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I swallowed hard, the warmth in the car suddenly feeling oppressive. “Okay.”

“Why are you pretending to be a wolf shifter, Sloane?”

There it was. The question sounded so much more pathetic out loud than it ever had in the safety of my own mind. I looked through the windshield at the occasional headlights in the distance. Explaining the truth meant stripping away the comedy and admitting how desperate I’d been for a sliver of connection.

Patty waited, showing none of the impatience I’d come to expect from people.

“I was added to the group chat by mistake,” I said finally.

“I figured that part out.”

“I was fully planning on leaving,” I insisted, looking over at her. “I swear.”

She raised an eyebrow, but her expression remained kind. “Why didn’t you?”

My chest constricted, the blanket I was clutching suddenly feeling very heavy. “The chat itself,” I whispered. “My parents had called me that afternoon. They were traveling through Europe, talking about their hotels and their trips, and asking why I’d left an internship that had actually just stopped paying me. They made me feel like an absolute failure at adulthood. And then my clients started emailing, and my entire life felt too loud and completely empty at the same time.”

Patty stayed quiet, letting me speak.

“I baked cupcakes,” I continued, my voice trembling slightly. “I made a dozen. I ate two, and then I just had ten cupcakes sitting on my counter with absolutely nobody in my life to give them to. And then the group chat started going crazy. Everyone was so funny. They cared about each other. Genuinely cared.

“I know I should’ve left,” I said, a single tear escaping and sliding down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away. “But everyone thought I was Loany, and every response they gave me made it so much harder to walk away. Nobody had seen her in years. Nobody knew where she lived, and everyone remembered a different version of her, so it was easy to just… roll with it.”

“That’s usually how terrible decisions introduce themselves,” Patty said, her tone completely free of judgment.

A small, wet laugh escaped me. “I kept waiting for the perfect moment to confess.”

“And then?”

“And then I liked everyone too much.” My voice cracked at the admission. “Everything else I told you was real, Patty. I really am a graphic designer. I really love Nocturnal Hearts. I really bake. I wasn’t pretending to like you, or Caldwell, or Grandma Ruth…” I trailed off.

“What about Hudson?” she asked quietly.

A sudden, intense heat flooded my face, competing with the tears. “That’s real, too.”

“I knew it,” she said, a small smirk returning to her lips.

“Please don’t enjoy my romantic tragedy this much.”

“I’ll try,” she promised, though she didn’t look like she was trying very hard.

I looked down at my lap. “I know this is incredibly wrong. I’ve lied to all of you. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I actually belonged somewhere. I had people to talk to when I woke up. Someone noticed if I went quiet for a day. Hudson remembered things I said to him weeks ago. You sent me sketches because you knew I’d understand them. I didn’t want to go back to having nobody.”

Patty’s warm fingers closed firmly around mine. She didn’t offer any empty platitudes, just held my hand. “I get it.”

I looked at her, shaking my head. “You shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have all of them,” I said. “You’re part of this incredible, protective family.”

“I have them now,” Patty said, her gaze drifting back to the dark road ahead. “But being latent in a wolf family is complicated, Sloane. Nobody was ever cruel to me, but everyone spent my entire childhood waiting for my shift. Every single birthday, every mood swing, every growth spurt, someone in the room thought maybe this is the day.”

“How old were you when they finally stopped waiting?”

“They didn’t all stop at once. That would have been much easier,” she said, her thumb tracing a gentle circle over my knuckles. “By fifteen, most of them understood. By sixteen, people actively avoided talking about shifting around me.

“Aunt Karen was the least understanding of them all. Still is, actually. She treats me like I’m less than, a total disappointment. When I turned seventeen, she suggested I might develop late if I cut dairy out of my diet.”