Two Fronts

~Lyra's POV~

I found Jade in the east sitting room just after lunch.

She was reading something on her phone, legs tucked under her, entirely at ease in the way she always was. She looked up when I came in and smiled like she'd been waiting for me, which she probably had been, in the way that someone waits when they're also watching.

"I need your help with something," I said. "Old family correspondence. Papa's been asking me to sort through the pre-council archive boxes for months and I keep putting it off. It's tedious work and I'd rather have company."

She made a face. "How old are we talking?"

"Fifteen, twenty years. Mostly formal letters, pack records, that kind of thing."

She looked like she was going to decline. I could see it forming. So I added, quietly, "I'd just like the company, Jade. It's been a strange few weeks."

That landed. She uncurled from the chair. "Okay. Show me where."

-------

We sat at the long table in the correspondence room with two archive boxes between us, splitting the sorting by year. It was genuinely tedious, which made it useful. Tedium makes people comfortable. Comfortable people don't manage their faces as carefully as they should.

I let the first hour pass normally. We talked about nothing, a pack event she'd heard about, a letter she found from a distant Ashwood cousin who apparently had very strong opinions about fence maintenance. I laughed when it was right to laugh. I let her carry the conversation.

Then I shifted it.

"I keep finding references to names I don't recognise," I said, holding up a letter like I was puzzling over it. "Old pack members who aren't in any of the current records. There was one a few minutes ago, someone who was part of the pack in Papa's early years and then just... isn't mentioned anymore."

"People leave," Jade said, not looking up. "Packs change."

"This one didn't leave voluntarily." I set the letter down. "I think they were exiled. Papa's generation had at least one significant exile. I remember hearing about it when I was small, but nobody ever talked about it directly." I kept my voice casual, like I was just filling silence. "Do you know anything about the exiled branch of the family? The one from about fifteen years back?"

Jade's hands didn't stop moving. She turned a page, set a letter on the correct pile, reached for the next one. She was good. The motion was smooth and unbroken.

But around her eyes, for less than a second, something tightened. A small, contained flicker. Muscle pulling inward just below the outer corner of her left eye, the involuntary kind, the kind that happens when a word lands somewhere it wasn't supposed to land.

It was gone before she looked up.

"I think I heard something once," she said lightly. "An exile, some old falling-out. You know how pack history gets, everyone remembers a different version of it."

"Mm," I said. I looked back at my letter. "I'll ask Papa when he's less busy."

She nodded and reached for her tea.

I let the conversation drift back to fence maintenance.

-----

The gate runner found me an hour later.

I was in the corridor outside the correspondence room when he came up, a young border wolf, not quite nervous but carrying himself with the careful posture of someone delivering news he wasn't sure how it would be received.

"Miss Ashwood. There's someone at the outer gate." He paused. "He asked for you specifically. He's alone. No escort, no appointment." Another pause. "It's Alpha Slade."

I looked at him for a moment.

"Tell him I'm coming," I said.

----

Ivan was standing on the far side of the gate when I arrived. Just him. No Beta, no warriors, no Marissa. He was in plain clothes, not pack colours, which was either deliberate or a signal I wasn't sure how to read yet. He looked good in the way that well-built men always look good even when they're not trying. But there was something else underneath it. A strain around his jaw, a tightness at the corners of his eyes that didn't come from the drive here.

He looked tired. Not physically. Something else.

I stopped on my side of the gate and looked at him through the bars.

"Lyra," he said.

"Ivan."

"I needed to see you."

"You're seeing me," I said.

He exhaled. His hands were in his pockets and he shifted his weight slightly, which was the closest thing to uncertainty I'd ever seen from him. "I know I'm not supposed to be here. I know you told my beta no. I'm not here to argue the divorce." He looked at me directly.

"Lyra, I need you to tell me you know I didn't send the beta to cause trouble."

"I already knew that," I said. "The beta was polite. He delivered a message. That's all."

Something in his face relaxed, just slightly. "Okay." He nodded once. "Okay."

A beat passed.

"Ivan," I said. "Why are you really here."

He looked at me, and for a moment he just looked, the way people do when they're sorting through several things they could say and trying to find the one that's actually honest.

"I'm not interested anymore," I said, before he could start. "That's not a position that's up for discussion."

"That's impossible," he said. "All of a sudden?"

"Yeah," I said. "All of a sudden, Ivan."

"Did I do something wrong?" He took half a step closer to the gate. "At least let me in so we can talk this out properly."

"No." I kept my voice even. "You stay right there."

He was quiet for a moment. The muscle in his jaw worked once. Then he nodded, slow and controlled, the way a man nods when he's swallowing something he'd rather say out loud.

"Fine," he said. "I'll leave you for now. Let you think it over."

He turned to go.

Then he stopped.

He looked at me through the gate for a long moment. Then he said it.

"Marissa has been meeting with people she hasn't told me about. No pack affiliations I recognize. Old weapons, old symbols. I found something in her correspondence weeks ago and when I asked her about it, she denied it. But I know what I saw." He held my gaze. "I think she's done something, Lyra.”

I kept my expression exactly where it was.

"What kind of symbols?" I asked.

He scoffed.

I only saw it for a second before she took it from me."

He paused. "I don't know what it means. But it scared her that I saw it. Marissa doesn't scare."

“Why are you telling me this Ivan? To scare me or what?”

He looked at me steadily. "Just so you know. Be prepared, Lyra."

The silence stretched.

"Go home, Ivan," I said.

He held my gaze for another moment. Then he turned and walked back toward his car without looking back.

I stayed at the gate until I couldn't hear his footsteps anymore.

Then I looked down at my hands.

They were shaking.

Not visibly. You'd have to be looking closely to see it. But I could feel it, a fine, contained tremor in both palms, the kind that comes when something you've been keeping at arm's length suddenly gets very close.

I pressed both hands flat against my sides and walked back toward the house.

I needed to find Xavier.