The Alpha's Forbidden Pact

"Say it again," I said. "Tell me I don't get a say in my own life." "It's not about a say." Kade's voice stayed flat, the wall he always put up when I pushed too hard. "It's about keeping you breathing until the Moon." He was one of five men sworn by blood the day I was born to keep me hidden and alive until the night my identity as heir to a murdered wolf throne could no longer be buried, and in six years of guarding me he had never once let himself want anything he wasn't allowed to have. "That's not an answer." "It's the one you're getting." "You've been giving me some version of that for six years." "And you're still standing here to complain about it." We were close, closer than the pact allowed, the old rule that said none of the Five could ever touch me the way a man touches a woman he wants, not until the night the hiding finally ended. I could feel the heat off him like something I kept walking into on purpose. My heart slammed too fast, too loud, and I hated that it always did this around him, hated more that he probably knew it. "You keep saying that like it's supposed to comfort me," I said. "Keeping me breathing. Like I'm something you're guarding instead of someone you're talking to." "That's the job." "Is it just the job?" His eyes flicked away first, jaw working like the question cost him something he didn't want me to see. "Don't," he said. "Don't what. Ask you a real question." "Don't push this tonight." "When, then. You always have a reason it's not the right night." "Ivy." "That's not an answer either." "You want an answer or you want a fight. Pick one, because I don't have the patience for both tonight." "Maybe I want both." "Of course you do." My pulse kept climbing, and it wasn't the kind that came from danger. I knew this feeling too well, the air going thin whenever we stood like this, my skin too aware of exactly how far his hand sat from mine. My breath had gone shallow without asking my permission. Six years of him never touching me longer than a second, never letting a hug last, never letting his fingers linger, because one wrong touch from any of the five men bound to protect me would break the pact for all of them at once. Six years of wondering if that restraint cost him anything, or if it only ever cost me. "I have spent my whole life being told what I can't know," I said. "What I can't ask. Who I can't trust. I am so tired of being managed, Kade." "You're not being managed. You're being kept alive." "Then let me help decide how." He exhaled slowly, like he was counting something behind his teeth. "You know I can't." "Can't or won't." "Does it matter?" "It matters to me." For one full second, neither of us said anything. His eyes dropped to my mouth and snapped back up fast, like he'd caught himself somewhere he wasn't allowed to be, which, given the rule that governed every inch of space between us, he had. I felt it everywhere, low in my stomach, a pull that had no business existing between two people who weren't allowed to want each other. "Ivy." My name came out rough. "What." "Step back." "Why." "Because I'm not going to be the one who does it." I didn't move. Some reckless part of me wanted to see if the world actually ended, or if the pact was just a rule someone built to keep me small. Kade stepped back first. He did it fast, like ripping something loose, three full feet gone in a single motion, and the loss of his heat felt sharper than it should have. He dragged a hand through his hair, jaw tight, looking anywhere but at me. "That's not fair," I said, quieter now. "None of this is fair. That's the point." "Then why do you get to decide when it stops?" "Because someone has to." "Convenient. It's always you deciding." "Would you rather it wasn't?" I didn't answer that one, because I didn't trust what would come out of my mouth if I tried. "You make it sound like a burden," I said instead. "Deciding for me. Like it costs you something." "It does." "Then stop doing it." "I can't." "That's not an explanation." "It's the truth. I don't know how to stop doing it. I've been doing it since you were eight years old and I was told to keep you alive no matter what it cost me. I don't know how to just switch that off because you're angry at me tonight." Something in his voice cracked on the last word, and for a second I almost softened, almost reaching for him the way I wasn't allowed to, before I caught myself and folded my arms instead. I opened my mouth anyway, ready to argue, but the door slammed open before I got a word out. Theo. He was breathing hard, like he'd run the whole way from the main house, his face pale in a way that meant something had already gone wrong. "Theo, what's wrong?" "You need to come now." His eyes cut between the two of us, clocked exactly how close we'd been standing, and he didn't say anything about it, which somehow made it worse. "Both of you. My father called it. Full gathering. Right now." Kade's whole posture changed, shoulders squaring, voice going flat in the way that told me this wasn't a drill. "What happened?" "It's the Council." Theo's eyes cut to me, something in them dropping my stomach before he even said it. "They moved it up." "Moved what up," I said, though some part of me already knew, some part of me had been bracing for this exact sentence for years without letting myself look at it directly. "The Reclaiming Moon." Theo said it like it cost him to say. "It's not months away anymore, Ivy. The night everyone finds out who you really are, and the pact that's kept us from ever touching you finally runs out." "Then how long." He hesitated, and the hesitation told me everything before the number did. "How long, Theo." "Weeks," he said. "We have weeks." The floor felt like it had shifted a few inches to the left and no one had given me time to catch my balance. Weeks. Not the careful, distant countdown I'd spent my whole life refusing to look at directly. Weeks until my name stopped being a secret. Weeks until every rule that kept five men from ever touching me the way I sometimes caught myself wanting them to run out at once. Kade didn't move right away. When I looked at him, he was already looking at me, and for the first time since I'd known him, I couldn't read what was underneath it. Not the careful control he wore for everyone else. Something rawer, something that made his hands curl into loose fists at his sides like he needed somewhere to put whatever he was feeling. "Kade," I said. "We should go." His hand wasn't quite steady when it found the small of my back to guide me toward the door, and he didn't sound like a man walking toward an update. He sounded like a man walking toward the end of something he'd spent six years trying to protect.