UNBOUND: THE ALPHA'S SECOND VOW

CHAPTER TWO

Ivy's POV

Smoke doesn't smell like anything in the movies.

It drags down your throat like swallowing a struck match, and it claims your lungs before your brain even registers danger.

"Stairwell," Marcus barks, already pulling me toward the fire exit, but I plant my feet, because seventeen families are on the seventh floor and I did not spend two years building a firm just to run out a side door while my clients choke on smoke somewhere above me.

"Ivy…"

"They're my case, Marcus."

Damian is suddenly beside me, when did he get there, his big hand closing over my shoulder with a heat that feels wrong, familiar, unwelcome in the way an old wound is unwelcome when someone presses on it.

"The seventh floor is being evacuated by pack security right now," he says, low and fast, all business, none of the wreckage from thirty seconds ago showing on his face.

"I have four wolves up there already. Get outside. Now."

"You don't get to give me orders."

"I'm not giving you orders. I'm telling you what's happening so you don't do something insane."

His jaw ticks.

"Please, Ivy."

The word please from his mouth lands somewhere it has no business landing, somewhere soft and unguarded that I thought I'd sealed shut three years ago. I hate that it still works.

I hate that some wrecked, younger part of me still hears my name in his voice and wants to believe him.

I don't have time to hate it properly, because the crowd surges, and somebody's elbow catches me hard in the ribs, and the crowd wrenches me sideways, and this time it's not a memory, it's real, the smoke thickening enough that my eyes are streaming and my knees actually do go.

Damian's arm hooks around my waist before I finish falling. His arms come around me on instinct, wolf-fast, and for one suspended second I am pressed against his chest the way I used to be, his heartbeat slamming under my cheek, too fast for a man giving orders this calmly, and the old scar on my collarbone ignites, hot and silver under my collar, like it's answering something.

"You're not supposed to feel that," I gasp, more to myself than to him.

"Neither are you," he says, and his voice has gone strange rough, frightened, like a man realizing a wound he thought was closed is still bleeding under the bandage.

"Ivy, the bond…"

Blackthorn security's first instinct on a call like this isn't just to look for flames. Retrofitted sprinkler systems in pack buildings carry a scent-neutralizing agent, because a real fire's smoke is exactly the kind of cover someone would use to mask a scent-marking attack instead.

Somewhere above us, that's exactly what four wolves in Alpha black are checking for right now, and the thought settles cold in my stomach even before the noise cuts Damian off not fire, not real danger, just a fire marshal with a bullhorn ordering the lobby clear.

In the crush of bodies I lose my footing again, and this time when I go down, it's not into his arms.

It's into the arms of a woman I don't know.

Golden-haired, composed even in chaos, steel in her spine the way only pack-trained wolves carry themselves. She sets me upright with brisk, practiced hands.

"Careful.”

There's no unkindness in her voice.

Just efficiency.

Then her eyes flick past me to Damian, and something recalculates behind her eyes recognition, and beneath that, an old tiredness I understand instantly, because I have worn that exact expression myself.

"Damian. You look like you've seen your own funeral."

"Selene." His voice doesn't rise. It just goes somewhere she can't follow. "Not now."

Selene Ashford. I know the name from the merger filings the Ashford Pack heir Damian's been courting for a political alliance, the "necessary" match everyone in the Five Packs has been gossiping about for a year.

She's younger than I expected. Prettier than I wanted her to be, which is a petty, ugly thought I'm ashamed of the second it surfaces.

She looks at me really looks, taking in the case folder still clutched to my chest, the singed hem of my slacks, the way Damian hasn't managed to put three feet between us and something shifts behind her eyes.

Understanding.

Maybe pity.

"You're Calloway," she says. "The Halloway coalition's counsel."

"That's me."

"Then you and I," she says, with a small, tired smile that doesn't match the chaos of sirens behind her, "are about to become very well acquainted, Ms. Calloway. Because I read your brief on the seventh-floor filing cabinet before it started smoking. Your argument is better than anything Blackthorn's own counsel has managed to write, and I intend to tell my father exactly that."

Before I can answer, security floods the lobby and starts herding everyone toward the doors, and I lose sight of Selene in the crowd but not before I catch Damian watching her retreating back with an expression I can't read, something between guilt and relief.

Outside, in the gray afternoon and the wail of fire trucks, Marcus finds me and doesn't let go of my arm again. My hands won't stop shaking.

Not from smoke.

"He asked if she's his," Marcus says quietly, watching my face.

Not a question.

"I heard him."

"What are you going to tell him?"

I watch Damian across the crowded street, barking orders to his security detail, silver-streaked hair catching the gray light, looking every inch the Alpha who ruined me, and underneath that, for one unguarded second, looking like a man who'd already started grieving something he hadn't lost yet.

"Nothing," I say.

"I'm going to tell him nothing, because the moment paternity is confirmed under pack law, my daughter stops being mine and starts being property Blackthorn property, his to claim whether I want that or not."

Marcus's jaw tightens.

"Ivy. He's going to find the birth registry eventually. It's in the case file. You can't un-file a federal document."

I already know that.

I knew it the moment I saw Wren's name typed on the tab in that elevator lobby, the exact moment the fire alarm went off like the universe itself was trying to warn me.

I look back across the street. Damian has stopped mid-sentence, and he's staring straight at me through the crowd, smoke still curling faint behind him, and even from thirty feet away I can see it the terrible, dawning certainty on his face that he already knows the answer to the question the fire alarm interrupted.

My phone buzzes in my coat pocket. A text from my daughter's nanny:

Wren has a fever.

My hand goes numb around the phone. I'm already flagging down a cab before I finish reading it.

A second text lands before I get the door open:

And there's a strange wolf outside the house. Watching.