Ivy's Pov

The door clicked shut behind him and I sat there at that kitchen table staring at the divorce papers still unsigned under my hands, and I thought about how five years of my life had just walked out to go check on another woman without even waiting to hear what I had to say.

My phone buzzed on the table. I looked down at it.

Noah: If you still want pheromones, stop making unnecessary trouble and just be good.

I read it twice then I smiled, I deleted the entire conversation thread. Every message. Every one-word reply he had bothered to send me in the last three days.

He had been using pheromones against me for years. An Alpha's pheromones are not just a comfort to a pregnant omega — they are a necessity. They help the fetus develop properly or without them, a werewolf baby struggles. Noah knew that and he used it the same way someone uses a leash, releasing it just enough to keep me grateful, pulling it back the moment I stopped being convenient. Every time I tried to stand up for myself, every time I pushed back even a little, he would withdraw them until my body was in enough distress that I had no choice but to go back to him.

It was five years of that, being managed like a problem he hadn't found a permanent solution to yet.

I stood up, folded the divorce agreement back into its folder, and started packing.

I didn't have much. What I had now was a small rented apartment near the outer edge of pack territory, close enough to the boundary that you could hear the wind differently at night. I had my savings, not much of those either since I had never been given a formal income as Luna despite everything I had built for this pack and I had a suitcase that was only half full when I was done.

Sera, my best friend arrived twenty minutes after I called her.

She came in wearing an oversized brown jacket and jeans, "Are you serious this time?"

"Yes," I said.

"Ivy…." She stepped closer, studying my face the way she had been studying it for years, reading all the things I didn't say out loud. "Because you've been serious before. You were serious when he gave her your anniversary dinner reservation. You were serious when he skipped your hospital checkup to take her to the coast. And every time—"

"This time is different, Sera. I promise."

She went quiet for a moment. Then, softly, "The baby. How is the baby? Whatever you've decided, we can figure it out. I'll help you disappear if you need to. Say the word and we're gone tonight."

I opened my mouth and something cracked in my chest. I pressed my hand over my face and I laughed, but it came out all wrong, wet and broken, and then I was crying and laughing at the same time in a way that didn't feel human. "The baby is gone," I managed. "He's gone, Sera. All those years of waiting, hoping…he…he died.."

I choked hard on my words and the room went completely silent aside from my sobs.

Sera crossed the space between us in two steps and pulled me in, both arms around me, and I pressed my face into her shoulder and cried the way I hadn't let myself cry in three days.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, Ivy." She held me tighter. "Where is Noah? Does he know?"

I pulled back and wiped my face with the back of my hand. "He's probably with her. He left to go to her tonight without even waiting for me to finish talking." I laughed again, bitter and short.

"He's the one who pushed me into the water, Sera. At the banquet. He was trying to catch Amy and he knocked me in and he didn't even look back. That's why the baby is gone. His own father killed him."

Sera went very still, then I watched something cold and dangerous move across her face. "He pushed you into the water." She said it slowly, like she was making sure she understood correctly. "Eight months pregnant and then what, he just….he just left you there?"

"He walked Amy away from the pool. I was on the floor coughing water out of my lungs and he walked her away and asked if she was okay."

"Ivy—"

"And the pack members standing there told me I was clumsy. Said I should have stayed home and eaten like a pig." I picked up my bag. "Can we just go? I can't be in this place anymore."

Sera pressed her lips together so hard they went white and she picked up my suitcase without another word.

***

She helped me clean out the apartment in under an hour. There wasn't much to sort through, just a few boxes of books, some kitchen things, and a small framed photo of my mother I kept on the bedside table that I wrapped carefully in a shirt before placing it in my bag. Sera kept glancing at me the whole time with that look on her face, the one she always got when she was biting back everything she actually wanted to say.

"I always told you," she finally said, folding one of my sweaters. "From the very beginning. I told you that man was going to burn you alive and smile while doing it. He's a fucking bastard be you were too deep in a puddle of love mess."

"I know you did."

