All Chapters of Marked By Mistake: The Baker's Secret: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Roman's POV Hazel had fallen asleep against my shoulder twenty minutes into the drive back from her swimming lesson, and I found myself, somewhere around the third red light, telling her, quiet and useless to anyone but myself, about a version of my own childhood she was far too young yet to hear properly."My father died when I was fourteen," I said, voice low, mostly to the windshield. "A territory dispute gone wrong. He went to negotiate terms with a neighboring pack and never came home."She did not stir, small and warm and entirely unaware, and some part of me found it easier to say the words to her sleeping weight than I ever had to anyone fully listening."I was supposed to have years left before I became Alpha. Nobody expects a fourteen year old to carry a pack. The council tried to install a regent, someone to hold the position until I was ready, and I refused. I do not entirely know why, even now. I think I was angry, and grief needed somewhere to go, and leadership was the

Ivy's POV He called, exactly as promised, three days later, voice warm and careful over the line in a way that still managed to set every nerve in my body on edge."I would like to take Hazel for an afternoon. Supervised, of course, wherever you are most comfortable. The park, if you like. I only want to get to know her a little.""No." I said it so firmly "Ivy—""I said no, Silas." My voice came out sharper than I intended, old fury finally breaking through the careful calm I had been maintaining since he reappeared. "You do not get to disappear for three years, tell me repeatedly she was not yours, and then show up now wanting afternoons at the park like none of that ever happened."Silence stretched on the line, long enough that I nearly hung up before he spoke again, something quieter and more careful in his tone."I was cruel to you. I know that. I am not asking you to forget it." A pause. "I am asking for the chance to be better than I was. People are allowed to change, Ivy."

Ivy’s POV I stepped back without meaning to, and felt my shoulders meet the wall before I fully understood I had been retreating at all. He did not stop when I did. He simply closed the last of the distance between us, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath, could see nothing but the green of his eyes holding mine captive in a way that made my pulse climb higher He leaned in closer, his mouth near my ear now, his voice dropping to something almost gentle beneath all that command. "I intend to take you right now," he whispered, and I felt my whole body tighten at the plainness of the words, at the hardness of him pressed lightly against me through the thin fabric separating us.He took my earlobe gently between his lips and I gasped despite myself, my hands rising to his chest not to push him away but simply to have somewhere to put them. He smiled faintly against my skin at the sound, and I felt the heat of my own reaction rise up my throat, humiliating in its hones

Ivy's POV I had found Theresa alone in Darkwood's library two days after my father had showed me the pendant, surrounded by the particular, orderly stillness she always seemed to carry into any room she occupied, and stood in the doorway a long moment before I worked up the nerve to actually interrupt her reading."Theresa. Can I ask you something strange?""My favorite kind of question." She set down her book immediately, warmth replacing whatever quiet concentration had occupied her a moment before. "Come, sit. What is on your mind?"I hesitated, turning the pendant over once in my pocket before I finally pulled it free and set it on the table between us, wolf and moon catching the lamplight. "Do you know anything about a pack called Silverglen?"Theresa went very still, something careful and old moving behind her eyes, and for a moment I thought she might simply deflect the way Walter so often had, before she reached out and touched the pendant's edge with one careful fingertip."

Ivy's POV The farmer's market had been Hazel's idea, a Saturday tradition we had kept faithfully since she was old enough to demand her own strawberries, and the town square hummed warm and crowded under the first truly warm sun of the season, vendors calling out over baskets of early spring produce, children chasing each other between the stalls.I was haggling, good naturedly, over a basket of strawberries when I saw her.Blonde hair. A pale blue dress. Standing utterly still at the edge of the crowd, facing directly toward me, while everyone else moved around her in the easy, oblivious current of a Saturday morning.Marisol.My whole body went cold, the basket of strawberries slipping from suddenly numb fingers, and I blinked, certain, desperately certain, that I had simply imagined it, some trick of sunlight and old grief conjuring a face that could not possibly be standing there.When I opened my eyes again, the space where she had been standing held nothing but an elderly man