Chapter Five: The Name She Wasn't Supposed to Know

We stayed up half the night poring over the intercepted letter, Rhys's scouts' reports, and everything Kaelan could recall from council meetings he'd only half been allowed into. By the time grey dawn light crept through the study windows, I had a headache, three cups of cold tea, and absolutely no plan that didn't end with either me in a royal cell or Kaelan married to a woman actively plotting to end his bloodline.

"There has to be something in the old bonding laws," Rhys muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. "A loophole. Some precedent for"

"There is," said a voice from the doorway.

We all turned. An older woman stood there, silver hair braided severely back, leaning on a carved wooden staff Mira, Rhys's pack historian, whom I'd only met once in passing during my first week.

"Forgive the intrusion," she said, though she didn't sound remotely sorry. "I couldn't help overhearing. And I couldn't, in good conscience, let you keep searching blind when the answer is sitting three feet from you."

She looked directly at me when she said it.

My stomach dropped. "Me?"

Mira crossed the room slowly, studying my face with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "Bond-reading. The ability to sense lies through scent and instinct alone, without training, without a mentor, developed on your own as a child. Tell me, has anyone ever called it anything else? A family name for the gift, perhaps? Something your grandmother might have used?"

The question landed strangely, dredging up a memory I hadn't touched in years my grandmother, before she died, cupping my face and whispering a word I'd never repeated to anyone because it had felt, even then, like something forbidden.

"Seer-sight," I said slowly. "She called it Seer-sight. But that's just an old word, isn't it? A superstition?"

Mira and Rhys exchanged a look that made my chest go tight.

"It's not a superstition," Mira said quietly. "It's a bloodline. One the Ashford throne spent three generations quietly erasing, because a true Seer can't be lied to not by an Alpha, not by a King, not even by the throne itself. The last confirmed Seer death was recorded sixty years ago." She paused. "Recorded. Not confirmed."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "Are you saying..."

"I'm saying," Mira said, "that if you are what I believe you are, Ivy Hart, you are not a loose thread anyone can quietly cut. You are the single greatest threat the Ashford throne has faced in half a century. And that letter ordering your capture?" She nodded toward the parchment still lying on Rhys's desk. "It was never about severing a bond."

Kaelan had gone very still, staring at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

"It was about making sure no one ever found out what you are," Mira finished, "before you found out yourself."

The room went silent except for the sound of my own pulse roaring in my ears.

"That's not possible," I whispered. "I'm nobody. I'm the Hart family's other daughter. I'm..."

"You're the reason the King wants you in a cell within thirty days instead of simply letting the bond fade on its own," Rhys said quietly, the pieces visibly clicking into place behind his eyes. "It was never about Kaelan's power at all."

Kaelan's face had gone pale, golden eyes wide with something between horror and dawning understanding. "If my father finds out what you are before we do," he said slowly, "he won't wait thirty days."

As if summoned by the words themselves, the study door burst open a second time not Kaelan this time, but one of Rhys's border scouts, breathless, blood on his sleeve.

"Alpha," the scout gasped. "Royal envoy at the border. They're not waiting for thirty days."

He looked straight at me.

"They're here now."