Novels by Lena Voss

Elena's tour lasted maybe fifteen minutes and felt more like a warning than anything else. This wing. That door, locked, don't ask. Kitchen staff eat at six, don't be late if you want anything hot. Then she left, heels loud on the hardwood, and Ivy sat alone in a room bigger than her whole apartment, looking at a closet full of clothes in her exact size that she definitely hadn't packed.She didn't touch them yet.She sat on the edge of a bed that probably cost more than her car and watched the light outside go from gold to orange to something darker, and tried not to think about the word tonight.Kade knocked at seven."You didn't eat," he said. Not a question."Wasn't hungry.""You need to eat. Matters more tonight than most nights." He was holding a tray she hadn't noticed. Simple food — bread, soup, nothing fancy. "Can I come in?"She let him in because she didn't know what else to do with her hands.He set the tray down and sat in the chair across from the bed, same posture as th

Margaret Marsh had a pen in her hand instead of a pencil when Ivy walked in, working the crossword, which meant she was feeling good today. Or stubborn. Usually both."You look like you saw a ghost. Seven letters, starts with T. Unexpected windfall.""Treasure doesn't fit.""It's eight. I counted." Margaret looked up then, actually looked, and whatever she saw made her put the pen down slow. "Ivy.""I got a job.""You have two jobs.""A third one. Temporary. Good money." Ivy sat on the edge of the bed and took her mom's hand because she needed somewhere to look that wasn't her mom's face. "It's out of town. I'd be gone a while. Months, maybe.""How much money.""Enough for the house. Enough that you don't have to think about the letters anymore. Any of it."Margaret didn't say anything for a second. She was better at quiet than Ivy was, which right now was inconvenient, because Ivy could tell she was thinking and had no idea which way it was going to go."What job pays like that," Mar

"Sit back down," Kade said. "You're not steady yet, whatever you think."He was right, which annoyed her more than the werewolf thing had, somehow. Ivy sat."Pack law." He didn't ease into it. Just started talking, like a man who'd rehearsed this in his head a hundred times and had given up trying to make it sound less insane. "There's exactly one rule that can't be bent, changed, or voted around, and it's this: an alpha holds his seat by blood, not by popularity, not by strength alone. If I don't have a recognized heir by the winter solstice, my seat goes to whoever's next in the succession line. That's my cousin. Damon.""And Damon's bad.""Damon's ambitious." Kade's jaw did something complicated. "Which isn't the same thing, and I'd be lying if I said it was, and I don't lie to people I'm about to ask something enormous of. He'd probably run the pack fine. He'd also sell off half our land to developers inside two years to pay off what he already owes, and he'd do it smiling.""So y

"Two hundred thousand dollars. All you have to do is not ask questions."Ivy set her coffee down fast, before she dropped it. Gas station coffee, sixty-nine cents with the loyalty card, and she'd been babying it since six a.m. because breakfast wasn't really happening this month."Say that number again?"Priya didn't even blink. She'd clearly said it before, probably a dozen times to a dozen women who'd sat in this exact chair doing the exact math Ivy was doing right now. "Two hundred thousand, base fee. Medical's separate. There's a completion bonus if you carry to term without complications." She pushed a folder across the desk, thick enough that Ivy almost laughed — it was thicker than every tax return she'd ever filed, combined. "The client's private. I mean really private. That's not something I can walk back today, and it's not something I can explain either.""Try me.""Can't." Priya said it gently, which was somehow worse than if she'd been rude about it. "What I can tell you