24

ADRIAN

“I’LL BE fine,” Ivy said, smiling tiredly up at me from her position on the bed. “Really. Nightmare aside—”

“You’re still dealing with the aftermath of whatever happened with him ,” I replied, perching on the edge. I wished I could climb in with her, to hold and protect her now more than ever. It was getting harder to hide my vitriol for her other mate—the one who caused her so much pain.

Despite the nightmares she’d had before, I hadn’t felt anything like what she’d accidentally shared through the bond. Somehow, maybe by borrowing his power, she ’d shared parts of her nightmare with us. I recalled moments from it even now—darkness and running, an ethereal voice, and then pain. Splitting, agonising pain.

I pushed the memories aside and cupped her flushed cheek, bringing our foreheads together. “I’m still worried about you, Ivy.” I was more than fucking worried, but I blocked most of those emotions from her, carefully tucking them away where they wouldn’t upset her.

She sighed, but didn’t pull away, melting into my touch. “I’m okay now.”

“No, you aren’t,” I whispered, “and that’s okay. That’s what we’re here for.”

My mate shuddered, her eyes fluttering shut. “I know.”

If only she realised she could lean on us more, I thought. Had my mother had been the same when she’d met her first mates? The last thing I wanted was to ask any of them for advice, but this could be a learning moment for us.

Ivy had been keeping the mystery mate from us. Every time he reached out, she’d hidden it, until it became too much. And I didn’t know how to feel about the secrets. Maybe it was our fault for the way we reacted to him, but it also pained me knowing she didn’t trust us enough with it.

I pressed my lips together and pulled back just enough to meet Ivy’s stare. “Do you think you’ll be okay here for a little while?” I asked carefully. “The kids will be up in a bit...”

“Yeah, of course. I’m not some broken doll, Adrian.” Her dark eyes searched mine for a moment, like she wanted to say more. But the door to the bedroom opened, and the children entered, diving onto the bed, while Thea moved a little slower, bags in hand.

I turned back to Ivy, who had a soft smile playing at her lips. “I’ll be back soon,” I promised. “Everything will be okay.”

“I know.” She curled an arm around my neck and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of my mouth, which earned us a chorus of gags. When she pulled away, she laughed. “Don’t be too long, okay?”

“We won’t, Sweetheart.” I glanced at the kids and pointed to Maisie. “Take care of your sister.”

The six-year-old jumped to her feet on the bed, her pink pyjama set wrinkled and already stained with last night’s dessert, but she bounced over to Ivy’s side and dropped down beside her. “Got it!”

With one last kiss to her forehead, I forced myself away from Ivy’s side. The weight of her stare followed me to the door. I looked back as it closed behind me, heart squeezing at the sight of her, tired and scared, but surrounded by her sisters.

Fuck, I hoped time with them brought her some peace.

I scraped a hand through my hair and made my way out to the family room where the rest of the team waited. Tension filled the air between us as I joined Rowan on one of the sofas across from Elias and Maeve.

“Ivy and the kids are settled,” I said, leaning back with a groan. “They’ll be occupied for a while.”

“And she seemed okay?” Rowan asked carefully. Anyone else outside of our team, I might have felt a twinge of annoyance at being questioned. But deep down, I knew he belonged with Ivy just as much as the rest of us.

I nodded and spared him a look. “Yeah. As good as she can be. Scared, obviously. This whole mystery mate thing is weighing on her.”

“Understandable,” Maeve replied, voice tense. “Did she say anything else?”

“No.” I scrubbed a hand down my face and released a heavy breath. “I know she feels bad about not mentioning it.” But it was more than that. It meant in some way, she didn’t trust us— me .

Elias grunted, and I shot him a look. “It’s not like we’ve been helpful regarding him ,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms.

Rowan laughed darkly. “Yeah,” he mused, “threatening him wasn’t smart. The consequences of our actions.”

I stiffened, and the tension thickened. But he was right. We’d openly threatened the bastard more than once. Ivy probably didn’t feel comfortable talking about him, and I didn’t blame her. We’d made it known how we felt about him—about his absence and subsequent visits—and what we thought his motives were.

“We isolated her,” I murmured, shoulders dropping in defeat.

