Page 1 of The Forgery Mate (Taken by His Alpha #6)

I ’m not Nico Duran, but if I slip tonight, the people I’m fooling won’t give me a second chance.

I adjust a champagne flute by two millimeters, not enough for a guest to notice, but perfect for the persona I’ve built of a jittery Beta with a thing for symmetry and a tendency to blink too much when spoken to.

The wig itches, bobby pins digging into my scalp, and blond bangs fall just low enough to obscure my vision. My eyes sting from the brown contacts, the makeup makes me want to scratch, and the fake glasses dig into the backs of my ears.

But discomfort is part of the job.

Nico Duran, the forgettable event staffer hired to polish crystal for Halcyon Hall’s exclusive gathering, is my disguise. I’ve spent three weeks becoming him.

Tonight, he’s my ticket to the painting that broke my grandfather.

“Those centerpieces are too high.” A harried woman in black passes by, tablet clutched to her chest. “We can’t have the guests trying to talk to each other through the flowers.”

I duck my head in deference. “Right away.”

She doesn’t register me. Just a uniform, and maybe the fact I’m a blond. A blur of servility she’ll forget by dessert. This is what keeps me from getting caught. I’ve learned to dissolve into expectation, to be what they already assume I am.

I take out the elevation platform called for in the table diagrams and set the heavy crystal vase back in the center.

Kneeling to check placement, I rotate the arrangement of white lilies and blue hydrangeas and focus past the flowers to the ceiling.

Two cameras in this room alone, both with blind spots near the west-facing windows.

I file the information away as I adjust the napkins, my fingers moving in practiced motions while my gaze slides to the hallway beyond, counting the steps to the grand staircase.

Fifteen.

Double doors at the landing.

A guard is posted there now, but the rotation changes every thirty minutes. I’ve already timed two shifts.

I move to the next table, and my shoulder brushes another server, a young Omega with freckles scattered across his nose like flecks of paint.

He flushes pink. “Sorry.”

His anxiety perfumes the air, the sweet-sharp scent of an Omega out of his depth. My own scent is erased by industrial-grade scent blockers, another layer of camouflage.

If anyone ever asks about Nico, they won’t remember a single thing worth noting.

“No harm done,” I say in Nico’s higher register. “First time at Halcyon?”

“Yeah.” His eyes dart between the marble floors and the vaulted ceilings with intricate moldings. “It’s overwhelming.”

“Use the service corridors behind the kitchen. Shorter paths between rooms.” I gesture toward the hallway. “And avoid the east wing if you can. The Alpha who owns this place doesn’t appreciate unfamiliar scents near his private collection.”

The information is a gift and a probe. The Omega’s face brightens. “Thanks. I heard there’s actual art in there worth millions.”

“More than millions.” I keep my tone casual. “There’s a Valenne.”

“A what?”

I shrug as if it’s unimportant. “It’s one of the items listed on the auction ballot. If you’re on staff tomorrow, make sure you skim it so you can answer any questions the guests have.”

I move away before he can ask more, walking to another table to adjust the center arrangement.

Every glance becomes a mental snapshot, angles and timing filed away for later use.

The distance between the kitchen and the main hall.

The thickness of the carpet that will muffle footsteps.

The windows that might serve as emergency exits with their old, simple locks.

The cool cylindrical weight of my own Valenne rests along my spine, secured in a custom holster beneath my server’s jacket.

I recreated it brushstroke by brushstroke, over nine agonizing months.

A perfect duplicate of Anatomy of a Ghost .

The ghost that haunted my grandfather until his death in a prison infirmary, his body failing as he whispered the secrets of his last forgery to me.

The truth of a perfect forgery isn’t in the technical skill. It’s in the obsession. You must become the artist, understand the pressure of their hand, the weight of their grief. Valenne painted his masterpiece after losing his twin. I painted mine after losing everything else.

A group of four shuffles into the ballroom, a crystal champagne fountain balanced between them. Ridiculous, excessive, and far taller than it needs to be.

Staff move out of their way, pulling chairs aside to clear the path. The bubble of chaos draws everyone’s attention, including the guards.

My pulse remains steady, every movement measured, every risk assessed. The painting upstairs is more than art or money to me. It’s to lay my grandfather’s greatest dream to rest, to finish what he started.

