The Alpha's Forbidden Pact

CHAPTER 15: RATIONED

I stayed in the yard after Kade went back inside.

The folded paper sat in my pocket, unread. I did not need to open it anymore. His face had already told me everything that mattered. One touch with intent. That was all it would have taken. The night he grabbed my wrist in the living room, the pact had been noticed. If he had held on even a few seconds longer, every protection they had built around me for eighteen years would have collapsed at once.

I sat on the low stone step and pressed my palms against my eyes.

Every time Kade had stepped back. Every time Damaris had put another person in the room. Every careful inch of space the five of them had guarded like it was sacred. I had read those distances as rejection or duty or coldness. Now they looked like something else entirely. They looked like men standing on a trigger and choosing, again and again, not to step on it.

The back door opened.

I did not turn around. Footsteps crossed the small yard and stopped a few feet away. I knew the weight of them without looking.

“Ivy.

Damaris’s voice was quieter than usual.

I dropped my hands and looked up. He stood with his hands at his sides, shoulders set in the way he used when he was holding something back. The evening light cut across the grey at his temples and the lines around his eyes. He looked tired. He also looked like a man who had already made a decision and was only here to deliver it.

“Kade told you,” he said.

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

He nodded once, as if he had expected it. “How much?”

“Enough. The real terms. What one touch would have cost all of you.”

Silence settled between us. Somewhere beyond the wall a car passed. The jasmine still smelled too sweet.

“I should have been the one to tell you,” he said.

“Probably.”

“There was never a good moment.”

“There were eighteen years of moments.”

He accepted that without argument. His eyes moved over my face like he was checking for damage he could not fix.

“The wrist,” he said. “That night after you came back from Vance Industries. Kade came close.”

“I know.”

“Closer than any of us have come since the pact was sealed.”

I stood up. The stone step felt cold through my clothes. “Why are you out here, Damaris?”

He did not answer immediately. His gaze shifted past me toward the darkening sky above the wall, then returned.

“We are changing your security detail,” he said. “Effective immediately.”

“Why?”

“Because the people who tried to take you on the street today will try again. Because Cassius Drake does not appear without purpose. And because the Council is moving pieces we cannot see yet.”

“That is not the full reason.”

His jaw tightened. For a moment I thought he would deny it. Then something in his expression gave way.

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

“Then tell me the rest.”

“I cannot. Not yet.”

“Damaris.”

“Ivy.” My name came out low, almost a warning. “There are things in motion that I am still trying to confirm. Until I have proof, I will not put theories in your head that could get you killed if I am wrong. What I can tell you is this. You do not leave this house without the two of us. You do not take calls from numbers we have not cleared. You do not go back to Vance Industries alone. The details are being doubled starting tonight.”

I stared at him. The careful control he usually wore was still there, but underneath it something restless moved. He looked like a man who had felt the ground shift and was still trying to find solid footing.

“You are rattled,” I said.

“Yes.”

The honesty surprised us both. He looked away at first.

“Kade will take the first watch,” he said, already stepping back toward the door. “Theo second. I will handle the outer perimeter with the others. You should try to sleep.”

“Damaris.”

He stopped with his hand on the door.

“Whatever you are not telling me,” I said, “how bad is it?”

He stood still for a long second. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper.

“Bad enough that I am no longer certain the pact is the strongest thing protecting you.”

Then he opened the door and went inside, leaving me alone in the yard with the weight of his words and the growing sense that the walls around me were being rebuilt even tighter than before.