“We cannot dwell on this.” Maeve stood, drawing our attention as she paced. Despite hiding her emotions before, she seemed to be unravelling now. “We know what we have to do. We must find this mate.”

Elias leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he took each of us in. “Sir Lazarus was right. We should have been doing more for Ivy. We should have fucking found him by now.”

My gut twisted. Lazarus was one of the few mates I rarely interacted with. Even when I’d been living in the Queen’s Wing, our interactions had been sparse. My father was my primary caregiver, just like Lazarus for his daughter. He’d always been at my mother’s side, like all her mates, but he was seen as her most loyal.

And the deadliest.

“Lazarus is an ass most of the time,” I muttered. “Don’t let him get under your skin. He just wants to prove he’s the standard. That if you can’t live up to him, then you can’t possibly be good enough for the Queen.”

Elias met my eye. “But he had a point, Kingsley. There’s more we can do,” he said darkly.

“Reach out to your contact, see if they’ve found anything,” I replied. “Maybe Lazarus made sense. But we’re not him. We aren’t my mother ’s mate circle. They’ve always operated differently. Separately. But we’re a team. We need to act like it.”

Maeve slowed her pacing, eyes narrowed. “That aligns with the Seer’s hand in our creation.”

Relief flooded me. The last thing I wanted was to be like my mother’s mate circle. I loved my parents, and I cared for my siblings, but there’d been so much disconnect between us during my childhood that it’d made my life isolating and lonely. I was lucky I had my youngest sister, Lyra, there. And for a few years, the twins, before they’d found their mate and left the palace.

Maybe it was too much to be thinking about our...dynamic before we’d even seen Ivy crowned and we’d been knighted as her council. But I feared, after this morning’s meeting, we might drift apart.

Beside me, Rowan sighed. “He isn’t a villain, as much as we wish he were. At least, we shouldn’t paint him as such. For Ivy’s sake.”

His words struck me with a ferocity that made guilt swell within me. But it didn’t stop me from hating the bastard.

Elias’s jaw ticked, like he wanted to argue, but instead he shook his head. “I hate it, but you’re right.”

“He might not be our adversary,” I said, glancing between my fellow bonds, “but he’s not our friend, either. Until we know his intentions, maybe we shouldn’t let our guards down.”

Especially where it concerns him , I thought. That was definitely one thing my mother’s mates wouldn’t understand. We had threats within our own mate circle, someone who could hurt Ivy, and we needed to do whatever it took to ensure he wouldn’t hurt our mate.

Rowan met my stare and sighed. “I don’t want to upset Ivy, and I’m sick keeping things from her.”

My stomach bottomed out. “You mean the visions?” I knew the answer already, and couldn’t help but have the same thoughts—no matter how much they scared me.

“Don’t. We’ve talked about this,” Elias growled. “That would just be another thing she’ll panic over.”

Rowan looked from me to the shifter, hands forming fists. “I get it. But she also deserves to know the truth.”

Maeve cut in before Elias could respond. “Enough. Yes, Rowan has a point. And so do you, Elias. But we can all agree that right now is not the time. She does deserve to know soon .”

Elias sat back with a huff and crossed his arms. “Have you felt anything from him since coming back? ”

Rowan shook his head, jaw clenched. “No. Nothing at all.”

A weight pressed down on my chest as I turned away from him. There were so many things we were failing at doing. Lazarus’s voice echoed in my head, his words mocking and a reminder that we wouldn’t be enough to protect her. That just the four of us would never be enough.

“This is so fucking depressing,” Rowan muttered. “First, we can’t find her other mate. Now, I can’t find the signature. Just fantastic.”

Maeve sighed, and her shoulders dropped with exhaustion. “We will find both.”

“We need a team to deal with the latter. That will take more resources, more time,” Elias said. “But the four of us—we should be able to find one bastard.”

“Make the call,” Maeve instructed. “Get some information from your contact.”

Elias said nothing as he stood, pulling a device from his belt. He walked towards the entryway, though he remained within earshot. Maeve, though, turned back to us. “Think. When you attended the academy, was there anyone who seemed...different? Their magic a little too powerful?”

