UNBOUND: THE ALPHA'S SECOND VOW

CHAPTER FIVE

Ivy's POV

I find Marcus outside the tribunal building, phone screen glowing in the gray morning light, his expression carved from stone.

"Show me."

He turns the phone around.

It's a public tribunal notice, freshly stamped.

My eyes catch on three lines before the rest blurs.

Emergency Petition, Blackthorn Pack Council, Formal Challenge to Alpha Fitness, filed by Councilman Edric Reeve, citing evidence of concealed offspring, breach of pack succession transparency, and destabilization of active merger negotiations.

"They're moving fast," Marcus says.

"Faster than I've ever seen a fitness challenge move."

"Because they were already planning it," I say slowly.

Selene's words clicking into place like a lock turning.

"The merger falling apart isn't a surprise to Reeve. It's an opportunity. He's had this drafted for weeks, just waiting for a trigger."

And I just watched Damian hand him one, on the record, in front of three hundred people's worth of legal witnesses, because I told him to prove it.

I don't have time to sit with the guilt curdling in my stomach, because my phone buzzes again this time an actual call, and the caller ID makes my chest seize.

Wren's daycare.

"Ms. Calloway?" The director's voice, tight and careful in the specific way people get when they're trying very hard not to alarm you. "I need you to come right away.”

“There's nothing wrong with Wren.

She's completely safe, I promise. But there's a man here asking to see her, and he says he's her father, and he won't leave the lobby until you arrive."

Every sound in the tribunal hallway goes distant, underwater.

"Is it Damian Voss?"

My voice comes out strange.

Flat.

A stranger's voice.

A pause.

"He didn't give a name. He's not... he's not one of ours, Ms. Calloway. He's not pack. I checked.”

“He has no scent signature we recognize at all, and our security wolf says that's not possible for someone claiming to be a father."

My pulse drops to a flat, dangerous quiet, the kind I get right before I ruin someone in a courtroom.

"Lock the doors," I say.

I'm already running, Marcus a half-step behind me, both of us abandoning the tribunal steps and every ounce of composure I've spent three years building.

"Lock every door. Do not let him within ten feet of her. I am four minutes away."

I don't remember Marcus's car moving.

I remember gripping the dashboard so hard the plastic creaks under my fingers, and the daycare's brick building rushing up too slow through the windshield, and my heart trying to climb straight up out of my throat.

We skid to a stop at the curb.

Through the daycare's front window I can see the lobby a stranger in a dark coat standing very still near the reception desk, his back to the glass, unmoving despite two security wolves flanking him with their hackles visibly raised even in human form.

I recognize the type before I recognize the men retired pack enforcers doing court-mandated community service after minor pack-law violations, the reason this daycare's "security" is scent-trained instead of just camera-watched, and the reason they clocked this stranger as wrong before anyone thought to call the police.

I'm out of the car before it fully stops.

I hit the front door at a dead run, shove it open hard enough that the bell above it screams.

And the stranger turns around.

It's not Damian. It's not anyone I recognize.

A lean, pale man with colorless eyes and a smile that doesn't reach them, a smile that makes every instinct in my body scream wrong, wrong, wrong before he's said a single word.

"Ms. Calloway," he says pleasantly, like we're meeting at a cocktail party instead of a daycare lobby with my daughter locked somewhere behind him.

"My name doesn't matter. What matters is the message. Councilman Reeve wanted you to know something before this afternoon's session."

My whole body has gone cold and sharp, every lawyer instinct and every mother instinct screaming the same thing at once: get him away from my child.

"Say it and leave."

His colorless eyes crinkle, almost fond, entirely wrong.

"The fitness challenge isn't really about the merger, or the renunciation filing, or even about you, Ms. Calloway. Alpha Voss has a secret buried far deeper than a two-year-old daughter one that, if it comes out at the right moment, will end not just his leadership, but very possibly his life."

He tilts his head, studying my face like he's savoring something.

"Councilman Reeve thought you, of all people, deserved to know that before you decide whose side you're actually on."

He strolls past me, unhurried, like a man who knows exactly how long it'll take security to react.

He's gone before Marcus's hand closes on empty air where his sleeve was, out into the gray afternoon, leaving me standing frozen in a daycare lobby with my daughter's frightened crying suddenly audible from the back room, and one single, terrible sentence ringing louder than anything else in my skull.

A secret buried far deeper than a two-year-old daughter.

And somewhere across the city, Damian Voss is about to walk into a fitness hearing with no idea the ground under his feet isn't cracking anymore.

It's already gone.