Chapter 21

Kade didn't sleep that night. Ivy knew because she didn't either, and somewhere around two in the morning she gave up pretending and found him in the library, staring at a map of the training grounds like it might tell him something it hadn't already told him a hundred times.

"You should rest," she said.

"So should you."

"Neither of us is going to, so let's stop pretending." She sat across from him, the same chair everyone in this house seemed to prefer, and studied his face in the low lamplight. "Tell me what happens if you lose."

Kade was quiet for a long moment. "Damon takes the seat. Pack law transfers everything with it — the territory, the council, the succession claim itself."

"And me? The baby?"

"You'd be protected. I'd make sure of that before the fight, not after." His jaw tightened. "But protected isn't the same as safe. Damon's never hidden how he feels about an Ashgrove bloodline sitting this close to real power. I don't know what kind of alpha he'd be to a child he sees as a threat to everything he just fought to win."

Ivy's stomach turned cold. "So if you lose, we might have to run."

"If you lose," Kade said quietly, "I need you to run. Immediately. Don't wait to see how bad it gets before you decide that."

"That's not a plan, that's you preparing to lose."

"It's me preparing for the worst so I can actually focus on winning." He rubbed both hands over his face, tired in a way that went deeper than one sleepless night. "I haven't fought Damon since we were teenagers. He was faster than me then. I don't know if that's still true."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Train. Starting tomorrow, every hour I'm not doing something else." He looked at her, something rawer showing through than she'd seen from him yet. "I need you to know something first, though. Whatever happens in that fight — winning, losing, any of it — the last week with you is the only part of my life since my parents died that's actually felt like it belonged to me instead of the pack. I needed to say that, in case I don't get another chance to."

Ivy crossed the room before she'd decided to move, and took his face in both hands, and kissed him slow and certain in a way that had nothing to do with contracts or bonds or full moons at all.

"You're not losing," she said, when they finally broke apart. "I didn't come this far, and find out I'm apparently werewolf royalty, just to watch you hand this pack to a man who smiles like that."

Something that was almost a laugh escaped him, rough and surprised. "That's your plan? Sheer stubbornness?"

"It's worked for me so far this week."

Rhys found them there an hour later, grim-faced, a folder tucked under one arm.

"You need to see this before you start training tomorrow," he said, setting the folder on the table between them. "I had people looking into Damon's movements the last few months, after the council meeting. Wanted to know if there was more to his confidence than just ambition."

Kade opened the folder. Inside, photographs — grainy, taken from a distance, showing Damon meeting with a man neither Ivy nor Kade recognized, broad-shouldered, unfamiliar markings tattooed along one forearm.

"Who is that?"

"A fighter," Rhys said. "Not pack. A mercenary who trains alphas for challenge combat, quietly, off the books, for packs willing to pay enough to keep it quiet. He's expensive. He's also very, very good."

Kade's face went hard. "Damon's been training with a professional. For months."

"Since before the council even met the first time," Rhys said. "I think this was always his plan, Kade. The legitimacy hearing was never really about winning in that hall. I think he knew it might fail. I think he wanted it to fail, publicly, humiliatingly enough that a challenge would look like the only honorable option left to him."

Ivy felt the floor tilt under her all over again.

"He planned this from the start," she said slowly. "The council. The registry. All of it. Just to get you into a fight he's been preparing for for months."

Kade closed the folder, hands steady despite everything, and looked up at both of them with something cold and certain settling into his face.

"Then I have three days," he said, "to catch up on months of preparation I didn't know I needed. Rhys — clear my schedule. Everything. I want every hour between now and the full moon."

"And Damon's mercenary?"

"Find out everything you can about him," Kade said. "If he trained Damon, there's a weakness in that training somewhere. Nobody teaches someone to fight without also teaching them exactly how they like to be beaten."