Chapter 3

Margaret Marsh had a pen in her hand instead of a pencil when Ivy walked in, working the crossword, which meant she was feeling good today. Or stubborn. Usually both.

"You look like you saw a ghost. Seven letters, starts with T. Unexpected windfall."

"Treasure doesn't fit."

"It's eight. I counted." Margaret looked up then, actually looked, and whatever she saw made her put the pen down slow. "Ivy."

"I got a job."

"You have two jobs."

"A third one. Temporary. Good money." Ivy sat on the edge of the bed and took her mom's hand because she needed somewhere to look that wasn't her mom's face. "It's out of town. I'd be gone a while. Months, maybe."

"How much money."

"Enough for the house. Enough that you don't have to think about the letters anymore. Any of it."

Margaret didn't say anything for a second. She was better at quiet than Ivy was, which right now was inconvenient, because Ivy could tell she was thinking and had no idea which way it was going to go.

"What job pays like that," Margaret said finally, "and needs you gone for months, and makes you come home looking like that."

"Mom—"

"I'm dying, sweetheart. I'm not stupid." She said it gently. It still landed hard. "Those are two different things. If this is dangerous—"

"It's not dangerous." Mostly true. "It's private. I can't tell you the details. I need you to trust me on this one."

Her mother looked at her a long moment. Then let it go, the way she always did lately, not because she believed it but because she'd decided a while back that trusting Ivy mattered more than winning an argument from a hospital bed.

"Okay," she said. "Bring me something back. Not a gift. Just come back. That's the gift."

Ivy put her forehead against her mother's hand and didn't cry, because crying felt like admitting something out loud she wasn't ready to say, not even alone in this room.

The next three days were a blur, the bad kind.

She quit the second job over the phone. Gave two weeks' notice at the first one she already knew she'd never work. Spent one whole evening on her friend Dani's couch getting side-eyed over wine Ivy barely touched.

"A surrogacy job," Dani said. Third time. Like saying it again might make it sound less crazy. "For a client you can't tell me about. Paying you two hundred grand."

"That's the deal."

"Ivy. That's not a job."

"It's rent. Mom's meds. The house. Every red envelope that's shown up since March." Ivy pulled her knees up, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the time. "I already signed. It's done."

"Are you scared?"

She thought about a locked door, and a man who'd stopped being a man for half a second, and how none of that was information she was allowed to give Dani, even though she wanted to. Badly.

"A little," she said. True enough.

Dani didn't push. Just refilled the glass and let her crash on the couch instead of driving home at midnight, which a week ago she'd have made Ivy do anyway.

The car came at nine. Black SUV, windows tinted dark enough that Ivy couldn't see the driver until she was already in the back seat. He didn't talk. She didn't try.

Two hours north, then off the highway onto roads that kept narrowing, kept getting greener, until her phone gave up entirely and just showed a gray screen with no bars. The trees got taller. Older. The kind that looked like nobody had ever tried to sell them to a developer and lived.

Then the gate. Iron, maybe twelve feet, set into a stone wall running off into the trees in both directions. No sign anywhere. No call box she could find. It just opened, and the car rolled through onto gravel, winding up through the trees toward a house Ivy could only half see yet.

Dark timber. A lot of glass. A roofline that looked older than the rest of it.

Kade was on the front steps. Not alone.

The woman next to him had her blond hair pulled back so tight it looked like it hurt, and she watched the car come up the whole drive without her face moving once. Ivy immediately felt every coffee stain on her own sneakers.

"That's Elena," the driver said. First and only thing he said the whole trip. "Kade's sister-in-law. Watch yourself."

The car stopped. Kade was down the steps before Ivy had her door open, which she noticed and didn't let herself think too hard about.

"You came," he said, and something in it made her pulse do something stupid at nine in the morning in a gravel driveway two hours from anywhere she knew.

"I said I would."

"People say a lot of things at a signing table they don't mean by the drive up." He held the door, offered a hand she took before deciding to. "Wasn't sure you'd still be one of them."

Elena hadn't moved. Hadn't smiled. Just watched Ivy's face like she was deciding whether to be jealous or disgusted and hadn't landed on one yet.

"Ivy," Kade said. "This is Elena. She'll get you settled while I finish some things. We'll talk before tonight."

"Tonight?" Ivy's stomach dropped straight through the gravel. "I thought the moon wasn't full for another—"

"It's full tonight." Quiet. Watching her face for the fear he clearly expected, and clearly hated seeing show up. "I should've told you in the car. Didn't want you dreading the whole drive."

Elena's mouth curved. Thin. Cold. First expression she'd bothered with since the car came up the drive.

"Welcome to the pack," she said, in a voice that made the words mean the opposite. "Let's get you settled before the sun goes down. You're going to want every hour you can get."