Page 21 of The Forgery Mate (Taken by His Alpha #6)

“We’ve titled this exhibition Forgeries Through History , but perhaps a more accurate name would be Love Letters to the Impossible .

” Ezra’s fingers adjust the microphone, playing with the long stem.

“Because every great forgery begins with love. Love for the original. Love for the challenge. Love for the act of creation itself.”

Unease slips through me. I should move, should find a different angle from which to observe and maintain the careful distance Knox would preserve.

Instead, I remain frozen, caught in the amber of Ezra’s words.

“I acquired my first forgery when I was sixteen.” He gives his audience a private smile, as if sharing a secret with the room.

“A moody piece of storm clouds and spectral figures, supposedly by an obscure French artist from the 1920s. I didn’t know it was a forgery when I bought it.

It just spoke to me in a way nothing else had. ”

The air in the gallery thickens, becoming harder to draw into lungs suddenly too small for breath.

Is he speaking about the Valenne? About Anatomy of a Ghost ?

The painting at the center of everything, my grandfather’s masterpiece, the reason I first approached Ezra, the work we’ve both been circling for years.

“It hung in my bedroom for two years before an expert casually mentioned it couldn’t be authentic.” Ezra continues, his gaze sweeping the crowd. “The pigments were wrong, apparently. Too modern. The canvas itself dated to decades after the artist’s death.”

A laugh ripples through the audience, appreciation for the young collector’s na?veté. I don’t join them. My throat closes around the knowledge of what comes next.

“But here’s the strange part.” Ezra pauses, letting anticipation build.

“When I learned it was a forgery, I didn’t feel betrayed.

I felt fascinated . Because someone had loved the original painting enough to study it, to understand it, to recreate it with such devotion that it fooled even seasoned collectors.

Someone had put their soul into creating a perfect echo of another artist’s vision. ”

The spotlight catches the planes of his face as he turns, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw and transforming his youthful features into a visage of ancient wisdom. My grandfather would have called him an old soul. Wise beyond his years.

And my heart hammers in response, a prisoner pounding on the walls of its cage.

“It wasn’t a copy.” He finds me through the crowd, locking on with laser precision across a sea of faceless patrons. “It was a love letter disguised as a lie.”

The connection between us pulls taut, an invisible cord stretching across the darkened gallery. In that moment, Knox falls away, leaving only Ren, exposed, vulnerable, and seen. The room blurs at the edges of my vision, faces smearing into indistinct shapes as Ezra’s eyes hold me hostage.

“The forger had poured everything into their canvas. Technical skill, yes, but also understanding. They captured not only the brushstrokes but the intention behind them. The longing. The loss. The quiet desperation of reaching for something just beyond grasp.”

Each word strikes true, an attack designed to dismantle defenses I spent years constructing.

He knows. Has always known.

My approach as Knox was never the beginning of our story. It was just a chapter he let me believe I authored.

“So tonight,” Ezra continues, releasing me to address the wider audience, “we celebrate these love letters. These technical marvels. These forgeries that in many ways surpass their inspirations through the sheer force of devotion behind them.”

Applause breaks out around me, but the roaring in my ears drowns it out. My collar feels too tight, the temperature too high, the press of bodies too close. Sweat gathers at my hairline, threatening to dissolve the careful styling of Knox’s appearance.

A woman in designer silk bumps my arm and apologizes with a flirtatiousness I can’t return. Her expensive floral perfume mixes with the scent of champagne and cologne until my stomach churns with nausea.

I need air. Need space. Need to escape the knowing eyes that once again catch mine through the crowd as Ezra concludes his speech.

“Please enjoy the exhibition, explore these masterful deceptions, and remember that, sometimes, the greatest truths hide within the most beautiful lies.”

The lights come up, and conversation resumes in a wave of sound that crashes against my sensitized nerves.

I set my champagne down on a passing server’s tray and begin the careful navigation toward the edges of the room, away from where Ezra now accepts compliments from admirers who crowd around him.

The bathroom door swings shut behind me, cutting off the gallery’s ambient noise and plunging me into relative silence. My ears pop from the sudden change in acoustic pressure as I brace my hands on the cool marble of the sink counter, head bowed as I stare at the perfect circle of the basin.

I breathe deep, filling lungs only moments ago compressed by the weight of Ezra’s revelation.

The bathroom is all sleek minimalism, with black tiles, brushed metal fixtures, and lighting recessed into the ceiling to cast no shadows.

Even here, every detail has been considered, curated, and controlled.

Just like the exhibition. Just like Ezra’s speech.

Just like the trap I walked into with eyes wide open.

Turning the faucet on, I thrust my wrists beneath the cold flow of water, a trick my grandfather taught me to steady nerves before a difficult forgery. The icy shock over my pulse points forces focus and clears the mind of everything but the immediate sensation.

I splash some on my face, careful not to disturb Knox’s styling too much. Water beads on my glasses, distorting the reflection staring back at me.

