Chapter Sixty-One
Ana
It was early morning when I sat upright on the small mattress, my eyes heavy and burning with exhaustion. No matter how hard I tried, I simply could not bring myself to sleep at all throughout the entire duration of the night. Desmond's revelation from our conversation in the storage room kept replaying over and over in my mind like a broken record. He had explicitly stated that my long-lost mother would be physically attending the upcoming pack ball, and he had practically begged me to come along as his partner.
My initial instinct was to tell him no right to his face. What on earth would be the point of accompanying him to any formal pack gathering after everything that had transpired between us? The outcome would always be exactly the same—more public humiliat
