LOGINIvy's POVDid he think he was talking to a five year old?Because I was standing here, or sitting here, technically, in steaming water with chain marks on my wrists and a bruise the size of a fist spreading across my jaw and Liam was looking at me waiting for an answer and the only coherent thought in my entire head was that he was the most unreasonably, infuriatingly, inconveniently beautiful man I had ever been in a bathtub with.Which was not a long list. But still. The point stood.He was hot. Liam was hot the way fire is hot, the kind that you don't walk toward unless you want to get burned and you know it and you're walking anyway because something in you has decided it's worth it. And he was powerful, genuinely powerful, the kind that sat in the bones not the posture, and the combination of both things was making it very difficult for me to think about anything responsible.He took my silence as a yes.He moved to the edge of the bath and picked up the small bottle from the sh
Ivy's POVDelinda was already talking before we even fully crossed the threshold.She was standing dead center in the corridor, arms folded, chin lifted, dressed like she had been waiting for this exact moment and had rehearsed it three times in front of a mirror. Beautiful in the specific way that people who grew up knowing they were important always are. And she was looking at Liam like I wasn't even there, like I was something he had tracked in on the bottom of his shoe, and honestly every single part of my body hurt too much for me to pretend to be unbothered."Liam." Her voice was controlled and tight. "Are you seriously telling me you broke the law? It hasn't even been twenty-four hours." She spread her hands. "I was in your room. I was right there trying to figure out how to fix this, how to protect the pack, how to give you a real solution, and you just — left. For her."I raised my hand slightly. "Hi…I'm here and still bleeding. Just so we're all aware."Her eyes moved to me
Ivy's POVThe roar didn't stop.It kept going, rolling through the trees and across the water and into my chest and I felt it in my teeth and Amy's hands went slack on my chains and the women holding me started shaking so visibly I could feel it through the iron links and the river was cold against my legs and I was trying to find my footing on the slippery bank and failing.Amy's voice came out two full pitches higher than usual. "What the fuck is that?"Nobody answered her. The sound was too big for the space and it was getting closer and the ground was vibrating with it and then the tree line exploded and the Lycan came through it and he was enormous. Something older and bigger and wrong in the best possible way, dark fur and amber eyes blazing in the dark and every woman on that riverbank screamed at exactly the same time."Throw her now," Amy screamed. "Throw her and run, go, GO—"The women shoved me toward the water and my feet hit the current and the cold hit me like a wall an
Ivy's POVMy back was on fire.The chains had been cutting into the same spots for hours and I had stopped feeling my fingers a long time ago and the cold of the cave floor had moved past uncomfortable into something that lived in my bones and just sat there. I couldn't call anyone. I had no link with Liam, no mind link, no way to reach through the bond that didn't fully exist yet and say come now, come right now, they are going to kill me. I had the tracker. I had pressed it until my thumb was raw and now I couldn't even feel my thumb and I didn't know if the signal was still transmitting or if the chains had blocked it or if Liam was even looking at it.I had never felt this alone in my life and I had felt very alone in my life.Amy came back after Noah left.She walked in slowly, no rush, no urgency, the way people move when they know you are not going anywhere. She pulled a chair from the corner of the cave and set it in front of me and sat down and looked at me with the expressio
Liam's POVI was going to lose my mind.I had been sitting in that car outside Ironveil territory for six hours telling myself I gave Noah twenty-four hours and I was going to honor that and every single minute of those six hours, my Lycan had been pacing the inside of my chest like a caged animal that had already decided the cage was temporary. I kept pulling up the tracker signal. Watching the coordinates. The signal had gone stationary north of the main property hours ago and hadn't moved and I didn't know if that was good or not and the not knowing was the worst part.I didn't understand why I cared this much. That was the honest thing I kept running into. I had a contract with Ivy. A practical arrangement. She needed authority, I needed a Luna, clean transaction, no emotional complications. So why the fuck was I sitting outside another Alpha's territory with my jaw locked and my hands flat on my thighs and every piece of me screaming to move?My Lycan didn't answer that questio
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, no softening, no door left open. The woman I married used to flinch when I raised my voice. Used to smooth things over before they became confrontations. Used to find a way to make herself smaller so the room stayed comfortable. This one scared me and I was not going to say that out loud to anyone alive.I told myself the chains were about keeping her safe. Ivy would hurt herself if she saw an opening. I knew that about her. I knew the way she thought when she was cornered and I knew that she meant it when she said she would rather die than come back and that was not something I was willing to risk, not because I was soft about it, but because a dead Ivy was a useless Ivy and I needed her fu
Liam's POVIt’s been one week. I was gone for one week and somehow in that time my brother had decided to use the treasury wing as a personal punching bag, Alpha Edmund had taken his security agreement and his wounded pride I
Ivy's POVI didn't understand what was happening. I didn't understand this place, these people, or why two women who had never seen me in their lives hated me with the specific intensity of something personal. All I knew was that my face was still stinging from the slap, my scalp was burning from w
Ivy's POVI didn't know when I fell asleep and I didn't know how long I was out, but when I opened my eyes the first thing I noticed was the smell. Warm and deep, cedar and something else underneath it that made my wolf stretch inside me like she was waking from the best sleep of her life and relea
Liam's POVSeven days in that dungeon and not once did I think about the cold or the rats or the infected cuts on my back. Every single hour I was down there, the only thing running through my head was Ivy. Whether she was okay. Whether Noah had done something else. Whether A







