Chapter 23

Corin wouldn't talk. Not at first, not even after an hour of Odalys speaking to him low and fast in a language Ivy didn't understand a word of, her voice shifting between pleading and furious and back again.

"He answers to someone named Thorne," Odalys said finally, straightening, exhaustion carved deep into her face. "A faction within what's left of our people. Younger, angrier, tired of waiting for diplomacy to hand back what was taken by force."

"Taken back how?" Kade asked.

"Thorne doesn't believe Ashgrove needs Voss permission to exist again. He believes it needs Voss territory. All of it, eventually, starting with whatever leverage this child represents." Odalys's jaw tightened. "I thought I'd convinced the faction to wait. I was wrong. Corin here was sent to make sure the challenge fight ends in enough chaos that Thorne's people can move while everyone's distracted watching Damon and Kade try to kill each other."

Ivy's stomach turned to ice. "Move how? Move where?"

"Toward you," Odalys said quietly. "And the child. Thorne doesn't see you as someone to protect, Ivy. He sees you as a claim to be secured. A symbol he can use to rally the rest of Ashgrove around him, whether you consent to it or not."

The room went very quiet.

"So during the fight," Kade said slowly, "while I'm trying to keep this pack from falling to Damon, someone's going to try to take Ivy."

"That's my fear, yes."

"Then we change the plan." Kade turned to Rhys, voice hard and fast now, already three steps ahead. "Double security around Ivy, starting tonight, not just during the fight. Nobody gets near her I haven't personally cleared."

"That's not enough," Odalys said. "Thorne's people will expect security. They'll plan around it. What you need is someone who can feel them coming before they're close enough to matter."

Every eye in the room turned toward Ivy.

"Me," she said slowly. "You want me to use whatever this is. During the actual fight."

"I want you safe," Kade said immediately. "That's not the same thing as putting you in the middle of—"

"I'm already in the middle of it, Kade. I have been since the day I signed that contract." Ivy stood, feeling steadier than she probably had any right to feel. "If Thorne's people are going to come for me regardless of what precautions you take, I'd rather be able to feel them coming than sit somewhere safe and helpless, waiting to find out if the precautions worked."

"It's dangerous."

"Everything about this month has been dangerous." She met his eyes, steady. "I'd rather be dangerous back."

They found her an hour before moonrise, alone in the garden where she'd first met Damon, trying to settle the buzzing static that had been building under her skin all evening.

A woman waited by the roses. Not Odalys. Someone younger, hard-eyed, a symbol tattooed along her collarbone that matched the crescent-and-tree from the pendant exactly.

"You're not supposed to be here," Ivy said, that new awareness already screaming a warning she hadn't needed it to give her.

"I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be." The woman's voice was calm, almost gentle, which made it worse. "Thorne sent me ahead. Not to hurt you. To offer you a choice before things get complicated tonight."

"I'm not interested."

"You will be, once you hear it." The woman stepped closer, unhurried. "Come with me now, quietly, before the fighting starts. Thorne will protect you and the child properly — not as some bargaining chip in Voss politics, but as what you actually are. Ashgrove blood, finally coming home."

"This is my home. Right here."

"Is it?" The woman tilted her head, something almost pitying in her expression. "A week ago you didn't know any of this existed. A week from now, if Damon wins that fight, you'll be a widow's problem in someone else's pack, carrying a child nobody there will want alive. Thorne is offering you certainty. Voss is offering you a coin flip."

Ivy felt the pull of her own new instincts sharpen, that low hum turning into something closer to alarm, and somewhere behind the woman, in the shadows past the garden wall, she felt more of them. Not one. Several.

"You're not here to ask," Ivy said slowly, understanding landing cold and clear all at once. "You're here to take me either way. The choice was never real."

The woman's calm expression didn't change, which was its own kind of answer.

"I was hoping you'd make this easy," she said, and reached for something at her belt. "It's a shame you didn't."