Chapter Two: The Standoff

The guards fanned out behind Kaelan like shadows given shape, and my heart slammed against my ribs so hard I was sure he could hear it.

"Let go of me," I said again, quieter this time. Quiet felt safer than the alternative, the scream building at the back of my throat.

Kaelan's grip didn't loosen. If anything, his fingers pressed harder into the bruise already blooming under my sleeve. "Not until you understand what you're doing."

"I understand perfectly." I forced my chin up, refusing to let him see how badly my hands were shaking. "I'm leaving a pack that laughed while you humiliated me. That's not complicated, Kaelan."

Something flickered behind his eyes at the sound of his name in my mouth no title, no reverence, just the bare word. He wasn't used to that. I filed it away.

"If you cross onto Sterling land wearing an unresolved bond mark," he said, low and urgent, "you put that entire pack at risk. Ashford law doesn't recognise a mate transfer without formal severance. Rhys would be harbouring a claimed mate. Do you understand what that gives my father the right to do?"

The words landed like ice water.

I hadn't known that. I searched his face for a lie and found none my gift never let me miss one, not even when I desperately wanted to.

"You're saying this to keep me here," I said slowly. "Not because you care what happens to Rhys's pack."

"Does it matter why, if it's true?"

"It matters to me." My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for it.

For a moment neither of us moved. The forest around us had gone unnervingly still, the way it did right before a storm no birdsong, no wind, just the two of us and the bond thrumming low and insistent between our chests like a second heartbeat neither of us had agreed to share.

Then, footsteps.

Rhys emerged from the treeline, unhurried, hands loose at his sides in a way that somehow still read as a warning. His grey eyes swept the guards, then Kaelan's hand on my arm, and I watched something in his jaw tighten, the only outward sign of the fury I sensed rolling off him in waves.

"Alpha Prince." Rhys's voice was courteous. Deadly courteous. "You're on my border."

"She's mine," Kaelan said. "That takes precedence over borders."

"She rejected you." Rhys's eyes didn't leave Kaelan's face. "Or did I mishear the ceremony? I could have sworn I heard the word 'fatass' before the laughing started."

A muscle jumped in Kaelan's cheek. For the first time, I saw something other than arrogance in him a flash of something almost like shame, quickly buried.

"That doesn't sever a bond," Kaelan said stiffly. "You know the law as well as I do."

"I know the law says a claimed mate can choose sanctuary if her Alpha's household presents a credible threat to her safety." Rhys finally looked at me. His voice gentled, just slightly. "Ivy. Do you feel safe with him right now?"

I looked down at the bruise forming under Kaelan's fingers.

"No," I said.

Kaelan's hand fell away like he'd been burned.

The silence that followed was worse than any argument. I watched something crumple behind his golden eyes not defeat, exactly. Recognition. Like he was seeing, for the first time, exactly what he looked like from the outside.

"Ivy"

"Don't." I stepped back, putting myself half a pace closer to Rhys without fully deciding to. "You don't get to grab me in the woods and call it love, Kaelan. You had your chance to choose me in front of everyone. You chose to make a joke instead."

His throat worked. For a moment I thought he might actually apologise and some small, humiliating part of me wanted him to, wanted it so badly it scared me.

He didn't.

"This isn't over," he said instead, and the words sounded less like a threat and more like something he was trying to convince himself of. He turned, guards falling in around him, and disappeared back into the trees the way he'd come.

I didn't realise I was shaking until Rhys's hand hovered near my shoulder, not touching, just close, an offer instead of a demand.

"You're safe," he said quietly. "Come on. Let's get you inside."

I let him lead me toward Sterling territory, my bag heavy on my shoulder, the bruise on my arm already darkening. But it wasn't the bruise I kept thinking about.

It was the way Kaelan's power had felt when his hand was on me, not strong, the way I'd expected an Alpha Prince's to feel.

It had felt like it was flickering.

Like a candle burning down to nothing.