Chapter 4

At the restaurant, Mia settled beside her parents and smiled up at Keller.

“Take one more of us? Once I’m up north, I’ll only have pictures to look at when I miss you.”

Keller raised his phone, but his smile faded as he saw the twenty-seven missed calls on the screen, all from Ivy.

“I need to go back.”

Mia caught his sleeve.

“She’s still angry. If you go now, she’ll just start crying and asking why you took my side.”

“Twenty-seven.” Keller stared at her. “She’s never called this many times.”

Their mother set down her spoon and reached for the moonstone at her throat.

“Are her eyes hurting again? You did take her glasses back, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Mia said without hesitation. “And I asked a classmate to keep an eye on her. Mom, the academy’s full of people. What do you think is going to happen?”

Their father handed the server Ivy’s bowl of soup, which had begun to cool, and asked for it to be reheated.

“Call her first. Not being able to see makes her anxious.”

When Keller called back and heard the automated message saying her phone was switched off, he suddenly remembered that he still hadn’t reopened their mate link. Between taking photos, driving, ordering dinner, and Mia constantly calling for him, he had forgotten it completely. He dropped the barrier at once, expecting complaints or tears, but even the faint, familiar sense of Ivy’s emotions was gone. His wolf sprang to its feet, a restless growl rising deep inside his mind. Keller pressed a hand to his chest, his expression changing.

Ivy’s mother reopened her family link too. “Ivy?” she called, then tried again, but there was nothing on the other end.

“Maybe she’s blocked you too,” Mia said quietly. “You shut her out earlier. Now she wants you to worry.”

Their father, already gripping the back of his chair, hesitated at those words.

“She’s never done this before, even when she’s been upset.”

“Hasn’t she been like this for a while now?” Mia asked, her eyes filling with tears. “Should I go and beg her on my knees? If that’s what it takes for her to forgive me, I won’t go north. I don’t need the award…”

This time, instead of comforting her, Keller turned to Ivy’s mother, his voice tight.

“When exactly is the healer from the North coming? Didn’t you say last month that you’d arranged it?”

She avoided his eyes.

“He wanted to look over her old treatment records again. Ivy’s been getting around on her own lately, so I thought I could focus on Mia’s graduation first…”

“So there’s no appointment?”

No one answered. Keller remembered Ivy telling him through the link that her eyes hurt and that the project was hers. He had seen those drawings himself; before she was hurt, he had sat beside her sharpening an entire box of pencils while she bent over her desk sketching the Moon Goddess. Yet tonight, he had told her to wait until after the show. He grabbed his car keys and pushed Mia’s hand away.

“I’m going to get her.”

Their father stood too, picking up Ivy’s coat, which had been draped over his chair the whole time.

“We’ll come with you.”

Just then, Keller’s phone rang, and Mia visibly relaxed at the sight of Ivy’s name on the screen.

“See? I told you she was just upset. She’s waiting for you to make a fuss over her.”

Keller answered at once, his voice much gentler now.

“Ivy, don’t be scared. I’m on my way. Stay right where you are.”

But the voice on the other end belonged to a man he didn’t know.

“Are you Ivy Gray’s mate?”

Keller tightened his grip on the phone.

“Yes. Where is she? Why do you have her phone?”

“I’m one of the Duskwood Pack’s on-duty warriors. The crew clearing the academy theater found a female wolf in the prop storage room beneath the stage.”

As Ivy’s mother stepped forward, the tinted glasses slipped from her hand and hit the floor. Keller heard the man pause.

“A silver spear pierced her heart, and the healer has pronounced her dead. We’ve just plugged in her phone and found you listed as her emergency contact.”

He paused again before saying, “Please come to the academy immediately to identify your mate’s body.”