Ivy POV
Julian thinks I'm sulking.
Sleep it off, he says. You'll think clearly in the morning. He says it on his way out, the door clicking shut behind him, like the matter is already settled and I just need time to accept it.
I press two fingers to where he had me against the wall. Still sore.
I wash my face and go find somewhere useful to be.
I'm back in my room when my phone rings.
My aunt's name on the screen. Ada Crane. I pick up, and before I can say anything, she says, "Ivy. Something happened to Thomas."
My stomach drops.
She tells me quickly. Night Prison intake, this afternoon.
Thomas got caught discussing forbidden dark magic with some classmates. Someone reported it. Council Enforcement made an example of him.
Three lines of fact in a voice that costs her something to keep steady.
"There's one way to get him out," she says. "The warden's bonded mate. Julian's sister. Seraphina Silvercrest."
I already know what's coming next.
"You have to ask Julian, Ivy."
I close my eyes.
I know what Julian's face does when I explain what I need. The slight pause. The look that means he's already calculating what it costs him before I finish talking. Julian doesn't spend favors. He saves them, keeps them clean and unspent. He wouldn't pull from that account for Thomas Lancaster, and he'd know I needed him to. He'd hold that the way he holds everything else about me, carefully, where I can always see it. He'd grant it or he wouldn't, and either way I'd spend the rest of my time here paying for it in ways I couldn't name.
Julian doesn't help people for free. Not even his wife.
"I'll find another way," I say.
"Ivy, there isn't—"
"I'll find another way." I hang up.
Thomas has been inside six hours. I turn that over and it doesn't get any smaller.
There is one name I haven't used. One contact I've been holding back because I kept telling myself I didn't need it yet. I told myself things were going to work out.
They didn't work out.
There's something I have to do first.
Meredith's room is dim, one lamp on. She's propped against the pillows, her color wrong. I pour her medication without being asked and she takes the cup without arguing. That's how I know she's actually sick.
I change the compress when it goes warm. Refill the water. Pull the chair close and sit down.
But I can't make myself stay present. Half of me is still turning over the same locked door. Thomas in a cell. Julian as the only key and the worst possible one. The name I haven't used and don't know if I can still reach in time.
I don't notice how heavy my hands have gotten until I reach for the compress and miss it entirely.
The floor comes up fast. My shoulder catches the chair on the way down and I end up on my side with Meredith's voice sharp somewhere above me.
'Get up,' I think.
My body doesn't.
The pack doctor said two more days, rest and warmth, and I've done neither. My ribs pull on every breath and I've been breathing wrong since Ada called.
"Ivy." I turn my head. Meredith is pushing forward in the bed, one hand pressing to the mattress, about to try to stand.
"Don't," I say, my voice coming out thicker than I want it to. "Stay there. I'm fine."
"You are on the floor."
"I know where I am."
I get my arm under me and make it to sitting with my back against the wall. I stay there until the room levels out.
The door opens.
Selena takes in the scene. Her face does the warm concerned thing it always does. She moves straight to Meredith's side, picks up the compress, wrings it out, folds it right. She settles into my chair.
"Ivy, you should rest," she says. "I've got her."
I come back to myself in my own room. The lamp is on. Someone must have moved me.
Packmates are talking in the corridor outside. Their voices carry through the door.
"Did you hear? Luna collapsed in Lady Meredith's room. Selena had to step in."
"Selena's been looking after Lady Meredith for days now. The Luna can barely take care of herself."
"What use is she, really."
I know whose work this is. But I don't have time to care about that tonight.
I push myself upright. My head swims. I wait it out, then get up and go to the desk.
Paper. Pen.
I finally write the name down.
Silas Blackwood. The Lycan King. He holds a rank so old most packs don't use the title anymore, an authority that answers to no one in this territory, that even Julian would think twice before challenging. The kind of name that, written at the top of a letter, changes what the letter is.
I'm three sentences in when the door opens.
Julian. No knock.
