Page 113 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

I step further into the room, keeping quiet. She doesn’t stir as I reach for the laptop, planning to close it and nudge her under the covers—

But then the trackpad clicks under her hand, and the screen shifts.

She’s leaning on the mouse, and her fingers are half-mashed against the keyboard. A mess of tabs scatter across the top bar—document windows, notes, drafts. The one in focus is open in Google Docs.

How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates.

I freeze, narrowing my eyes as I lift the laptop and read over the words on the page.

Step 1: Reappear like a heat-triggered fever dream.

Step 2: Start spending more time at the pack house—linger in doorways, sit in his favorite chair, leave just enough of your scent behind to make him feral.

Step 3: Seduce the gym rat with commitment issues until he can’t stop texting you voice notes and calling you “trouble.”

Step 4: Make the golden retriever alpha fall a little bit in love by being sweet, soft, and just unattainable enough to keep him up at night.

Step 5: Blow off the next pack dinner with a casual “I’ve got plans” and let them all spiral.

Step 6: Post a story from your couch, wearing one of their hoodies with zero explanation.

Step 7: Make the whole pack question who’s actually in charge here.

Step 8: Make Wes question every decision he’s ever made—including letting you go.

Step 9: Walk away before it explodes. Before the bond claws back in.

Step 10: …Try not to look back.

The blood drains from my face.

I freeze, completely still, like if I don’t move, maybe the words will rearrange themselves into something else. Something that makes sense.

But they don’t. They stay exactly where they are, staring back at me in black and white like a punch to the chest.

Each line slices deeper. Steps. Tactics. A goddamn checklist of every soft, private moment she’s had with us, framed like a game and outlined in strategy.

We were nothing more than bullet points in her fucked-up experiment.

I stagger back a step, my ears ringing. My hands are shaking, and my heart’s hammering so hard it hurts.

I read it again, and again, and again; each time hoping I’ve misunderstood, that there’s another explanation. That this is some kind of joke or placeholder text.

But it’s not. There are multiple drafts: untitled tabs, notes in the margins, and our names repeated over and over.

Myname. She wrote about me. Aboutme. About making me fall in love just enough to keep me up at night.

And it worked.Fuck, it worked.

The floor feels like it tilts. I back up again, a strangled sound catching in my throat, something between a laugh and a sob.

Wes warned me. He said it didn’t make sense; that she was too charming, too effortless, too perfect at getting under our skin. He was paranoid and angry and impossible—

But he wasn’t wrong.

And Idefendedher. I defended her every single time. I believed every look, every soft smile, every whispered word that made me think—for the first time in my life—that maybe I could have something whole, that maybe I could be enough.

And now I’m standing here reading proof that none of it was real.

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