Mated to the Alpha's Brother, Guarded by My Enemy

Ivy's POVThe wolves are watching me unpack.Not literally, but the two Pack sentries stationed outside my bedroom door haven't moved in forty minutes, and every time I cross near the window I catch the shift of their shoulders and the slight turn of their heads. I hang the last of my clothes in the carved wooden wardrobe and try to look like a woman who isn't counting exits.Ashveil is nothing like home. Home is underground in neon and concrete and the permanent smell of generator fuel and ambition. This place is timber and firelight and mountain air so clean it almost hurts to breathe. My bedroom alone is bigger than the entire floor I shared with two other girls back in the Syndicate compound. Stone walls. A window that looks out onto a forest that goes on forever.It's beautiful but I hate it. I hate it because beautiful things in my experience always come with a price tag I find out about too late, and I hate it because I've been here less than six hours and I can already fee

Ivy's POVI don't answer him.I straighten up, let go of the railing, and put my hands back in my jacket pockets. "I'm tired," I say, "That's all it was."Caelum looks at me for a moment. He doesn't push. He just nods slowly."Goodnight, Ivy," he says.I go inside but I don't sleep.***Morning in Ashveil arrives without asking. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and catalogue everything I know.Facts. Start with facts.I am in Ashveil Pack territory. I am here for one year on my father's terms. My job is to be present, cooperative, and unproblematic while the treaty holds. I have one objective, and no margin for complications.That's the list.Caelum Dusk asking me how long I've been feeling it in the dark at half past midnight is not on the list. Neither is the way my body moved toward that howl before I told it to.I get up, wash my face with cold water, and decide that both things are going to stay firmly off the list until I understand them better. Understanding first. Fe

Ivy's POVI don't sleep again.I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and listen to the lodge settle around me and think about twigs snapping on empty paths. About the fact that Rook has been trained by the same people who trained me and we both know that if he wanted to follow someone through dark territory without being heard, no one would hear him.He would know that I know.That's the thing about Rook and me; we have always operated in the space of things we don't say out loud.***Rook is already in the great hall when I come down.This is notable because Rook doesn't do communal breakfasts. In eight years I have never once seen him voluntarily sit in a room full of people eating. He survives on coffee and whatever is available to be eaten while standing over a kitchen counter, preferably alone.I get food and sit across from him.He looks up and we lock gazes, the way we always do; the conversation that happens before the conversation, the one where we establish what we alrea

Ivy's POVI find Maren at dawn.She's already at her workbench when I walk in, sleeves rolled up and hair pinned back. She looks up and reads my face in about two seconds."Sit," she says.I sit. She puts something hot in front of me without asking and goes back to what she's doing and lets the silence be what it is. She doesn't rush at things; instead, she lets them arrive."My father knew," I say, when the warmth has reached my hands, "what I am. He knew before he sent me here."Maren's hands slow on the workbench, slide slightly."How long have you known?" I ask. "About me."She turns around and leans back against the bench and looks at me with eyes that are somehow both honest and gentle at the same time."I suspected the first morning," she says, "when I brought you tea and you hadn't slept and the moon was still two days out and you already had that look.""What look?""Like something inside you was knocking on a door." She pauses. "I've seen it once before. A late bloomer. But

Ivy's POVRook talks for a long time.Not the way most people talk. He speaks in the flat precise way he does everything, laying facts down like cards on a table. It starts three months ago.Before the treaty was announced. Before I was told anything. My father called Rook into a private meeting. My father sat in one chair and said, I need something from you that isn't in your job description."What did he say exactly?" I ask when Rook pauses."He said he had a daughter who was going to be more valuable than she knew," Rook's voice is even. Careful. Like he's making sure I get the exact words, "He said the Pack would recognize what she was before she did. He said he needed someone inside the territory who could manage the timeline.""Manage the timeline," I repeat."His words.""What timeline?" I say."He didn't specify. He said I'd know it when it started," Rook pauses, "I think he meant the awakening.""He knew it would happen here," I say."He knew it would happen faster here. Ful