Page 39 of Warded By His Wolf

“They won’t.”

“But if they do.”

I turned her to face me, hands on her shoulders, wolf fully in my eyes. “Then I go through them first. And you run, and Jace finds you, and Noah gets you to extraction, and the agency moves you somewhere Elias Thorne will never reach.”

She held my gaze. “And you?”

“I’ll be between them and you. That’s where I stay.”

Her hand came up to cover mine. The mark pulsed warm under my palm. Through the bond came something she hadn’t named yet, fiercer than gratitude, quieter than fear. It lived in the exact place where a word I wasn’t allowed to say first was waiting for her to say it.

I knew what it was. I’d known for days. Her half of the bond had to come free or not at all. So I held the word behind my teeth and let her feel, through the mark, everything I wasn’t saying.

“Then we do this together,” she said.

I didn’t argue. She wasn’t offering. She was stating a fact.

Because the day was going to take everything and the night might take more, I kissed her. One hand slid up into her hair, her fingers fisting in my jacket, the kind of kiss that doesn’t ask a question because it already knows the answer.

She made a low sound against my mouth and pulled me closer. Cold air, warm woman and the bond burning between us like a struck match. For ten seconds there was no perimeter, no timeline, no man in the trees. Just her. Just this.

When we broke apart her breath was ragged and her eyes were bright and neither of us pretended otherwise.

“Come back to me tonight,” she said. “Whatever it costs.”

“Always.”

The back door opened. Jace came through it with snow melting in his dark hair, eyes flat and focused, reporting, not talking.

“Seven miles out.” He dropped his jacket on the chair. “Three of them, moving steady. Containment pace, not assault pace. They’re not coming to hurt her.” His nearly black eyes met mine with the weight of a man who did not soften bad news. “They’re coming to take her.”

My hand tightened on Ivy’s shoulder. Through the bond her fear spiked, then steadied, held in place by something stronger than panic.

Seven miles. Full dark in three hours.

The countdown wasn’t in hours anymore.

It was in miles.

Chapter 14

The North Was Always the Door

IVY

The kitchen went still for exactly three seconds after Jace’s report landed. Seven miles. Containment pace. Two faction operatives flanking Elias.

Then Maddox moved.

Not with panic. I was learning the difference. He crossed to the counter with the economy of a man who had already run the calculations and was now executing. The coffee maker clicked on. Noah would think more clearly with something in his hands. I knew this because Maddox knew it, and I was beginning to read his patterns the way he read perimeters.

“Sit down,” he said. Not an order. A fact about what happened next.

I sat. Jace was already at the table, dark eyes flat and focused. Noah came in from the porch with the cold still clinging to his jacket and took the chair nearest the door without being told.

Through the bond, Maddox’s wolf was fully at the surface, not frantic. Present. Ready. The red-gold heat was steady in his gaze when he turned to face us, and I understood something I hadn’t before: this was purpose, not panic. A man who had identified his ground and was not moving from it.

“Seven miles by full dark was the straight-line math,” he said. “Containment teams don’t walk straight lines. They stage. They circle. They come when the house is tired.” He set a mug in front of Noah. “Sometime between midnight and dawn, they knock. Elias isn’t rushing because he thinks he has no reason to. He believes Ivy is still generating vision signals without knowing what it costs her. He believes Miriam’s intelligence is current. He believes his window is still his secret.”