登入Liam's POVMy eyes found Tulip the second she walked through that door and the first thing I felt was not warmth. It was irritation. Deep, controlled, what the fuck are you doing here irritation that I had to keep completely off my face because fifty people were watching mine.My father had handled this. That was the arrangement. Tulip was supposed to stay low, stay quiet, stay out of anything with my name on it until the timing was right. She was not supposed to walk into my hall, in front of the High Council, in front of Ivy, and detonate everything at once.I looked at Ivy.She had gone pale and it's not dramatically, not the kind of pale that makes a room notice. The quiet kind, where the colour drains slowly from beneath the skin and the person sits very still and keeps their face exactly where they put it because they are not going to let anyone see what is happening underneath. I knew that face. I had spent months learning that face. I moved my hand under the table and found
Ivy'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
Ivy's POVI was staring at him like he had reached into my chest and was deciding whether to pull something out.How did he say things like that? How did a man sit there with dark eyes and a voice that had dropped into something low and deliberate and make me feel like every promise I had made to m
Liam's POVI have never in my life listened to a woman the way I listened to her in that moment.Not my mother, who tried. Not my former Beta before Rixon, who occasionally forgot his place and tried anyway. Not a single elder sitting behind a council table with a list of grievances and a carefully
Ivy's POVI laughed at her silly statement. I looked at Amy standing there on my front steps with her peace offering scattered in pieces around her feet and I actually laughed."You," I said. "You are going to work with me. In the women's alliances? Is that what you just said to me?"She opened he
Ivy's POVDelinda did not walk in. She exploded in.The door hit the wall and she was already screaming before she cleared the frame, hair wild, mascara running in dark streaks down both cheeks, looking like something that had been through a war and had decided to bring the war here. Her eyes found