"You loved him before he even knew you existed. You sat in the back of that classroom and memorized his schedule and the one time he helped you….one time, Ivy, when those girls had you cornered and he happened to walk by and you turned it into a love story and gave him everything."

"I know," I said quietly with regret.

"The mate bond is not an excuse to let someone destroy you."

"I know that too, Sera stop already" I had known about it for a long time. Knowing something and being able to act on it are two very different things when everything in your biology is screaming at you to go back, stay close, forgive, endure. But my son was gone now. The last thread had been cut and I had nothing left to endure for.

Sera nudged my shoulder. "Come on. Let's get out of here. I'm taking you shopping. New life, new everything and a glow."

I actually smiled at that. "I have maybe enough in savings to buy two shirts."

"Good thing I'm paying then." She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.

Her phone rang before we reached it.

She picked up, frowned, and held a hand up at me. "Slow down, what? Who wants to buy it?" A pause then her frown deepened. "How much?" Another pause. "Who is it, Mara? Is it…. okay, we're coming. Don't do anything. Don't sell it. We're coming right now."

She hung up and looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. "That was Mara at the shop. You know that jade music box you left with her? Your mother's?"

My stomach tightened. "What about it?"

"Someone powerful just walked in and wanted to buy it. Mara says she's uncomfortable and she needs you there."

We got there in fifteen minutes.

I stepped through the door of Sera's small consignment shop and stopped so fast Sera walked into the back of me.

Noah was standing at the glass display, relaxed in the way he only ever was when he was around her. Amy was beside him with one hand looped through his arm, her blonde hair loose, wearing a pale dress that probably cost more than my monthly savings. She was pointing at the music box behind the glass and looking up at Noah with that smile she used when she wanted something, soft and tilted and completely irresistible to him.

"Can we get it? It's so beautiful, Noah. And it's perfect for the collection. I just love it—"

"If you want it," Noah said simply, "it's yours."

Mara, the shop owner, spotted Sera and hurried over with clear relief on her face. "You're here, thank God. Alpha Noah wants to purchase the Caldwell's Kade piece. I didn't know what to—"

"We're not selling," Sera said flatly. "Not to him or anyone."

Amy turned around at Sera's voice, and her eyes slid past her and landed on me. Something shifted in her expression, just mild surprise, and then she smiled and walked toward me with her hands clasped like we were old friends.

"Ivy, oh I'm so glad you're here. Is this your friend's shop? I was just asking Noah about the music box—" She tilted her head, acting soft and sweet. "Could you let her lend it to me? Just for a while? Noah and I, we actually first met because of a music box just like this one. It sounds silly but it means so much to me. I don't know how long I have left but I just want to hold onto things that feel like us, you know?"

She said it so delicate and sad and perfectly designed to make anyone who pushed back look like a monster.

Then she lowered her head slightly, adjusting the neckline of her dress, and I saw it.

The air left my body and rage simmered in my viens.

Around her neck, half tucked against her collarbone, was a thin gold chain with a small crescent moon pendant. The clasp was bent in the same place it had always been bent because my mother used to fidget with it when she was nervous and it had never been fixed. I knew every scratch on that pendant. I had held it in my hands as a little girl and watched my mother put it on every single morning.

My mother had died in the pack dungeon. She had gone in wearing that necklace and it was supposed to have been lost with her body. Noah had promised me, looked me in the face and promised that he would find it for me. That was two years ago.

He had found it and he had put it around Amy's neck.

The burning started behind my eyes and I pressed my teeth together hard and I looked at Amy, She was still talking, something about time and memories and not knowing how long she had left, that voice pitched just right to make everyone in the room feel sorry for her.

I looked at her and said, "People die every day." My voice came out quiet. Steady. "Do I have to give way to every single person who is about to die? Do you have to take everything away from me Amy?"

Ivy's Pov

Amy's eyes filled with tears so fast it almost looked rehearsed. Her bottom lip trembled and she pressed one hand to her chest like my words had physically wounded her. Every person in that shop was looking at me like I had just kicked a puppy.