"Where were you last night." Not a question. "Meredith needed someone. Selena has been the one taking care of her."
"I was there. I was with her."
"You're lying." His voice is flat. "The servants all say it was Selena. That's what I saw too. You were in here on your own, doing nothing." He picks up the paper, crumples it without reading it, drops it in the bin. "I'm pulling your allowance. Maybe then you'll learn your place."
I watch the paper land in the bin.
He doesn't know what was in it. He doesn't know about Thomas. He just threw it away.
Sylvie slams against my ribs. I hold her.
"Julian, enough." My voice comes out harder than I expect. "You never listen to a word I say. If that's how it is, dissolving this contract is the only way forward."
"We're not doing this tonight."
"I'm not asking your permission."
He moves fast. Both hands close on my arms and he walks me back against the desk. His hand comes up and grips my jaw and tilts my face up toward his.
"Listen to me." His voice drops. "Your pack is gone. Your name means nothing in this territory. You walk out of here and you have nothing, and nobody lines up for Silvercrest's leftovers. So tell me. Where exactly are you planning to go?"
My eyes sting. My jaw aches where his hand is.
"Freedom," I say.
That word has lived inside me for three years. Every locked door, every conversation he shut down before I finished talking, every night I lay awake listening to his footsteps go somewhere I wasn't. This is what I've wanted. Not to be chosen. Not even to be seen. Just to stop being held by someone who has never once asked if I wanted to stay.
Something crosses his face. He stays one beat too long. Then he lets go of my jaw.
"Don't even think about it," he says. He walks out. The door hits the frame hard.
I reach into the bin. The paper is still readable. I smooth it out on the desk, take out a fresh sheet, and copy it over word for word, then keep going where I left off. My hands are steadier than I expect them to be. I seal it before I can think too hard about what I'm doing. I walk it down to the night courier myself and press it into his hands.
He turns the corner and he's gone.
I stand in the empty corridor. I don't know if it gets there. Three years is a long time to go silent on someone. But the letter is out of my hands now, and that's the only move I had left tonight. It has to be enough.
*****
Julian POV
I find Meredith in better color the next morning. I sit with her for a few minutes, the way I always do.
"Selena wore herself out looking after you," I say. "She's resting this morning."
"Mm." Meredith adjusts the blanket across her lap.
"Everyone in this house can see it," I say. "Selena is exactly what a Luna should be. Ivy just hides in her room."
Meredith looks at me.
"Selena wasn't the only one who wore herself out," she says. "Ivy was here the whole night. She didn't sleep. She was still on her feet when she collapsed and they carried her back to her room." She pauses. "You just didn't see it."
I don't say anything.
"As a daughter-in-law," Meredith says, her voice even, "Ivy is adequate."
She picks up her tea and says nothing more.
I sit with that.
Last night I walked into her room and made decisions before I asked a single question. I pulled her allowance. I held her jaw and told her she had nothing.
Had I been wrong about her?
The thing I came here to say keeps getting replaced by the same image: Ivy on the floor of this room, one hand reaching for the compress and missing it. She was still on her feet when she collapsed.
The part I can't shake is that I meant it when I called her a liar. Every word. I said it and felt nothing except the satisfaction of being the one who decided.
That's what I am with Ivy. The one who decides.
Selena is my fated mate. I love Selena the way wolves are supposed to love. Clear. Certain. Without question.
What I feel about Ivy is nothing like that. It has no name I'd give it in daylight. She said the word freedom and she meant it. The thought of her walking out of this pack, not belonging to me anymore, puts something in my chest that has no clean name.
Meredith speaks.
"Give me a grandchild," she says. "Ivy's bloodline may have fallen, but it outranks Selena's. After that, whatever you decide about Selena, I won't stand in your way."
A grandchild is fine. But I'm not dissolving the contract with Ivy. An Alpha of Silvercrest with two Lunas is unusual, but it's been done. Ivy is mine. She walked into this pack and she became mine, and I'm not finished being her Alpha yet.
"That works," I say.
