Chapter 4

Elena's tour lasted maybe fifteen minutes and felt more like a warning than anything else. This wing. That door, locked, don't ask. Kitchen staff eat at six, don't be late if you want anything hot. Then she left, heels loud on the hardwood, and Ivy sat alone in a room bigger than her whole apartment, looking at a closet full of clothes in her exact size that she definitely hadn't packed.

She didn't touch them yet.

She sat on the edge of a bed that probably cost more than her car and watched the light outside go from gold to orange to something darker, and tried not to think about the word tonight.

Kade knocked at seven.

"You didn't eat," he said. Not a question.

"Wasn't hungry."

"You need to eat. Matters more tonight than most nights." He was holding a tray she hadn't noticed. Simple food — bread, soup, nothing fancy. "Can I come in?"

She let him in because she didn't know what else to do with her hands.

He set the tray down and sat in the chair across from the bed, same posture as the clinic, elbows on knees, like it was the only way he knew how to take up less space.

"Tell me what happens," Ivy said. "All of it. Not the nice version."

"There's a clearing about a mile from here. Old ground. Pack's used it for this since before the house was built." He watched her while he talked, careful. "At moonrise I change. You don't need to be scared of that part — the ritual only works once I'm fully shifted, and even then it's still me. Not like the movies."

"And after that?"

"After that the bond takes over. Neither of us controls it once it starts." A pause. "You need to know that going in. Once it takes hold you can't just stop halfway. If you have any doubt, tonight's the night to say it. Not tomorrow."

Ivy looked at her hands. "Does it hurt?"

"No." Fast. Sure. "It doesn't hurt. I wouldn't let it."

"You say that like you get a say."

"I get exactly one choice in this whole thing," Kade said. "Whether I let you walk out that door right now, full f*e, contract be damned, or whether I let you go through with something you're not sure about. I'd rather lose the heir. I need you to actually believe that, not just hear it."

Something in his voice made her look up. He meant it. That scared her more than the ritual did.

"I'm not backing out," Ivy said. "I just needed to hear you say it wasn't a trap."

"It's not a trap." He stood, offered a hand she didn't need and took anyway. "Just the truth. Truth's strange tonight, that's all."

The clearing looked exactly like he'd described it. Packed dirt, worn smooth. A ring of trees so tall the sky overhead came down to a small dark circle. A few pack members stood back at the treeline, quiet, not looking at her much.

Kade took off his shirt, handed it to a man who wouldn't meet Ivy's eyes, and walked out to the middle of the clearing alone.

The moon came up over the trees right on time.

The change took longer this time. Ivy made herself watch it. His shoulders went first, then everything else, and his eyes stayed the same color the whole way through — the only part of him that didn't turn into something else. He was big. Dark. Breathing hard in the cold, watching her the same way he had in the clinic. Waiting to see if she'd run.

She didn't.

"Your turn," said the man who'd taken Kade's shirt. Quiet. Not unkind. "Walk to the middle. He won't move until you do. He never does."

Her legs went before she'd decided anything.

Up close he was huge and warm and smelled like woodsmoke. She reached out and put her hand flat on his shoulder — rough fur, soft underneath — and felt him go still under her palm.

Then something happened low in her chest. Not a metaphor. A real, physical pull, like something had hooked into her and yanked once. Heat everywhere, fast, more than she'd felt from anything in her life, and she heard herself make a sound she didn't recognize as her own voice.

That's the last clear thing she remembered before morning.

She woke at dawn wrapped in a blanket that smelled like him. Kade sat a few feet away, human again, back against a tree, watching the sky get lighter. He looked like he hadn't slept.

"Hey," Ivy said. Voice rough.

"Hey." He didn't move closer. "How do you feel?"

"Strange." She sat up slow, testing the word. "Good-strange. Wasn't ready for it to feel like that."

"Neither was I," Kade said, quiet, and something in how he said it made her go still.

"That's not normal? For you?"

He didn't answer right away. The silence went on long enough that Ivy's stomach dropped before he even opened his mouth.

Behind them, two pack members from the night before were talking low, too far to hear words, close enough that Ivy caught the shape of it anyway. Surprise. Urgent. One of them glanced back at Kade and Ivy with a look that was basically a question nobody wanted to ask out loud.

"Kade." Ivy said it flat. "What aren't you telling me."

He looked at her a long moment, jaw tight. She watched him decide to lie.

"It's nothing. Just talk." He held out his hand. "Come on, you should eat before we walk back."

She took his hand. Told herself she believed him.

She didn't.