Chapter 9

The hall erupted into noise all at once, voices stacking on top of voices, and Ivy stood in the middle of it feeling like the floor had opened up beneath her feet.

Kade didn't deny it.

That was the part that landed hardest. Not the word itself, fated mate, strange and heavy and suddenly everywhere in the room. It was the silence after Damon said it. Kade didn't argue. Didn't correct him. Just stood there, jaw tight, hand still holding hers, saying nothing at all.

"Is it true?" Ivy asked, quiet, only for him.

Kade looked at her, and the answer was already on his face before he said a single word.

"Yes."

"You knew. At the clinic. You told me that already." Her voice was shaking now, and she hated that it was shaking in front of thirty strangers, but she couldn't make it stop. "You let the whole pack believe I was just a surrogate. You let me believe it, mostly, until this morning."

"Ivy—"

"Not here." She pulled her hand free of his. "Not in front of all these people."

She turned and walked out of the hall, fast, not looking back, and nobody stopped her. She heard Kade's voice behind her, low, telling someone to handle the council, and then his footsteps following her down the hallway.

"Ivy. Please."

"Please what?" She spun around at the base of the stairs, all the fear and fury from the last four days finally boiling over at once. "Please forgive you for lying to me twice now? Once at the clinic, and once just now, in front of your entire pack, when you could have told me privately and chose to let Damon say it for you instead?"

"I didn't choose that."

"You didn't stop it either."

Kade didn't have an answer for that. Ivy watched him not have one, and something in her chest cracked a little wider.

"I need space," she said. "Real space. Not the kind where you follow me to my room and explain yourself through the door."

"Okay." His voice was quiet, careful, like he was talking to something wounded. "I'll give you that. But Ivy — whatever you're feeling about me right now, please don't let it make you leave the property. It's not safe out there for you today. Not with what Damon just did in that hall."

"I'm not leaving," Ivy said. "I'm going to my room. Alone."

She walked up the stairs without looking back again, and this time, he let her go.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at nothing, replaying the sound of her own voice shaking in front of a room full of strangers. She felt stupid for being surprised. She felt worse for not being surprised enough.

A knock came at the door an hour later. Soft. Not Kade's knock.

"It's Elena," said a voice through the wood. "I'm not here to fight with you. Can I come in?"

Ivy almost said no. Curiosity won out over pride, barely.

"Fine."

Elena stepped in and closed the door behind her, and for the first time since Ivy had arrived at this house, she didn't look cold at all. She looked tired. Older than she had at breakfast.

"I owe you an apology," Elena said. "Not for today. For every day before it. I've been horrible to you since you got here, and you didn't deserve any of it."

"Why now?"

"Because I watched Damon use you as a weapon in that hall, and I realized I've been doing something similar in smaller ways since the moment you arrived." Elena sat, uninvited, in the chair by the window. "I lost my husband three years ago. I was supposed to be Luna. I'd built my whole life around that, and then he died, and Kade never remarried, and some part of me kept hoping the position might still find its way back to me eventually. Watching you walk in and take it without even trying — it made me cruel. That's on me, not you."

Ivy didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

"There's something else," Elena said, after a moment, quieter now. "Something you should probably know, given how fast this bond took hold. It's not common knowledge. I only know because I looked into it myself, back when I still thought I might have a claim."

"What is it?"

"A true mate bond taking effect after a single pairing — it's rare, but it's not unheard of, and it's not usually random when it happens that fast." Elena met her eyes, steady now, no cruelty left in it at all. "It usually means there's wolf blood somewhere on the human side too. Buried. Forgotten, maybe, on purpose. Do you know anything about your family, Ivy? Further back than your parents?"

Ivy's mouth went dry.

"My grandmother," she said slowly. "My mom never talks about her. She died before I was born. There was always something off about the way the family mentioned her — like there was a story nobody wanted to finish telling."

Elena's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes sharpened.

"I think," she said, "you and I need to find out exactly what that story is. Before Damon does it for us."