Chapter 17

They drove back to the compound in silence, the box of letters locked in the trunk, the little Ashgrove disc still warm in Ivy's closed fist like she couldn't make herself let go of it.

"The hearing's tomorrow," Ivy said finally, watching the trees blur past. "We have one night to figure out what we're even walking in there with."

"I know." Kade's hands were tight on the wheel. "And I don't think we can walk in there with the whole truth. Not yet."

"Why not? If it proves my bloodline isn't even part of your succession law—"

"Because the second the council hears the word Ashgrove, they're not going to hear 'this doesn't apply to us.' They're going to hear 'the pack my grandfather destroyed sent someone to break into her mother's house two days ago.'" Kade's jaw was tight. "Fear doesn't reason well, Ivy. If they think you're connected to something out for revenge against this pack, it won't matter that you didn't ask for any of it. They'll see a threat wearing a familiar face."

"So we hide it."

"We hold it back. For now. Until we understand more of what we're dealing with." He glanced at her, apologetic already. "I know that's the same kind of choice I made about the mate bond. I know how that sounds coming from me."

"It sounds," Ivy said slowly, "like you're finally asking instead of deciding for me."

"I am asking."

She thought about it, turning the little disc over in her fingers, feeling the old worn edges of a promise made sixty years before she was born.

"Okay," she said. "We hold it back. But Kade — if it comes out anyway, and it looks like we hid it on purpose, that's going to look so much worse than if we'd just told the truth from the start."

"I know. I'm hoping we have more time than that."

Neither of them said the rest of it out loud — that hoping wasn't the same as knowing, and that so far, this week, hoping hadn't gotten either of them very far at all.

Rhys was waiting at the gate when they pulled in, tense in a way that made Ivy's stomach drop before he'd said a single word.

"Elena's back," he said. "She's shaken but okay. Damon's lawyer questioned her for almost two hours before Kade's people got word and pulled her out." He fell into step beside them as they walked toward the house. "She wants to talk to you. Both of you. Says it's urgent."

They found Elena in the small sitting room off the library, wrapped in a blanket despite the warm night, hands cupped around a mug of tea she wasn't drinking.

"I'm sorry," she said, the second they walked in, before either of them could speak. "I went looking for the registry myself because I wanted to hand you proof before Damon could twist it. I didn't think it through. I got caught, and now he knows more than he did before, and that's on me."

"What exactly does he know?" Kade asked.

"That there's a bloodline question at all. That it goes back further than just the mate bond." Elena's hands tightened around the mug. "He doesn't have the letters. He doesn't have the pendant. But he knows enough to ask the right questions in that hearing tomorrow, and Kade — he's not going in there alone. He's retained outside counsel. Someone who specializes in inheritance law across pack lines. That's not cheap, and that's not something you do unless you're planning to make a real legal argument, not just political theater."

"How solid is his case, if he doesn't have the actual evidence?"

"Solid enough that the council will take it seriously," Elena said. "Solid enough that if you walk in tomorrow with nothing but denial, you'll lose ground you can't get back before the child is even born."

Ivy felt the little disc still pressed into her palm, warm, heavy with sixty years of a promise she hadn't asked to inherit.

"Then we don't walk in with denial," she said slowly. "We walk in with something Damon doesn't have. We just don't hand him the whole picture until we know exactly how he's going to use it."

Kade looked at her, something like pride moving across his tired face. "That's a dangerous game."

"Everything about this week has been a dangerous game," Ivy said. "I'd rather play it on purpose than keep getting caught flat-footed by it."

Elena set down her mug, studying Ivy with an expression that had shifted, somewhere in the last few days, from cold assessment into something closer to respect.

"Then you'd better decide fast," she said. "Because the hearing starts at noon, and Damon isn't going to wait for either of you to feel ready."