Noah turned to me with that cold, flat look he reserved for people who had disappointed him beyond repair. "It's just a music box, Ivy. Why are you being so aggressive?" He said it slowly, like he was explaining something to someone who couldn't keep up. "If you want one that badly, I'll buy you another."

I looked at him for a long moment. "Yes," I said pleasantly. "It's just a music box. So if she wants one, buy her another one. Why does it have to be mine?"

His jaw tightened.

Amy stepped forward then, her eyes still glistening, hands clasped together in that way she had that made her look permanently gentle. "Ivy, please. I'll do anything. Name any condition and I'll meet it. I just, this means so much to me, you have no idea—"

Any condition as if it would be her paying it and not Noah. As if everything she offered wasn't ultimately his money, his effort, his everything handed over on her behalf while I stood here with nothing.

I smiled at her warmly. "You really do love my mother's things, don't you?"

Amy blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"The music box." I nodded toward the display case. "And the necklace you're wearing." I kept my voice even, almost conversational. "Both of them belonged to my mother."

The color drained from Amy's face slowly, like water leaving a glass. "I… I don't know what you mean."

"Yes you do." I took one step toward her. "That necklace was my mother's. She died in the pack dungeon wearing it. Noah promised me two years ago that he would find it." I paused to let that land. "He found it and he put it around your neck."

Amy's hand flew up to the necklace, fingers closing around the pendant, and she turned to Noah with tears spilling now, real or practiced. I no longer cared which. "Noah, I had no idea. Yesterday when you gave me the gift box I thought, I just put it on. I didn't know it was her mother's. I'm so sorry, I really didn't know—"

"Now you know," I said. "Can you give it back?"

Amy touched the clasp slowly, and for one second, I thought she was actually going to take it off. Then she looked up at Noah with those wet brown eyes and said, "Maybe we should give it back to her. I don't want to cause trouble between you two. She's still carrying your heir. I'm not worth this, Noah. Really."

I watched Noah's face as he looked at her and I already knew what was coming before he opened his mouth.

"No." His voice was firm, final, like he was closing a deal. "Once a gift is given, it belongs to the person who received it. Don't talk like that. You deserve everything."

"But Noah—"

"There is no taking back something I gave." He said it like that was the end of it. Like my mother's necklace, my mother's keepsake, the last physical piece of a woman who died alone in a dungeon because this pack destroyed her, was just a line item he had already settled.

Amy looked up at him with such naked gratitude it made my stomach turn. He looked back at her the same way. Right there in front of me like I was furniture.

I unclenched my hands slowly. Then I smiled, and this time there was something in it that made Amy take a small step back. "You wanted to borrow the music box?" I said. "Fine….I'll consider it. All Alpha Noah has to do is come and beg me for it on his knees. Then I'll think about it."

The whole shop went still. Noah stared at me with a shock that almost looked funny and Amy stared at me. Even Sera behind me went quiet.

Noah's voice came out low and furious. "Ivy…what the fuck? That is enough."

"Really?" I tilted my head. "I thought you would do anything for her. Isn't that what you always say? Any wish, any price?" I let that sit for exactly two seconds. "Turns out there are limits after all. They just don't include me."

I turned to Mara before either of them could respond. "I'm withdrawing the music box from consignment today. Right now."

Noah took a step forward. "You—"

"What?" I looked back at him, calm, almost bored. "I'm the owner. Do I not have the right to take back my own property?"

He had nothing to say to that. What could he say? It was mine. It had always been mine. That was the thing about Noah — he was very good at taking things that belonged to me, but the moment I reached out and took something back, suddenly I was the problem.

Mara moved quickly, lifting the music box from the display and wrapping it with shaking hands. I took it, tucked it under my arm, and walked out without looking at either of them again. Sera was half a step behind me, close enough that I could hear her breathing slow and controlled the way it got when she was too angry for words.

We didn't speak until we were two streets away.

I asked Sera to drop me at the cemetery alone.

