Ivy POV
I'm still in the corridor when Evelyn calls.
Ada is losing her mind, she says. Come home.
I haven't seen my mother in weeks. She's been sick the whole time I've been here and I keep telling myself I'll go soon.
I go now.
When I get home Ada is already on the front step.
Before I can say anything she grabs both my arms and starts crying about Thomas, what happened, what I'm going to do. Her nails catch my left wrist. Four thin lines. I feel the sting and say nothing. I'm used to carrying everything this family can't hold.
When she stops she's shaking and just holding on. I put my hand over hers.
"I'll find a way to get Thomas out," I say.
Evelyn walks over and pulls me in.
I make it about two seconds before I'm crying the way I haven't cried since I was a child. She holds on and says nothing and that's the only reason I can stand it. She's not asking me to be all right. She's just there.
"File the Severance," she says, when I've stopped. "You already know what you have to do."
"I know."
"Don't tell your mother yet. She can't carry it right now."
I nod. I wipe my face with the back of my hand. I've been carrying this alone. A little longer won't break me.
I go down the hall.
My mother is sitting up when I push her door open. She looks up and smiles at me, the real kind, and my throat closes so fast it hurts.
Her eyes move over me. My coat. The gold chain at my neck.
"You look well," she says. "You're doing all right for yourself."
She doesn't know about Thomas. She doesn't know about any of it. She's looking at me like I'm proof that things are fine, and I let her.
That's the hardest part. Not the silver. Not the contract. Sitting here and being proof.
She starts talking. Something about a show. The neighbors' dog. I listen. I smile when she needs me to.
She looks smaller than the last time I was here. The illness takes up more space in her face now. She can't know how bad things are. Not yet. What she needs is to believe I'm fine.
When I leave I'm still running the numbers in my head. The silver I've saved isn't enough on its own. That's why I wrapped up the two canvases and carried them with me today.
The gallery is in the lower quarter, fifteen minutes on foot.
I unroll the first canvas on the front desk. The owner goes quiet. He looks at the first one, then the second, then at me.
"These are yours," he says.
He tilts the canvas toward the window and studies the upper corner where the brushwork gets heavier. I let him.
He gives me a number that's higher than I calculated.
I go very still.
"Say that again," I tell him.
He does.
I walk out with the envelope in my inside pocket and stop on the front step. The cold hits my face. My feet are solid on the pavement.
'I can do this.' Not hoping. Knowing.
Three years inside someone else's idea of what I was worth. Today a stranger looked at two landscapes I painted alone and gave me more than I asked for. That's mine. Nobody handed it to me. I built it in the margins of a life that was supposed to swallow me whole.
I pull my coat tight and start walking back.
Thomas has been inside two days. The money is enough. The letter is already sent.
One thing at a time. That's all this has ever taken.
The market is loud. A child runs past my elbow. I let myself think: maybe today is the day things start going right.
I'm still thinking it when the street narrows.
I hear footsteps behind me. I don't slow down. Then they split, and my body knows before my brain catches up. I'm still processing when they step out of the alley.
Five of them.
The one in front breathes in.
"Silvercrest Luna," he says. "No pack scent backing you up."
My stomach drops.
Last time Silvercrest came to clean it up. This time I'm alone, forty minutes from the pack house, and there's no one here who owes me anything.
Sylvie pushes forward. I hold her. Against five I can't shift fast enough. We've been through this before.
"Walk away," I say.
He smiles. Takes a step. The others close in from both sides.
I back up. My shoulder hits the wall. The only move left is to make enough noise that someone comes.
I open my mouth.
A hand clamps over my mouth. Another grabs my arms from behind. Something rough drops over my head and everything goes dark. I can't see. I can't call out. The fabric smells like rot and my knees hit the ground.
They'll drag me somewhere. Torture me, sell me, or use me to bargain with Julian for money. Any way this ends, I don't come back from it the way I need to.
I thrash. My elbow connects with something solid. It doesn't matter. There are five of them.
Suddenly everything goes quiet.
A weight settles into the air, like an Alpha's presence filling a room, but this is bigger than any Alpha I've ever felt. It presses down on everything. The hands on my arms drop away. I hear something I've never heard before: five wolves going to the ground at once, breathing in short terrified bursts, not moving.
A voice. Male.
"If I see any of you again, there won't be anything left to find."
Footsteps. Scrambling. Silence.
That force is still in the air and it's pressing on me too, holding me down.
Someone lifts the sack off my head.
Silver eyes.
That's the first thing I see. Silver, steady, looking straight at me. After the dark and the rot-smell and the certainty that nobody was coming, those eyes are the most solid thing I've ever seen.
A man crouches in front of me. Tall, even like this. Patient and still, like he has nowhere else to be.
He helps me to my feet. My coat is torn at the shoulder. He says nothing, just takes his own coat off and lays it over me.
The coat is still warm. I didn't expect that.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my sides.
He waits. Not performing patience. Just waiting, like this is the only thing happening right now.
Three years. Nobody waited for me like that.
I already know who he is. I knew the moment those rogues said his name. Last night I wrote it at the top of a letter and pressed it into the courier's hands in the dark, not knowing if it would ever arrive. The only name in this territory with enough authority to reach Thomas inside the Night Prison.
"Thank you," I say. "You're Silas Blackwood."
"Go straight home," he says. "You won't be followed. I have people behind you."
He looks at me for a long time. Long enough that I have to look away first.
He doesn't leave until I start walking.
By the time I realize I never asked him about the letter, I'm already home.
His coat smells like cedar. I'm still wearing it when I reach Silvercrest.
There are people behind me. His people. I can't see them but I know they're there, and something about that is doing something to me I wasn't ready for. Three years in this pack and nobody ever walked behind me to make sure I got home. I forgot what it felt like to be someone worth protecting. I didn't know I was still waiting for that until right now.
I can't stop thinking about the smell of cedar.
Suddenly Sylvie moves.
It comes from somewhere low in my chest and stops my feet where I stand.
I go back through it without meaning to. His eyes when he lifted the sack. The way he didn't ask before he put his coat over me. That long look before I turned away. The smell of cedar that's been in my lungs since the alley.
Sylvie makes a sound I have never heard from her. Something that comes from somewhere much older than either of us. Low. Certain. Absolutely sure of itself.
My chest tightens.
I know that sound. I've never heard it before and I know exactly what it means.
'No,' I think.
I walk faster. Like I can outpace it. Like if I get through the gate before Sylvie finishes that sound it won't count.
The gate is right there.
I stop anyway.
I can't make myself not know it. I've known since the alley. Since the coat. Since he stood there and waited like I was worth waiting for.
Silas Blackwood is my mate.