Grandfather’s voice whispers from memory. Art is patience, Ren. A heist is just another kind of art.

A tall man in a charcoal suit passes close enough for me to catch his cologne. He stares right through me, seeing nothing beyond the uniform.

I turn away, arranging dessert plates with mechanical precision.

A breeze comes from the open terrace doors, bringing with it the salt of the ocean in the distance. It mingles with the scent of aging paper from the antique books that fill the bookcases and the warmth of wood polish.

My fingers freeze mid-motion, salad plate suspended over the dinner plate. I know this particular combination the way some people recognize a song from three notes.

It’s Rockford Manor distilled into a perfume, and suddenly I’m not in Halcyon Hall at all. I’m back there, one month of my life that I’ve spent a year trying to forget, with an Alpha who looked at me like I was a piece of artwork he wanted to own.

I set the plate down too hard. It doesn’t break, but the sharp sound draws the attention of a passing Beta wearing the same uniform as me. I duck my head, adjusting the arrangement with trembling fingers.

Despite my efforts to forget, memory holds its own gravity. The harder I push it away, the stronger it pulls.

“You have incredible hands,” he says, watching me sketch in the window seat, wrapped only in a sheet, my skin still humming from a night spent tangled together.

I look up at Ezra Rockford, with his sculpted body and golden-brown hair disrupted by a startling streak of silver at his temple, a lightning strike frozen in time. The sight of him quickens my pulse, the same as it did the first time I approached him at an art gallery.

He moves with the easy confidence of a predator as he prowls closer. “Are you sure you’re not an artist?”

I close my notebook. “It’s a way to meditate.”

“Your skills are wasted on art history, Professor Knox.” His finger traces the edge of my notebook, not quite touching my hand but close enough that my skin prickles with awareness. “Are you sure you have to go back to teaching in a few weeks?”

I blink the memory away, focusing on the weight of the crystal centerpiece in my hands. This is the present. The new job.

But the Halcyon ballroom has the same high ceilings as Rockford Manor, the same gleaming hardwood floors that amplify every footstep. My body remembers these spaces even when my mind tries to reject them.

A waiter passes with more champagne flutes, and I think of Ezra’s glass collection filled with rare pieces he acquired from auction houses and private collectors, some through methods he never explained. He’d hold them up to the light, turning them to catch fire in his hands.

He studied me the same way, as if I was another beautiful and breakable piece of art to be added to his collection.

Heat creeps up my neck despite the room’s perfect temperature control, and my heart pounds. I need to focus. Need to?—

“I don’t want you to leave,” Ezra whispers into my neck, his breath hot on my skin. We stand in his private gallery, surrounded by paintings worth more than most people’s lives. His hands find my waist, possessive without being forceful. “I want to keep you here, Knox.”

My pulse skips with the same desire. “I’ve been here a month.”

His laugh comes low and hungry against my ear. “A month is nothing.”

The memory sours as it always does. Because that month meant everything to me. And then I took the check his family offered, packed my bag, and vanished on Ezra without a goodbye.

I adjust a napkin that doesn’t need adjusting, fighting to stay present. Sweat dampens my palms beneath the thin service gloves.

In my ear, I can still hear the cold voice of Aaiden Rockford, sliding the envelope across his desk.

“Fifty thousand dollars.” He focuses on a point over my left shoulder, as if I’m already gone. “For your discretion and your immediate departure.”

The check trembles between my fingers. So this is how it ends. I should have seen this coming from the powerful Rockford family, but they had treated me with such civil kindness that I had allowed myself to believe it was real.

“Does Ezra know about this?”

His dry, humorless laugh is nothing like his cousin’s. “Ezra collects beautiful things until he tires of them. Consider this a severance before the inevitable.”

“I’m not an employee.”

“No. You’re worse, Professor Knox. You’re a leech, and you’ve outstayed your welcome.”

I’d taken the money.

Of course, I had. Not because I needed it, but because it was a reminder that I stayed too long pretending to be Knox, and I could only hurt Ezra in the end.

And he was young. Younger than I thought when I first approached him.

The silver in his hair and his reputation in the art curation field had made me think he was older.

He was only ever supposed to be a way into Rockford Manor.

But I had gotten distracted, let myself pretend that what we were doing could last, when all he knew was the lie I presented.

It was better for everyone that I go, before things got messy.