Who are you right now? The question forms in my mind, unanswerable. Not Knox, whose scholarly confidence has abandoned me. Not Lorenzo with his practiced charm. Not Tobias with his quiet retreat into obscurity. Just fragments of masks shattered by Ezra’s speech.

I remove my glasses, wiping them clean with the pocket square from my jacket. Without them, my reflection becomes someone else, not me, but not one of my personas, either.

No one. A ghost.

The sound of the door opening comes as no surprise, and my fingers tighten on the edge of the counter as the distinct click of the lock echoes in the tiled space.

“Hiding, Professor Knox?” Ezra’s voice carries the same rich timbre from his speech but stripped of performance. “Or do you prefer Tobias these days?”

I straighten and replace my glasses before I turn to face him.

Ezra leans against the door, arms crossed. He looks different here, the charming performance from earlier gone, the hunter now exposed.

My pulse beats erratically. “I needed a moment.”

Ezra pushes off from the door, closing the distance. “A moment to regroup? To recalculate? To decide which mask to wear next?”

I stand my ground, refusing to retreat further, though every instinct screams to create distance.

“You thought you made the first move.” He stops just out of reach, maddeningly confident while I’m falling apart. “You thought you came to me for the art. But I knew who you were the moment we met. The Omega who paints ghosts. The thief who yearns to be seen.”

My blood runs cold, then hot, then cold again, a fever pulsing beneath my skin. Ezra has been playing a game since before we met, leaving me uncertain of where I stand on the board.

“How long?” The question emerges through clenched teeth, my anger wrapping around fear.

“From the beginning.” His tongue skims over his bottom lip. “Before you ever approached me as the shy professor with specialist knowledge in forgery detection. Before you created Knox to appeal to me, I created sweet, na?ve Ezra to appeal to you.”

Each word strips away another layer of protection. All the careful planning, the months of research, the persona crafted specifically to interest a young Alpha collector with a passion for authenticity. All revealed as futile, transparent gambits he saw through from the start.

“If you knew, why play along?” My confusion bounces off the hard surfaces of the bathroom. “Why let me get close? Why let me—” Into your bed. Into your life.

The unfinished questions linger between us, heavy with the memory of skin on skin and secrets murmured into the dark.

“You’re a forgery expert.” Ezra takes another step, close enough now for the heat radiating from his body to reach me. “I wanted to test your commitment to the role. How far you’d go for what you wanted.”

“Is that what I am to you? Another piece in your collection?” My fingers curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “Another forgery to study and catalog and display?”

His pupils expand to swallow his golden-hazel irises. One hand rises, not to touch but to hover near my face, the promise of contact more devastating than actual connection.

“You’re the only original in a world of copies.” The words land soft as embers, burning where they touch. “Every persona you’ve created—Knox, Lorenzo, all of them—they’re just echoes of the real man beneath. The man only I can see.”

“You don’t see me.” Bitterness rises to be found playing the fool. “You see what you want. Some fabrication you invented before we even met.”

Ezra closes the last distance between us, and my back meets cold tile as I retreat. His arm braces beside my head, caging me without touching. His face lowers until our breaths mingle, until his oxygen fills my lungs.

“I saw you in that gallery a year and a half ago, staring at the artwork. Saw your fingers twitching, painting them in your mind.” An Alpha rumble rises from his chest, weakening my defenses. “I saw you shining through your disguise, the broken artist who chased someone else’s dreams.”

Heat spreads from my core outward, the flush having nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the proximity of his body and the sensation of being stripped bare by words alone.

“What do you want from me?” I ask hoarsely, my throat raw from emotion.

His lips curve with satisfaction tinged by hunger, victory shadowed by want. His free hand rises at last to touch my face, fingertips tracing the line of my jaw.

“I want what I’ve always wanted.” The confession burns between us. “Everything. The truth beneath the lies. The man beneath the masks. The forgery and the forger, the ghost and the man who gives it form.”

My pulse hammers in my throat, visible beneath skin too thin to contain the chaos within. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, a touch so light it might be imaginary if not for the current it sends racing through me.

“Just give up.” The caress of his fingers belies the steel beneath his words. “Because I’ll never let you go.”

“You can’t own people.” The protest sounds weak, undermined by my body leaning into his touch.

“I don’t want to own you.” His lips hover a breath from mine, not quite touching. “I want you to stop running from yourself. From this. From us.”

Between us, the air shivers with that quiet, fatal recognition shared between predator and prey in the instant before the hunt inevitably ends.

“You’re finally starting to understand,” he whispers a breath away from my lips, the almost-contact sending shivers cascading through me.

And I do understand. The exhibition. The forgeries displayed with reverence rather than scorn. My grandfather’s work, preserved and presented as art in its own right. The invitation to tonight. All of it was designed not to trap me, but to call me home.

To Ezra.