Chapter 24

Ivy didn't think. She moved.

The woman's hand closed around something at her belt, and Ivy's new sense screamed loud enough to drown out every other thought in her head — not a warning this time, but a direction, pulling her body sideways a half second before a dart hissed past where her throat had just been.

"Kade!" The name tore out of her, loud, desperate, and she felt something strange happen the instant she said it — not just sound traveling through air, but something deeper, a pull along the bond itself, like she'd yanked a cord tied straight to his chest.

The woman lunged again. Ivy caught her wrist on pure instinct, that hum in her chest sharpening into something almost like sight, showing her the attack before it fully landed. She twisted hard, more strength in her arms than she'd ever had before this week, and sent the woman stumbling back into the rose bushes.

More shapes moved in the shadows past the garden wall. Two, then three, closing in fast.

Ivy backed toward the house, heart slamming, that new awareness screaming warnings from every direction at once, more than she knew how to sort through.

Then Kade was there.

He came over the garden wall like he hadn't bothered with the gate at all, already mid-change, gold eyes blazing in a face that was more animal than man by the time his feet hit the ground. He hit the nearest attacker before the man had time to turn, and the fight that followed lasted only seconds — fast, brutal, over almost before Ivy's eyes could track it.

Rhys arrived a breath later, security at his back, and between the two of them the garden went from chaos to silence in less than a minute. The woman who'd approached first lay pinned under Rhys's knee, cursing in a language Ivy didn't know. Two others were already restrained. A fourth had run.

Kade turned back into himself, breathing hard, and crossed the garden to Ivy in three strides, hands running over her shoulders, her face, checking for damage he clearly expected to find.

"I'm okay," she said, before he could ask. "I felt it coming. I actually felt it, Kade, before she even moved."

"You called for me."

"I didn't know I could do that."

"Neither did I." Something in his face had gone raw, stripped down to something Ivy hadn't seen even in the clearing that first night. "I was two buildings away, running drills. I heard you like you were standing right next to me."

Odalys arrived moments later, out of breath, taking in the restrained attackers with a grim, weary expression that held no surprise in it at all.

"Thorne moved faster than I feared," she said. "I'll deal with my own people. This is mine to answer for, not yours."

"Deal with them after tonight," Kade said. "Right now I need every able body focused on one thing."

A horn sounded somewhere across the compound, low and long, carrying easily through the cooling night air. Ivy felt it land in her chest like a physical weight.

"Moonrise," Odalys said quietly. "In one hour."

Kade looked at Ivy, torn in a way she'd never seen from him before — the fight with Damon waiting, the danger to her not fully resolved, both demanding him at once.

"Go," Ivy said, before he could say it himself. "I'll be surrounded by security. I can feel danger coming now, remember? I'll be safer than I've been all week."

"I don't want to leave you like this."

"I don't want you to lose this pack because you were standing in a garden with me instead." She took his face in both hands, steady despite everything her body was still shaking from. "Win this fight, Kade. Come back to me after. That's the only plan I need from you right now."

Something fierce and grateful moved across his face, and he kissed her once, hard and quick, like a promise neither of them had time to say out loud.

"Rhys," he said, already turning toward the training grounds, voice sharpening back into command. "Triple the watch on her. Nobody gets near this garden again tonight."

"Already moving," Rhys said.

Kade looked back once more at Ivy, amber eyes holding hers across the torn-up rose bushes and the restrained attackers and everything else this impossible night had already thrown at both of them.

"One hour," he said. "Then it's Damon and me, and everything this pack's ever going to be."

He turned and ran for the clearing, and Ivy stood in the ruined garden with her heart in her throat, watching him go, praying to whatever god watched over werewolves and Ashgrove blood alike that an hour would be enough time for either of them to be ready.