Rowan and I shared a look. Ivy had mentioned he was roughly her age...but he might have appeared once or twice during our years there. I tried to think back; Ivy was three years younger than Rowan and me, and if mystery mate were a year older...

“He would have been at the academy while we were there,” I said, stomach twisting. “And I never picked up on anything.”

Rowan blew out a breath. “I’m trying to figure out whether we encountered too many Fae, but you and I were...”

“I was out with Dante a lot,” I admitted. “The academy wasn’t my main priority. But he had plenty of Fae males there, from all the courts. Seelie and Unseelie alike.”

“And I tagged along, even though his parties were pretty much just orgies and alcohol and illusions. But I don’t remember anyone standing out.” Rowan ran a hand through his hair, frowning as he stared down at the coffee table and the dozen or so colouring pages littering the top. “Could you ask Sylvia?”

My older sister would know, sure. As Headmistress, she likely had a more intimate understanding of each student’s power. She’d know if someone was holding their magical potential back.

“We can ask,” I replied, just as Elias stalked back to our small circle. “Anything?”

The shifter shook his head, but he didn’t sit. Instead, he leaned against the side of the sofa and crossed his arms. “Nothing. No Fae males exhibiting the power we’re looking for. Whoever Ivy’s mate is, he’s either good at hiding—or whoever his family is has done something to control him.”

Ivy’s comments about his past entered my head. As much as I hated the bastard for what he was doing to my mate, I couldn’t help but pity him. There was a slim chance he wasn’t here, not of his own choice, but because he was forced to.

I closed my hands into fists, fighting the sudden wave of guilt and uselessness rushing through me. “We should check with Sylvia. If he’s at the academy—or has been there—then she’ll know.”

“You think his family would risk that?” Elias asked. “From what Ivy revealed this morning, it sounds like he’s not in control of his life.”

That’s one way of putting it , I thought. But I sighed. “Even if that is the case, his family—if they are a powerful bloodline—would want their son at an academy like Oberon. They wouldn ’t want the rumours and judgement of sending him away to one of the other schools. They would prioritise status.”

Maeve looked uncertain, but she pulled out her tablet from Sir Ya’Dahir and punched in a few things. “I’ll see if I can set up a meeting with your sister. I also want to see the Phoenix Compound records. We may find something in there.”

“I’ll stay on my contact,” Elias grunted. “Now, can we go be with our mate? The wolf isn’t taking well to being away from her after this morning.”

Rowan rose and stretched his arms over his head. “Yeah, I feel uneasy. Which doesn’t seem normal.”

Silently, I rubbed my chest. It was hard to ignore the feeling, but there it was. Ivy was only a room away, and yet I needed to be at her side again. The bond demanded it, and so did my magic. I wouldn’t know peace until I had her in my arms again.

The tablet disappeared from Maeve’s hands, and she also stood. “As much as I would like to get ahead of this, I don’t believe I can.”

Rowan and I shared a look. It was nice, knowing I wasn’t the only one. That we were all the same: completely and entirely in love with Ivy. I knew part of the desire to be with her came from the bond, but even without it, I wanted to be by her side. I wanted to step into the bubble of her life, to join her in it.

And I knew I wasn’t alone in that.

We made our way back into the spacious bedroom to find Ivy and Thea in the centre of the bed, with the children sprawled out at their feet. A musical played on the television mounted on the wall, and there was a suspicious amount of sugary food covering the duvet.

They looked up as we entered, and for the first time since Ivy woke up, there was a genuine, hopeful smile on her lips. “Hello again.”

Elias was the first one to approach the bed. “Space for us, or have we been kicked out?”

Ivy glanced at Thea, who lifted her brows, then met the curious stares of the other children. After a moment, she shrugged and met Elias’s eye. “You got anything to offer?”

It didn’t take long to conjure up a few extra sweet treats and drinks. Palace staff left us Avalon’s finest pizza outside the bedroom for lunch. The nightmare and bond-discussion were still a heavy weight in the back of my mind, but I was able to focus on our little family for as long as it was possible. No meetings, no training, no reason to leave Ivy’s side for the rest of the day.

And I couldn’t wait until we finally made it to a place where this could be forever.