Chapter Forty-Three

Ivy took the stairs two at a time.

She hit the nursery door with her shoulder and nearly fell inside. The room was warm and bright. Margaret sat in the rocking chair by the window with Rowan on her lap, holding a wooden block out of his reach and laughing at him.

"Easy," Margaret said, looking up. "You'll wake the whole house."

Ivy didn't answer. She crossed the room, scooped Rowan up, and held him against her chest so tight he squawked. He smelled like milk and soap. He was fine. He was completely fine.

"Ivy." Margaret stood slowly. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Not yet." Ivy's voice shook. "Mom, I need you to stay right here. Don't leave this room. Don't open the door for anyone but me or Kade."

Margaret looked at her for a long moment. Then she sat back down and folded her hands in her lap.

"I've been through worse than a locked door," she said. "Go."

Kade was already in the hallway. Rhys was behind him, talking fast into a radio, and two guards had taken up places on either side of the nursery door.

"Every gate is locked," Rhys said. "Every patrol is doubled. Nobody comes in or out until I say so."

"How did he get to Priya before we even knew?" Ivy asked. "The Warden. How did he know where to look?"

"He didn't know where to look," Kade said. "He knew who to ask. Priya ran my screenings. Of course he started with her."

"Then he knows we're connected to the clinic."

"He's known that since the day you walked in," Kade said. His jaw was tight. "I just didn't know he was watching."

They gathered in the study an hour later. Odalys, Wren, Rhys, Elena, and Damon, who had driven up from the border pack the moment he heard. He looked tired. He sat down near the door and said nothing until Kade asked him to.

"Tell me what you know about the Vance family," Kade said.

"Not much," Damon said. "I've heard the name. Old money, old land. They keep to themselves." He rubbed his eyes. "When I was building the legitimacy case against you, my lawyer mentioned a man who could get sealed pack records for a price. He never gave a name. I never asked."

"Did you pay him?"

"I paid someone." Damon looked up. "I think it might have been a Vance."

Nobody spoke.

"So he helped you find Ivy's registry file," Odalys said slowly. "He gave you the one weapon that would hurt us most. And he sold it to you cheap."

"Cheap," Damon said, and gave a short, bitter laugh. "He practically handed it over. I thought I was being clever. I was being used."

"You were being steered," Kade said. "So was I. So was all of us."

Rhys's radio crackled. He listened, then crossed the room and handed Kade a small paper envelope.

"A guard found this at the front gate. Nobody saw who left it. It wasn't there ten minutes ago."

Kade opened it. A single card slid out. It was thick and cream-colored, with a plain black seal pressed into the corner. A tree with roots and branches, and a circle around it.

Ivy knew that shape. It was almost the same as the crescent and tree on her grandmother's pendant. Only the crescent had been replaced with a closed, solid ring.

"A copy," Odalys whispered. "Of our sigil. Closed in."

Kade read the card out loud. His voice was flat.

"Alpha Voss. Mrs. Voss. I would like to meet your son. Tomorrow at noon, at the clinic where you began. Come together. Come unarmed. Nobody needs to be hurt. A reasonable man would prefer it that way."

"A reasonable man," Elena said quietly. "That phrase."

Everyone turned to her.

She was standing very still by the bookshelf. All the color had left her face.

"Elena?" Ivy said.

"My husband said that to me." Elena's voice was thin. "Three weeks before he died. He came home from a meeting at the clinic. He wasn't himself. I asked what had happened, and he said, A reasonable man would have signed." She pressed one hand over her mouth. "I thought he was talking about a business deal. He never told me what they wanted him to sign."

"Your husband was my brother," Kade said slowly. "He died in a hunting accident. That's what the council told us."

"That's what they told us all," Elena said. "I never believed it. But I had no proof, and no one to ask, and no reason to think the clinic had anything to do with it." Tears were running down her face now, and she didn't wipe them. "He didn't die in a hunting accident, Kade. I think they killed him because he said no."

Ivy crossed the room and put an arm around her. Elena let her. She leaned in, trembling, and Ivy realized this was the first time in over a year that Elena had let anyone hold her up.

"Then we do not go to that meeting," Rhys said. "That's obvious. It's a trap."

"Of course it's a trap," Kade said.

"Then we ignore it."

"And he finds another way," Wren said from her chair. Her voice was dry and steady. "He found me, in the end. He found Bram. He found every family on that list, one by one, over forty years. He's patient. If we don't go to him, he'll come to us."

"On his terms," Odalys said. "At a time we don't choose."

Kade stood at the window for a long time with his back to the room. Outside, the afternoon light was going gold over the trees.

"He asked for Rowan," he said finally. "He didn't ask for the pack, or the land, or the council. He asked for my son. That tells me what he's really after."

"What?" Ivy asked.

"The blood." Kade turned. His eyes were hard and steady. "Voss and Ashgrove, in one child. Something that hasn't existed in sixty years. Something he thought he'd destroyed." He looked at each of them in turn. "He doesn't want to hurt Rowan. He wants to keep him."

Ivy's arms tightened around Elena without her meaning to. She felt that familiar low hum in her chest, the old warning, and for the first time in a long while it wasn't pointing at a door or a treeline.

It was pointing at the window. At the road leading away from the house. At the clinic, two hours south, where a man with a closed black seal was waiting for her to walk in again.

"We go," she said.

"Ivy—"

"We go," she said again. "But not the way he thinks. He's been writing our story for sixty-one years. I think it's time we wrote some of it ourselves."