Iron Moon

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

IVY

"You felt it too. Do not insult me by pretending you did not."

I say it before I lose my nerve, standing in the middle of Alpha Ronan Vale's office while my father and Jonah wait outside with Silas, because someone in this room has to say the truth out loud, and I am done letting men decide what happens to my life without me getting a say in it.

Ronan does not answer right away. He stands behind his desk instead of sitting, arms crossed, jaw tight enough that a muscle jumps in his cheek, and for a long moment the only sound in the room is the fire cracking in the hearth behind him.

"I felt something," he says finally, and even those four words seem to cost him something. "It does not change anything."

"It does not change anything," I repeat, and I hear how flat my own voice sounds, how much it matches the way Bastian sounded two years ago right before he broke my heart in front of an entire pack. "That is exactly what my last mate said to me. Right before he rejected me because his father told him to."

Something moves across Ronan's face, fast, gone before I can name it. Not indifference. The opposite of indifference, actually, something that looks almost like pain.

"I am not him," he says.

"You are standing here telling me the bond does not matter while refusing to explain why. That sounds exactly like him to me."

"You do not know anything about my reasons."

"Then tell me." I step closer, and I watch him go very still, the way a predator goes still when something walks toward it instead of away, uncertain for the first time since I walked into this room. "Tell me why an Alpha strong enough to make grown warriors flinch is standing here refusing to even say the word mate out loud."

For one second, I think he is actually going to tell me. His mouth opens, something raw sitting right behind his eyes, and Fenrik, I realize later that is his wolf's name, though I do not know it yet in this moment, Fenrik is fighting him for control so hard I can see it in the way his hands curl into fists at his sides.

Then the door opens without a knock, and an older man steps inside, silver at his temples, sharp eyes that go straight to me and stay there a beat too long before moving to Ronan.

"Alpha. Council business. Now." The man's voice is smooth, formal, and completely cold. "It concerns a matter of pack lineage that cannot wait."

I watch something shut down behind Ronan's eyes, a door closing so fast and so completely that it is like watching the man from thirty seconds ago disappear entirely.

"Renner." Ronan's voice has gone flat, careful. "This is a poor time."

"On the contrary, Alpha, I believe the timing could not be more urgent." Renner's gaze slides to me again, assessing, cataloguing, the way you look at a problem instead of a person. "Especially given what half this pack house is currently whispering about a rogue girl and the way you looked at her in the front hall."

My face goes hot. Ronan's does not change at all, which somehow feels worse.

"Get out, Renner."

"Of course, Alpha." Renner bows his head, but his eyes stay on me one second longer than respect requires, something calculating sitting behind them that makes my skin crawl in a way I do not fully understand yet. "I will simply tell the council you are otherwise occupied. I am certain they will find that very reassuring, given everything else currently under review."

He leaves. The door closes. Whatever moment existed between us thirty seconds ago is gone, replaced by something colder standing in Ronan's eyes.

"You should go," he says. "Silas will show your family to their house."

"That's it?" I cannot keep the disbelief out of my voice. "You are just going to send me away after that?"

"There is nothing else to discuss."

"There is everything else to discuss." My voice rises before I can stop it, two years of swallowing my own anger cracking straight down the middle. "I did not ask for this bond either. I did not ask to feel something for a man I have known for ten minutes. But I am not going to stand here and pretend I do not feel it just because it is inconvenient for you, the way I did the last time a man decided my feelings were a problem to be managed instead of respected."

Something flashes across his face, fast and furious and, underneath it, something that looks almost like respect.

"You do not know what protecting this pack costs me," he says quietly.

"Then tell me."

"I cannot."

"Cannot, or will not?"

He does not answer, and the silence stretches long enough that I understand it is an answer all on its own.

"Fine," I say, and I turn for the door, because I promised myself two years ago I would never again stand in a room begging a man to choose me, and I am not about to break that promise for an Alpha I met an hour ago no matter what my chest is doing right now. "You do not owe me anything, Alpha Vale. Believe me, I have had enough practice being unwanted to know exactly how this goes."

I make it to the door before his voice stops me, low, rougher than before.

"Ivy."

It is the first time he has said my name. I do not know how he already knows it, no one told him, my father has not introduced us formally, and something about hearing my name in his voice for the first time hits me harder than it should.

I turn around. He has come out from behind the desk, closer than I expected, close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his eyes, and for one long moment neither of us says anything at all.

"Whatever you think this is," he says finally, "you should know that walking away from you right now is the hardest thing I have done in seven years."

"Then why are you doing it?"

His jaw tightens. And just as I think he might actually answer me, a warrior bursts through the door without knocking, breathless, eyes wide with the kind of fear that makes every hair on my arms stand straight up.

"Alpha. Border patrol just radioed in." The warrior's eyes flick to me for half a second before going back to Ronan. "Duskwood warriors have been spotted three miles south. And Alpha Draven is with them."

The room goes ice cold.

Ronan's eyes lock on mine, and for the first time since I walked into this office, I see something in his face that is not careful at all. It is fury, pure and immediate, the kind of fury that makes the temperature of a room actually change.

"He is not touching her," Ronan says, and his voice has dropped into something that does not sound entirely human anymore, something with Fenrik sitting right underneath it. "Sound the alarm. Every warrior to the southern line. Now."

The warrior bolts. Somewhere outside, a horn begins to sound, long and deep, rolling out over the whole territory, and I feel the entire pack house shudder awake around us.

Draven followed us. Draven is here, three miles from where I am standing, less than a full moon after promising my father he would simply take what he wanted if we said no.

And the last thing I see before Ronan turns and strides out to meet whatever is coming, leaving me standing alone in his office with my heart slamming against my ribs, is his eyes flicking back to me one final time, and in them, something that looks less like an Alpha protecting a pack and a lot more like a man who has already decided, secret or no secret, exactly what he is willing to burn down to keep me safe.