LOGINLiam'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
Liam's POVThe drive to Crescent Vale took forty minutes and I spent most of it in silence with Rixon in the passenger seat scrolling through the contract terms on his tablet while Kel sat in the back pretending to sleep. The SUV was quiet the way it always was before something needed to get done. No music, no small talk. Just the road and the low hum of the engine and the particular kind of focused stillness that had always preceded my work.Edmund had handled this contract for three years before he was removed. Construction rights, resource allocation, territorial supply chains between Crescent Vale and my pack's eastern border. It was not complicated work. It just needed someone present and paying attention, which Edmund had stopped being somewhere around the second year.We pulled into the site just after nine.I stepped out in all black, dark trousers, a fitted shirt with the sleeves already rolled to my forearms, and moved toward the lead contractor without slowing my stride. The
Liam's POVVance worked fast.Whatever he had put inside the cut was spreading through my skin like something alive and angry, moving under my flesh in waves that made every nerve ending in my body decide to scream at the same time, and I gripped the bed sheets and held on and the fabric tore in my
Liam's POVKel had my left side and Rixon had my right and neither of them were gentle about it."Move, move, get him inside—""I'm walking," I said."You are barely standing," Kel said. "There's a difference. Stop being difficult."I let them drag me because my legs had decided independently that
Ivy's POVWhen Noah walked out I laughed and it's not a quiet, dignified, I-am-holding-it-together laugh. A real one, the kind that starts in your stomach and tears its way out whether you want it to or not, loud and unhinged and completely honest, and I laughed until tears were running down my fac
Noah's POVIt's been a week.One full week of trying and she had not moved an inch. I could get drunk on the rage simmering through me right now, honestly, it was that thick, that present, sitting in my chest like something on fire that refused to burn out no matter how much I breathed through it.L







