UNDER HIS RULE

CHAPTER THREE (Ivy's pov)

"What?" I asked.

His smirk only widened.

"You look all grown now, Ivy. Like a real woman." He tilted his head, studying me the way an older brother does when he's decided teasing you is his life's calling. "So that's what the smirk was for?"

"Do you expect me to be that little girl you kept picking on because you were older?" I rolled my eyes, though the memories came rushing back before I could stop them.

Like the time he convinced eight-year-old me that if I ate an entire lemon whole, I'd get stronger, just so he could film my face when I bit into it. Or the summer he "taught" me to swim by pushing me into the deep end of the training pond and calling it tough love. Or every single family dinner where he'd steal food off my plate the second I looked away, then act personally wounded when I retaliated.

"Give me some instances," he said, all mock innocence, like he hadn't just watched the same memories cross my face.

"Hmm," was all I gave him. Some things weren't worth dignifying with a full answer.

"And lest I forget," I added, straightening my spine, "I'm not weak anymore." I said it firmly, feeling every year of Callan's brutal training settle into the words like it lived in my muscles now — because it did. "I can handle myself just fine."

Cormac laughed. Not a polite chuckle, either — a real, doubled-over kind of laugh that made my jaw tighten.

"What's funny?" I asked, annoyance creeping into my voice.

He kept laughing, wiping at his eyes like I'd told the joke of the century. "Until you start training here," he finally managed, "we'll know if you're actually strong, or if you've just been telling yourself sweet things all these years."

He didn't even know who'd trained me. Didn't know about the quiet, relentless neighbor who'd turned Grandma's backyard into a battlefield more times than I could count. To Cormac, I was still just the little sister who'd disappeared for a few years and apparently come back with an attitude. Let him think whatever he wants. He'd find out soon enough.

I hissed at him, sharp and unimpressed, as he pushed himself up from the sofa still snickering to himself.

I didn't bother responding. There wasn't a comeback worth wasting on someone determined to underestimate me before I'd even had the chance to prove otherwise. Instead, I turned and walked straight toward what used to be my room, footsteps a little harder against the floor than necessary.

The door creaked the same way it always had. Inside, everything sat exactly where I'd left it years ago — same faded curtains, same shelf of half-finished books, same small dent in the wall from when I'd thrown a shoe at Cormac and missed spectacularly. A thin layer of dust coated every surface, undisturbed, like the room had simply been waiting, holding its breath the same way the territory had the moment I crossed onto pack land.

It was strange, standing in a space that was so completely mine and so obviously frozen in time. Like stepping into a memory instead of a room.

I peeled off my clothes, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the drive, and made my way to the small attached bathroom. The water took a second to warm, sputtering out cold before easing into something bearable, and I stepped under it with a long exhale.

*How dare he underestimate us,* Ash growled inwardly, pacing some restless line just beneath my skin. *We trained. We bled for that training. We are not the same soft little pup he remembers.*

*I know,* I thought back, tilting my head under the spray, letting the water run down and wash away some of the tension that had knotted itself into my shoulders since the moment I'd stepped through the front door. *He'll find out.*

*Let him laugh now,* Ash said, low and satisfied, already looking forward to being proven right. *He won't be laughing when you put him on his back.*

I almost smiled at that. Almost.

Steam curled up around me, fogging the small mirror over the sink, blurring my reflection into something soft and indistinct. I stood there longer than necessary, letting the heat work into muscles that had spent hours in a car and years, apparently, bracing for a homecoming that didn't look anything like what I'd imagined.

Cormac's teasing didn't actually bother me — not really. It was familiar, almost comforting in its own annoying way, a piece of normal in a house that otherwise felt like it belonged to strangers wearing my family's faces. My father's tired eyes. The dust on my old shelves. The word *commoner* still sitting heavy in my chest from earlier, refusing to fully settle.

And somewhere underneath all of that, quieter than I wanted to admit, sat a different question entirely — one I hadn't let myself think about yet, not directly.

What was Alpha Damien actually like, the man whose name alone had turned my father into someone I barely recognized?

I turned the water off, wrapped a towel around myself, and decided that question could wait until tomorrow.

By the time I'd changed and made my way back downstairs, the smell of freshly baked cookies had filled every corner of the house, warm and buttery and impossible to ignore. Underneath it sat something heavier, savory — Grandma had clearly not stopped at dessert.

I walked into the dining room to find the table already set, steam rising off the dishes she'd just finished laying out.

"Perfect timing," Grandma said without even turning around, like she'd sensed me the second I hit the last step. "Sit. Eat. All of you."

Dad was already at the table, looking marginally lighter than he had earlier, and Cormac dropped into the seat across from me a moment later, still wearing traces of that insufferable smirk.

For a little while, over food and the lingering scent of cookies cooling on the counter, none of it — the loss of my father's title, the man whose name I still hadn't fully let myself sit with — mattered quite as much.

Tonight, I just wanted this. My family, mostly whole, at one table again.