Chapter 2

Ivy POV:

I woke up in a stranger's bed in Pilsen, and the first thing I saw was a note on the nightstand.

Sunlight cut through the crooked blinds of the sixth-floor walk-up. Every muscle in my body ached.

Last night was still burned into the back of my eyelids. The clinic we had stopped at on the way over, the one-page contract I had made him sign, the creak of the wooden stairs, and then the front door slamming shut behind my back as he caged me against it in the dark.

"Last chance to walk away, Luna," he had murmured against my ear, his voice rough.

I had tipped my chin up, heart hammering. "Are you all talk?"

He had taken my mouth like he was starving. And later, on this narrow mattress, when he had realized the truth, his whole body had gone rigid above me.

"You're a virgin?" His voice came out rough, almost stunned. "This is your first time?"

I had grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, my face burning in the dark. "Don't you dare stop now."

He hadn't stopped. Near dawn, his teeth had grazed the bare side of my throat—the exact spot where an Alpha's mark was supposed to be—and instead of biting down, he had only pressed an open-mouthed kiss over the pulse point, hot and almost gentle.

I pushed myself up on one elbow, wincing, and reached for the nightstand.

A brass key sat on top of a torn piece of paper. Two words were scrawled across it in sharp, heavy handwriting.

Tonight. Again.

I stared at the paper, my ears heating.

If he was this good, why on earth was he fixing pipes?

My phone buzzed on the floor where my dress had landed. Sasha Marchetti's name flashed on the screen.

I picked it up on the third ring. "Hey—"

"Flower, what the hell is going on?" Sasha shrieked into my ear. "Do you know what Zoe just posted on her story? Your Himalayan Birkin! The one Grant gave you for your birthday last year! Did you get robbed?"

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.

So Mr. Dale's crew hadn't burned the boxes after all. Someone had gone digging through the dumpster.

"I threw it out," I said, reaching for my clothes. "And Sasha? I divorced Grant."

The line went dead.

Forty minutes later, I was barely through the front door of my Gold Coast apartment when the buzzer started ringing like a fire alarm.

I opened the door to find Sasha panting in the hallway, her dark curls damp with sweat.

"You took the elevator," I said. "Why are you sweating?"

"I ran up from the garage because the freight guys were blocking the lobby!" She grabbed my shoulders. "Tell me you weren't lying on the phone."

I handed her the court decree from the entry table.

Sasha stared at the stamp, her jaw dropping. "You actually left him? You've been throwing yourself under a bus for Grant Calloway since you were seventeen! Did he force you?"

"I filed," I said.

"You?" She looked at me like I had grown a second head. "Half the packs in Illinois have been laughing at you for years, and you're telling me you walked away on your own?"

I walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. "He asked me to help his girlfriend through the first month after the pup comes."

The apartment went dead silent.

Sasha's teeth clicked together. "Want me to call my uncle? Nobody would ever find him."

I laughed, the first real sound that had come out of my throat in weeks. "I'm fine, Sasha. Really. Twenty million in my account, and I'm out."

She marched over to hug me, then froze halfway there.

Her hand shot out and yanked the collar of my blouse down an inch.

I gasped and slapped my hand over my collarbone, my face going scarlet.

Sasha's eyes went huge. Then she leaned in, sniffed the side of my neck once, and went dead still.

"Flower. You smell like a rogue."

"It was part of the deal," I muttered, pulling my collar tight. "The elders wanted the divorce pinned on me."

"And you actually slept with him?" Sasha stared at the red marks disappearing into my shirt. Not one of them was a bite. "Wait. What are you going to tell your father?"

"I won't have to tell him anything," I said, holding up my phone. "I sent the photo to Grant's lawyer an hour ago."

By six o'clock that evening, my phone was vibrating off the glass coffee table.

The photo was in every pack group chat in Chicago. Within twenty minutes, the human gossip blogs had picked it up too.

It had been taken in the dim light of the Pilsen bedroom. You couldn't see the man's face—only the wide, muscled expanse of his bare back, and my pale arm wrapped around his shoulders, my face half-buried against his neck with my eyes shut.

The headline above it was in bold capitals: CALLOWAY LUNA CAUGHT IN BED WITH A ROGUE.

Underneath, the pack forum comments were scrolling faster than I could read them.

*A rogue? Not even a ranked wolf?*

*What did you expect? Look at her.*

*The wolfless one finally found her level.*

I set the phone down and turned on the living room screen.

The local pack network was already running a live feed from the lobby of the Calloway Group tower. Grant wasn't even there. His Beta stood behind the podium in a charcoal suit, reading off a card without looking up.

"Alpha Calloway and Ms. Lancaster dissolved their union earlier this month. The Calloway Pack has no knowledge of, and no connection to, Ms. Lancaster's private conduct."

The Beta stepped away from the microphones. The feed cut back to the photo of me.

I sat alone on the sofa in the empty living room, watching my name burn.

For eight years, every time Grant's face was in the gossip feeds with another she-wolf, I had stood next to him and smiled. Nobody was standing next to me now.

Clean for him. Ruined for me. Exactly as agreed.

Still, my eyes drifted back to the blown-up image on the screen.

In the high-resolution blowup, four red, parallel scratches raked down the hard muscle of the rogue's shoulder blade.

My fingernails had done that. I hadn't even realized how hard I had been holding on to him.

My phone lit up on the glass table. A text from Grant.

The text read: "Nice work. It almost looks real."

I touched the corner of my mouth, where it was still bruised and swollen from last night.

It was real. Every second of it.