She didn't want to. She held my arm in the car and said, "Ivy, you don't have to do this today. It's too much for one day. Come home with me, eat something, sleep—"

"I need to see her," I said quietly. "Please."

She let me go.

My mother's grave was at the far edge of the pack burial grounds, past the tree line where the maintained path ended and the grass grew long and wild. Pack criminals were not given proper plots near the others. She was buried where the ground dipped low and the trees blocked most of the light, marked by a simple stone with her name and the year she died. No other words. The pack had not allowed it.

I sat in the grass in front of her stone with the music box in my lap and I told her everything. About the banquet, about the water, about my son and the necklace around Amy's neck that I had not been able to get back. I talked until my throat ached and then I just sat in the quiet, listening to the wind move through the trees above her, letting myself feel the full weight of everything I had been holding together since this started.

I don't know how long I was there but I heard something, a low sound behind the cluster of trees to my right. I could swear it wasn't an animal. I stood slowly, tucking the music box carefully against my side, and moved toward it. Through the gap in the trees, in the shadow between two leaning oaks, I found someone.

He was on the ground, one arm braced against the tree trunk like he had been trying to stand and lost the fight halfway up. His shirt was dark with blood, so much of it that I couldn't tell what color it had originally been. He was tall because even collapsed like this I could see that broad-shouldered and powerfully built structure— but whatever strength that body usually carried had run out somewhere between here and wherever he had come from. His face was turned away from me, half hidden in shadow.

I took a step closer and I felt a pull, low in my chest, like standing too close to something warm after being cold for a very long time and I stopped walking. My heart was doing something strange. The back of my neck was warm in a way that had nothing to do with the evening air.

I didn't understand it. I only knew that I could not walk away from him.

"Hey," I said. My voice came out sof

ter than I intended. "Can you hear me?"

Chapter Four

Ivy's Pov

I should have walked away. He was a stranger, bleeding out between two trees at the edge of pack territory, and every sensible thought in my head was telling me that a man this badly injured at the border could be a rogue or a criminal trying to flee but my feet wouldn't move in the other direction.

My wolf was restless inside me, pacing low and quiet, a soft continuous growl that wasn't aggression.

I pulled the small medical kit from my bag. I always carried one when I came here. The path to my mother's grave was uneven and overgrown and I had twisted my ankle on it more than once. I crouched a few feet away from him first, just watching, trying to get a read on how conscious he actually was.

Even with his face half in shadow and with that much blood soaked into his clothes, I could see the shift happen the moment I got close. His body stiffened. One hand pressed harder into the dirt.

His head turned toward me slowly, and through whatever haze of pain and blood loss he was under, he barely looked at me and made a sound low in his throat.

It was a warning. Rough and weak but unmistakably deliberate.

I stayed where I was. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said. "I'm just going to stop the bleeding."

He made the sound again. Deeper this time, and even half-conscious and unable to lift himself off the ground, the force of it went through my chest like a bass note through thin walls. My legs nearly gave out.

I pressed my hand flat against the tree beside me, steadied myself, and kept moving toward him.

"I know," I said, more to myself than to him. "I know….Just stay still."

His presence was overwhelming even like this, not even Noah had such effects and aura. I had lived with an Alpha for five years. I knew what dominance felt like in a room.

I pushed the thought aside and focused on the wound.

It was bad. Deep, like something had torn rather than cut, and he had lost a significant amount of blood before I got to him. I worked quickly, pressing the gauze firm against the worst of it, wrapping what I could reach with the bandaging in the kit, keeping my hands steady through the second low roar that rolled out of him when I applied pressure. This one nearly took me off my knees. I gripped his shirt and held on and kept pressing.

"You're going to be fine," I told him, even though I wasn't certain. "You're too stubborn not to be."

I didn't consider taking him home. I had enough troubles to add to it.

I found the cemetery keeper in his small stone hut at the entrance of the grounds, right where he always was just before dark, wrapping herbs and muttering to himself. Benno. "There's an injured man in the trees past the east path," I said. "He's bad but stable for now. Someone tore into him."

