Chapter 2 The Signature He Never Read

Ivy POV The sound that tore out of me didn't sound like mine. It still brought a maid running down the hall, her tray hitting the floor somewhere behind her. Hands pressed cloth hard against me, urgent and sure. The room tipped and snapped back into focus, over and over. I bit down until I tasted copper. The pain didn't let up once. I heard someone praying under their breath near the foot of the bed. Then the healer's hands went quiet on me. That stillness said it before his face did. "My lady. I'm sorry. We couldn't save him." His voice cracked on the last word, as the apology cost him something too. I didn't ask him to say it again. I lay in the wreck of the sheets and waited for the tears that came every other time. They didn't come. Something in me had gone past crying into something colder, something that watched the blood soak through the linen with nothing left to spend on it. "Ivy." Julian's voice came from the doorway, not the bedside. I turned my head and let myself hope for half a breath. The same stupid half-breath I always gave him. He didn't come closer. His eyes touched the sheets and flinched away. "How could you let this happen?" Not are you all right. Not even my name. "I didn't let anything happen. Selena brought me a drink earlier tonight. She said it was from you." His jaw went tight. "Don't put this on her." "I'm telling you what happened, Julian." "You're accusing my intended of poisoning my own wife." His voice dropped, colder than the room. "Watch what you say next." The healer's hands had gone still on my shoulder. He didn't say a word in my defense. Nobody ever did, not to an Alpha, not even about the wife bleeding out in front of him. A servant shoved through the door without knocking. "My lord! Lady Selena has collapsed. She won't stop screaming. She's asking for you!" Selena's voice tore down the hall behind him, high and broken. "Julian! Please, I need you, I can't breathe—" He was already moving. He never once crossed the room to where I was. Her sobbing followed him all the way down the hall. I'd already run out of excuses for any of them, right there, listening to it fade. Six years of blood drawn from my own arm. A husband who ran to her instead of me. And now a child is gone, with no one in this house close enough to so much as hold my hand through it. I closed my eyes and counted everything I'd just listed, the way I used to count coins as a girl. Except none of this could ever be paid back in kind. Not tears. Debts. My hand found my stomach on its own, pressing flat against nothing, the way it had every night for the past two months when there'd been something there to press toward. There was nothing there now. There never would be again, not from this body, not for him. I made myself breathe through it instead of around it. Once. Twice. By the third breath, the ache had a shape I could use instead of one that used me. If no one in this house meant to settle what they owed me, I'd collect it myself. By the time the maids finished changing the linens, I already knew what I was going to do. For three days, I played exactly the wife they expected. Quiet. Hollowed out. Grateful for every spoonful of broth they brought me. Let them watch a woman they thought was already broken. At night, once the lamps along the corridor were doused, I sent for Raine. She'd been my maid since the day I came to Silvercrest as a bride, the only person in this house who'd never once looked at me like I was something Julian was owed. She'd seen every year of it, said nothing to anyone, and never once asked me to be grateful for her silence. Her mother had kept the steward's records for years before age took her hands. Enough of it had stayed with Raine that she knew exactly what made a contract impossible to argue with. She didn't ask if I was sure. She only asked, "When do you want it signed?" "Before he has time to think about anything he reads." Raine reached for a fresh sheet without being told twice. "Tell me what to write." If anyone ever traced the paper back to her hand, she'd lose more than I would. She didn't hesitate once. We worked by a single lamp until there was one sheet that said, in language no court could argue with, that I was done. I read it through twice. Something in my chest went still. It wasn't relief. Raine folded it into the center of the household ledger without being told to. She buried it under purchase slips and supply totals, the one stack of paper in this house nobody ever looked at twice. "He won't even glance at it," she said. "He never does." She wasn't wrong. Now I only needed him distracted enough not to look twice. Selena handed me that morning without meaning to. She'd kept him up half the night again, and by sunrise, he was already short with anyone who came near his desk. A clerk backed out of the room red-faced, clutching a torn page, and didn't look at me on his way past. I carried the ledger in the way I always did, my voice as flat as the numbers inside it. "The accounts. They need your signature." He didn't lift his head. Pen down, ink, next page. Pen down, ink, next page. My whole future went under his hand, exactly where every line he'd never read had gone before it. He signed it without once looking up at me. I watched the ink sit there and kept my face still, even as something inside me exhaled for the first time in six years. Four years as a wife. Two more debts before that. He'd signed it away faster than he ever signed anything that mattered to him. "That's all?" he said, already reaching for something else, his attention gone from me before the words finished leaving his mouth. "That's all." I walked out at the pace I'd walked in. Outside the study windows, rain had started, fine and steady against the glass. Somewhere behind my ribs, the memory came anyway. A cloak around my shoulders once, in rain just like this. A man who'd asked for nothing back. I didn't let myself stay there long enough to feel it properly. There would be time for that later. There was only one thing left to do before this house found out what I'd already taken from them. The next day, the elders convened as they always did, rogue counts and supply ledgers droning past without a single word landing on me. Meredith sat near the head of the table, exactly where she always positioned herself when something concerned her son. Near the end, I stood. Every voice in the room died at once. I never stood at these meetings. "I, Ivy Lancaster, formally petition to dissolve my marriage contract with Julian Silvercrest." My hands stayed folded. My voice didn't shake, though something underneath it wanted to. The room cracked open before I'd even finished his name. Chairs scraped back. "Whoever heard of a wife standing up in open council to end her own marriage?" Meredith's voice cut through first, sharp enough to silence everyone else. Julian shot to his feet. "Withdraw your petition! I won't allow this!" "You did allow it." I let the silence stretch a moment before I said the rest. "Yesterday. In your study. Your own hand." "Show me." His voice had lost the certainty it started with. I drew the contract from my sleeve and set it on the table where every elder could see the ink. No one reached out to pick it up. No one needed to. The blood left Julian's face. He stared down at his own name and said nothing. Then he laughed, short and ugly, like I'd just proven something about myself instead of him. "And go where?" His voice carried to every corner of the hall. "Your family's gone, Ivy. A dead father, a dead brother, a boy too young to shelter anyone. We're the only roof you've ever had since." "Since you signed, we are no longer husband and wife." I kept my voice even. "Where I go next is no concern of yours." "There's something else this table should know. I'm petitioning House Blackwood to bind a new contract. To Silas Blackwood, the Lycan King." "Have you lost your mind?" Meredith's voice rang out before anyone else could speak. "Marrying a man who's been comatose for a year?"