LOGINIvy's POVMy hands were flat on the table and I was pressing them down hard because if I did not, they were going to shake and I was not going to give this room that.Luka's words were still sitting in the air. Step down with immediate effect. They had landed somewhere in my chest like something cold dropped from a height and I was still feeling the weight of them when Liam laughed and everything in the hall changed.My wolf growled low inside me.Stay still, I told her. Not yet.She held but I felt her restless, coiled, unhappy about being made to wait.Liam rose from his chair. Not dramatically, not with a performance of it, just stood up slowly the way a storm gathers, and when he was fully upright the room felt like it had shrunk. He looked at Luka with that particular stillness that I had come to understand meant he was at his most dangerous and then he let it go."Where were you?" His voice filled every corner of that hall without effort. "Where was this Council when my wife was
Liam's POVI will be honest with myself for one second and admit that when Kel told me the Council had arrived unannounced I felt something close to tension settle in my chest. I do not do fear. But the particular tightness that comes when something you care about is about to be put in a room with people whose entire purpose is to dismantle it.Ivy was what I cared about. That was the thing I was still getting used to.I sat at the head of that table in my charcoal suit and watched her walk through those doors and I told myself to keep my face neutral and I managed it for approximately four seconds before she opened her mouth and I had to press my knuckles flat against the table to stop myself from reacting.I had forgotten who Ivy was.
Ivy's POVThe woman had authority the way some people have bone structure. You could not miss it and you could not manufacture it and she knew both of those things about herself.She was dressed like a Priestess, deep ceremonial robes the colour of midnight with gold stitching at the collar that caught the hall light every time she moved. She carried a staff, dark wood, a carved moon at the top, and she held it the way people hold things they have carried for so long it has become part of their body. Her face was all sharp angles and cold assessment and when her eyes landed on me they stayed there with the kind of patience that said she had been in rooms far more intimidating than this one and had walked out of all of them exactly the same way she walked in.My wolf went still inside me. Not afraid but watching.I wanted to ask who she was. The question was sitting right there on my tongue and I almost let it out before I caught myself because something about the way this woman was l
Ivy's POVI just finished dressing up and Sena was braiding the last section of my hair when she said told me about the council of elders."They can sentence an Alpha to death, Luna." Her fingers paused on my scalp for just a second before she continued. "The High Council answers to no one. Not even an Alpha King. They were there before the territories were drawn, before the packs were named. They are the reason any of this exists."Bree was standing by the vanity arranging the small pots of jewellery I barely touched and she looked up through the mirror with wide eyes. "The women on that council are the worst of them. They smile at you and you do not know until three days later that they already decided your fate before you walked into the room."I was wearing the ivory dress Maxine had laid out for me, structured at the shoulders and fitted through the waist, the kind that said I was not scrambling even when everything inside me was doing exactly that. My hair was down, the new leng
Ivy's POVSteph came through that door like she had been launched from somewhere and landed specifically in my room by force of personality alone. Her braids swung behind her, long and honey-tipped and freshly done, and she dropped her bag on the floor without looking where it landed and grabbed both my hands before I could even open my mouth to say hello."Stop everything," she said. "Look at my hair first. Look at it, Ivy. Take it in."I looked at her hair. Long, sleek braids, deep brown at the roots bleeding into a warm honey gold at the ends, laid so perfectly it looked like she had walked out of somewhere expensive, which she probably had. It suited her in the annoying way that everything suited Steph, like her face had been specifically designed to make any hairstyle l
Noah's POVAmy came through the door like something was chasing her when I was still fuming at the humiliation Liam caused me today!She was crying before she even closed it behind her, her dress wrinkled, her hair half undone, her composure completely gone in a way I had never actually seen from her before. Amy did not cry. Amy calculated, Amy schemed, Amy smiled at people she wanted to destroy. So when she came through that door with actual tears running down her face I stood up from the chair before I could decide whether I was concerned or simply annoyed.I settled on being annoyed fairly quickly."He tried to burn me alive," she said. Her voice was shaking. "He called for fuel and a lighter, Noah. He was going to set me on fire in his own living room in front of his guards like it was nothing."I stared at her. "You went to Blue Elite mansion?""I went to finalise the alliance—""I told you to wait," I said. "I told you specifically to wait until I had spoken to the Council befo
Noah's POVI stood there and watched them wrap the chains around her and told myself it was necessary.It was necessary. Ivy was not the woman I married. The woman I married would never have looked at me the way this Ivy looked at me, with that specific fury in her eyes that had no apology in it, n
Ivy's POVI laughed at his words and I watched Noah's face go through about six different emotions in four seconds and laughed harder."What?" he said."Nothing." I pressed my lips together and failed. "Nothing, it's just—" I shook my head. "Do you remember March? The heavy rain? The night the east
Ivy's POVBy the time we got there, The cave was Ice cold.I had designed it that way deliberately. Temperature regulation for wartime shelter. I had spent three weeks on that detail alone and I had been proud of it and right now I was standing in it in my wedding dress with m
Liam's POVI couldn't sit still.I had been going through files for the last two hours, every record of every Alpha who had stood in that hall today and opened their mouth against my union, every pack affiliation, every alliance history, every debt owed to the Lycan Crown that had somehow not stopp