Benno set down his herbs slowly and looked at me. "How bad?"

"He needs shelter and time. Not a hospital, if he wanted a hospital he would have gone to one." I paused. "He has a strong wolf. He'll survive if the bleeding stays stopped."

Benno was quiet for a moment and then stood up without any further questions. He reached for his coat and the worn leather satchel he kept stocked with more knowledge than most pack healers. "I'll check him out."

"Don't tell him I was there," I said. "Don't tell anyone please, I just can't bear to see him bleeding out near my mother's cemetery"

He looked at me with those calm old eyes and smirked. "You were never here."

I walked back to the main road and called Sera for a ride and didn't mention the man in the trees.

***

I woke up the next morning to my phone buzzing on the nightstand.

A group chat notification. Three members. Myself, Mrs. Holt who managed Noah's household, and Amy.

I sat up in bed in Sera's spare room, hair loose around my face, and I stared at it for a moment before I opened it.

Mrs. Holt had sent a message at six in the morning: Miss Amy isn't feeling well this morning. She's been asking about the soup again. Alpha Noah wanted us to reach out.

Then Amy, forty minutes later, with a sad-face emoji: I know it's a lot to ask. I just haven't been able to eat properly. The soup you made last time was the only thing that helped my stomach. But I understand if you don't want to.

I set the phone face down on the mattress and lay there staring at the ceiling.

I knew this game. I had played it before and lost badly.

Eight months ago, I had brought a flask of slow-cooked bone broth to Noah's study because he had been working late and hadn't eaten. He wasn't there when I arrived. Amy was, curled up on the reading chair in one of his sweaters, and she had looked at the flask with such genuine longing that I had, stupidly, told her to help herself. She drank the whole thing in one sitting and looked at me afterward with those soft eyes and said, "I've never had anything like this. You're so talented, Ivy. I wish I could have this every day."

I should have laughed and walked out. Instead I said nothing, and two days later Noah came to me and said Amy's appetite had been suffering because of her illness and that the soup had been the first thing to help and could I make it a few more times. Just a few times. Just until she was stronger.

I said no. I was eight months pregnant. I had my own health to manage, my own body that was running on almost no pheromone support, and I was not going to become a private cook for the woman my husband was in love with.

Amy was admitted to the hospital unconscious that same night.

They pumped her stomach. They called it a crisis episode. Noah called me from the hospital at two in the morning, his voice so cold it had no temperature at all, and said, "She left a note. It says she knows she's not worthy of anyone's kindness. That since she's dying anyway, why should anyone bother." He paused. "She's asking about you specifically, Ivy. I need you to think very carefully about the kind of person you want to be."

She recovered in two days. Sent home bright-eyed and quiet and wearing the expression of someone who had narrowly survived something terrible. The pack found out and I spent a week being looked at in halls and corridors like I was something that had crawled out from under something. Noah didn't come home for eleven days after that. Eleven days with no pheromones, my son growing inside me, my body going into low-grade distress that the doctors said was manageable but concerning.

I held out for as long as I could before my hands started shaking in my sleep and I woke up one night in a cold sweat with my son barely moving inside me.

I called Noah. He picked up on the second ring, which told me everything — he had been waiting for me to break. "Are you ready to apologize?" he said. That was it, Not are you okay or how is the baby. Just are you ready to apologize.

I apologized. I went to Amy's room in Noah's house and I apologized while she sat in bed with a cup of tea and looked at me with something that wasn't quite guilt and wasn't quite satisfaction either, something that existed in the careful space between the two. And then I cooked for her every day for the next eight weeks until the night of the banquet, because my son's life was not something I was willing to gamble with but my son was gone now.

I picked my phone back up.

The group chat was still open. Amy's message sitting there with its sad-face emoji and its perfectly worded helplessness. I understand if you don't want to.

I typed one message, slow and deliberate, and read it back once before I sent it. "You were right back then. You are indeed not worthy."

I pressed send…Then I left the group.