All Chapters of The Alpha's Plump mate : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

"I have to go " Ivy said into the phone fast and quiet. "Someone is outside.""Call me back when you can " Priya said. "Please. Do not sit on this alone."Ivy hung up. Stood up. Her heart was pounding. She opened the door before whoever it was could even knock.Kade stood in the hallway with his hand raised halfway through a knock. It looked like Kade had been standing there working up the nerve for longer than Ivy realized."I was not going to bother you tonight " Kade said. "I just needed to see that you were okay. I can go.""Don't." The word came out before Ivy could even decide to say it. "Come in.. I am still angry. That does not change just because you showed up looking like that.""Looking like what?""Like a man who has not slept and knows whose fault that is." Ivy stepped back to let Kade in anyway.Kade sat in the chair by the window. It was the spot Elena had taken an hour earlier. Ivy noticed, in a way that everyone in this house seemed to prefer that chair over being clo

“I want to see my mom " Ivy said, the morning after the notice arrived. "Before the hearing. I need to ask Ivy’s mom about Ivy’s grandmother and Ivy would rather do it in person than over the phone."Kade did not argue this time. "I will come with Ivy. If that is all right."“It is more than right." Ivy managed a tired smile. "I do not think Ivy wants to do this "They drove back to the hospital together three days on the clock now of a vague deadline somewhere off in the future and Ivy spent most of the ride rehearsing how Ivy was supposed to ask Ivy’s dying mom about a grandmother nobody in the family had ever wanted to talk about.In the end Ivy did not need to rehearse anything. Margaret brought it up herself.“You have that look again " Margaret said, the second Ivy walked in. Margaret was sitting up this time color back in her face sharper than Margaret had been two nights ago. "The look from before. Like Ivy is carrying something and trying not to let it show."“Mom I need to a

The house looked smaller than Ivy remembered, the way childhood places always do once you've spent a week living somewhere with a wall around it and a name for every tree.Kade parked at the curb instead of the driveway, out of habit or caution, Ivy couldn't tell which."You don't have to come in," she said. "I know this isn't really your world. Peeling paint and a porch step that's been broken since I was twelve.""I want to come in." He looked at the house, then at her, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. "This is where you grew up. I'd like to see it, if you'll let me."She let him.The attic hadn't been touched in years, dust thick enough to leave footprints, boxes stacked in the same careless order Margaret must have left them in whenever she'd last had the strength to come up here. It took twenty minutes of searching before Ivy found the one marked, in her mother's careful handwriting, simply: MOM.She carried it down to the kitchen table, hands unsteady, and opened it

They drove back to the compound in silence, the box of letters locked in the trunk, the little Ashgrove disc still warm in Ivy's closed fist like she couldn't make herself let go of it."The hearing's tomorrow," Ivy said finally, watching the trees blur past. "We have one night to figure out what we're even walking in there with.""I know." Kade's hands were tight on the wheel. "And I don't think we can walk in there with the whole truth. Not yet.""Why not? If it proves my bloodline isn't even part of your succession law—""Because the second the council hears the word Ashgrove, they're not going to hear 'this doesn't apply to us.' They're going to hear 'the pack my grandfather destroyed sent someone to break into her mother's house two days ago.'" Kade's jaw was tight. "Fear doesn't reason well, Ivy. If they think you're connected to something out for revenge against this pack, it won't matter that you didn't ask for any of it. They'll see a threat wearing a familiar face.""So we h

Nobody in the hall moved for a long moment. Nobody breathed, it seemed, except the woman standing in the doorway like she'd been waiting her whole life to walk through it."My name is Odalys," she said, stepping fully into the hall now, robes trailing dark against the stone floor. "I am what remains of the Ashgrove elders. There are not many of us left. Sixty-one years scattered thin a bloodline that was once strong enough to stand as its own pack."She walked toward the center of the hall, unhurried, and the crowd parted for her without anyone quite deciding to."I know this child," Odalys said, stopping in front of Ivy, studying her face with the same ancient certainty she'd shown from the doorway. "Not this child specifically. But the promise that made this child possible. Naia Ashgrove — your grandmother, girl, though I doubt you've ever heard that surname before today — made a vow before she vanished into the human world. That her bloodline would return, one day, to stand where i