha! THAT'S HIM!"
I sat up so fast the paper on the exam table crinkled.
It was him.
Same jaw, same shoulders, same infuriating composure. He was not wearing scrubs. He was wearing the kind of clothes that cost more than my monthly rent.
"How are you here?" Aurora demanded. "Is he a doctor?"
He was not a doctor.
"It's you —" The words fell out before I could stop them.
"You noticed," he said, and he didn't look even slightly apologetic about any of this.
"Sophia." Aurora's voice was deadly quiet. "This Alpha tracked us. He followed our scent here. He is interested in us specifically and this is not an accident."
I tried to sit up properly. His hand came down on my shoulder — light, one-handed, effortless.
"Don't. I'm not finished."
I couldn't move. Not because the grip was painful. Because it simply held, the way a wall holds. He wasn't even trying.
"His strength —" Aurora went breathless.
He finished applying the medication, removed the gloves in one clean pull, and straightened.
"By wolf tradition," he said, "once two people have been together, someone has to take responsibility. You spoke to me first. That means it's yours."
"What?" I stared at him.
"In wolf culture. Whoever initiates is responsible."
"There is no such tradition," Aurora said immediately. "That is a complete lie."
"You're making that up," I said. "There is no such tradition."
Something passed across his face — not embarrassment. Closer to amusement. "Your wolf told you?"
"Yes."
"Smart." He extended his hand. "Damian Steele."
My hand stopped moving halfway to his.
"Steele?" The name landed like a stone dropped into still water.
"Is that a problem?"
"Sophia." Aurora's voice had gone urgent, almost frantic. "The Steele bloodline. That's Silvermoon's Alpha family. If he's a Steele, then he could be —"
No. That was impossible. That was too much.
I pulled in a slow breath and worked to keep my face still.
"I need to go." I moved to get off the table.
"Wait." He stepped aside just enough to let me move — but held out a card. "You never told me your name."
"Why would I?"
"Take this anyway." He pressed it into my hand.
The card was heavy, the kind of stock that meant money. Gold-stamped lettering:
Damian Steele CEO, Silvermoon Holdings
On the back, something handwritten in clean, confident strokes:
Whenever you're ready. — D
"He's a CEO," Aurora said slowly. "And Silvermoon Holdings — Sophia, that's the Silvermoon Pack's company. That's their company."
I looked up to ask him something — anything — but he was already walking away, unhurried, hands in his pockets, filling the doorway the way a man does when he's never once questioned whether there was enough room for him.
He left behind the faint smell of pine.
And my pulse, still unsteady, that I was doing my best to pretend wasn't happening.
- Writer
