Chapter 41

Ivy's POVBy the time we got there, The cave was Ice cold. I had designed it that way deliberately. Temperature regulation for wartime shelter. I had spent three weeks on that detail alone and I had been proud of it and right now I was standing in it in my wedding dress with my wrists bound and nowhere to go and the pride felt very far away.Noah walked through the entrance behind me and stopped and looked around and I watched his face do the thing I had been watching his face do for two years, that slow recalibration when something exceeded what he expected. He ran his hand along the reinforced wall. Looked up at the ceiling structure. Turned a full circle taking it in."You built this," he said.I didn't answer."I knew about the development projects but I didn't know you had gotten this far with this one." He looked at me with something in his expression that I hadn't seen from him in a long time and it made my skin cra

Chapter 42

Ivy's POVI laughed at his words and I watched Noah's face go through about six different emotions in four seconds and laughed harder."What?" he said."Nothing." I pressed my lips together and failed. "Nothing, it's just—" I shook my head. "Do you remember March? The heavy rain? The night the east drainage was flooding and I could see from my window that the lower settlement was going to have a problem by morning?" I watched him. "I came to your office with a full proposal, printed, bound with cost projections, structural breakdowns, contractor contacts, everything. I knocked on your door and Amy was on your couch with my blanket and a cup of tea that I made, Noah, I made it that morning before I even knew you'd need it, and you looked at me like I had interrupted a funeral." I tilted my head. "You told me the projects were meaningless. That I was disturbing you. You said, and I am quoting directly, that you didn't have time for my hobby projects." I let that land. "I came back twi

Chapter 43

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

Chapter 44

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

Chapter 45

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

Chapter 46

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