Chapter 3

Ivy's Pov

Amy's eyes filled with tears so fast it almost looked rehearsed. Her bottom lip trembled and she pressed one hand to her chest like my words had physically wounded her. Every person in that shop was looking at me like I had just kicked a puppy.

Noah turned to me with that cold, flat look he reserved for people who had disappointed him beyond repair. "It's just a music box, Ivy. Why are you being so aggressive?" He said it slowly, like he was explaining something to someone who couldn't keep up. "If you want one that badly, I'll buy you another."

I looked at him for a long moment. "Yes," I said pleasantly. "It's just a music box. So if she wants one, buy her another one. Why does it have to be mine?"

His jaw tightened.

Amy stepped forward then, her eyes still glistening, hands clasped together in that way she had that made her look permanently gentle. "Ivy, please. I'll do anything. Name any condition and I'll meet it. I just, this means so much to me, you have no idea—"

Any condition as if it would be her paying it and not Noah. As if everything she offered wasn't ultimately his money, his effort, his everything handed over on her behalf while I stood here with nothing.

I smiled at her warmly. "You really do love my mother's things, don't you?"

Amy blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"The music box." I nodded toward the display case. "And the necklace you're wearing." I kept my voice even, almost conversational. "Both of them belonged to my mother."

The color drained from Amy's face slowly, like water leaving a glass. "I… I don't know what you mean."

"Yes you do." I took one step toward her. "That necklace was my mother's. She died in the pack dungeon wearing it. Noah promised me two years ago that he would find it." I paused to let that land. "He found it and he put it around your neck."

Amy's hand flew up to the necklace, fingers closing around the pendant, and she turned to Noah with tears spilling now, real or practiced. I no longer cared which. "Noah, I had no idea. Yesterday when you gave me the gift box I thought, I just put it on. I didn't know it was her mother's. I'm so sorry, I really didn't know—"

"Now you know," I said. "Can you give it back?"

Amy touched the clasp slowly, and for one second, I thought she was actually going to take it off. Then she looked up at Noah with those wet brown eyes and said, "Maybe we should give it back to her. I don't want to cause trouble between you two. She's still carrying your heir. I'm not worth this, Noah. Really."

I watched Noah's face as he looked at her and I already knew what was coming before he opened his mouth.

"No." His voice was firm, final, like he was closing a deal. "Once a gift is given, it belongs to the person who received it. Don't talk like that. You deserve everything."

"But Noah—"

"There is no taking back something I gave." He said it like that was the end of it. Like my mother's necklace, my mother's keepsake, the last physical piece of a woman who died alone in a dungeon because this pack destroyed her, was just a line item he had already settled.

Amy looked up at him with such naked gratitude it made my stomach turn. He looked back at her the same way. Right there in front of me like I was furniture.

I unclenched my hands slowly. Then I smiled, and this time there was something in it that made Amy take a small step back. "You wanted to borrow the music box?" I said. "Fine….I'll consider it. All Alpha Noah has to do is come and beg me for it on his knees. Then I'll think about it."

The whole shop went still. Noah stared at me with a shock that almost looked funny and Amy stared at me. Even Sera behind me went quiet.

Noah's voice came out low and furious. "Ivy…what the fuck? That is enough."

"Really?" I tilted my head. "I thought you would do anything for her. Isn't that what you always say? Any wish, any price?" I let that sit for exactly two seconds. "Turns out there are limits after all. They just don't include me."

I turned to Mara before either of them could respond. "I'm withdrawing the music box from consignment today. Right now."

Noah took a step forward. "You—"

"What?" I looked back at him, calm, almost bored. "I'm the owner. Do I not have the right to take back my own property?"

He had nothing to say to that. What could he say? It was mine. It had always been mine. That was the thing about Noah — he was very good at taking things that belonged to me, but the moment I reached out and took something back, suddenly I was the problem.

Mara moved quickly, lifting the music box from the display and wrapping it with shaking hands. I took it, tucked it under my arm, and walked out without looking at either of them again. Sera was half a step behind me, close enough that I could hear her breathing slow and controlled the way it got when she was too angry for words.

We didn't speak until we were two streets away.

I asked Sera to drop me at the cemetery alone.

She didn't want to. She held my arm in the car and said, "Ivy, you don't have to do this today. It's too much for one day. Come home with me, eat something, sleep—"

"I need to see her," I said quietly. "Please."

She let me go.

My mother's grave was at the far edge of the pack burial grounds, past the tree line where the maintained path ended and the grass grew long and wild. Pack criminals were not given proper plots near the others. She was buried where the ground dipped low and the trees blocked most of the light, marked by a simple stone with her name and the year she died. No other words. The pack had not allowed it.

I sat in the grass in front of her stone with the music box in my lap and I told her everything. About the banquet, about the water, about my son and the necklace around Amy's neck that I had not been able to get back. I talked until my throat ached and then I just sat in the quiet, listening to the wind move through the trees above her, letting myself feel the full weight of everything I had been holding together since this started.

I don't know how long I was there but I heard something, a low sound behind the cluster of trees to my right. I could swear it wasn't an animal. I stood slowly, tucking the music box carefully against my side, and moved toward it. Through the gap in the trees, in the shadow between two leaning oaks, I found someone.

He was on the ground, one arm braced against the tree trunk like he had been trying to stand and lost the fight halfway up. His shirt was dark with blood, so much of it that I couldn't tell what color it had originally been. He was tall because even collapsed like this I could see that broad-shouldered and powerfully built structure— but whatever strength that body usually carried had run out somewhere between here and wherever he had come from. His face was turned away from me, half hidden in shadow.

I took a step closer and I felt a pull, low in my chest, like standing too close to something warm after being cold for a very long time and I stopped walking. My heart was doing something strange. The back of my neck was warm in a way that had nothing to do with the evening air.

I didn't understand it. I only knew that I could not walk away from him.

"Hey," I said. My voice came out sof

ter than I intended. "Can you hear me?"