with rage, the bright blue tattoos inked into his flesh practically writhing over his bunched muscles.
Ivy pulled her mother's journal from the bag she'd hung over the back of her chair, opening it to the page marked with a pink ribbon. Ilex was waiting for her to look his way, searching her face with eyes exactly like her own.
She flipped the journal around and held it up to show her brother the entry written the day they were born. “Your true name was given to you by our mother on the hour of your birth, at eleven fifty-eight, February 1st. You are Ilex Finley Green, son of Ilsa Margaret Green, and brother to Ivy Renee Green.”
“Impossible!” Donnatar slammed his hands down with enough force to crack the table straight down the middle. Hard enough that the ground trembled and quaked beneath them, which brought Uriah to his feet, and all the lions to surround them at her back.
“You knew! You sat down at this table and knew this entire time our bargain would not hold! You... you tricked me? Me!?”
Ivy shrugged and put her mother's journal away. “I did. Seems I've got a little more of your blood in me than you thought. Ilex, I'd like to know you. To be your sister. So long as you mean no harm to me and mine or report back to this prick about my life or the coven, you're welcome here.”
Ivy smiled genuinely at her brother and got up, brushing the wrinkles out of her dress, straightening her hat, so ready to get home and have that breakdown, she couldn't bear to wait another minute.
“Dad, nice to meet you, feel free to fuck off.”
Donnatar didn't take her dismissal too kindly, the ground rocking and rolling a bit more as the twelve-foot-tall forest god roared. “How dare you?”
Ivy had time to take a breath with the intention of responding in kind, when something hard wrapped around her leg. Something hard and covered in thorns.
She screamed as she was yanked under the table and hauled backward across the protective line of iron with enough force to audibly snap the bones in her calf.
She felt it, like two dry twigs cracking apart, the thorns digging deep as she struggled, shredding skin and muscle like a thousand sharp knives.
The lions roared out in challenge, she heard the girls shout out her name, but the inhuman bellow of a bear rose above them all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pain became everything. Every beat of her heart, every desperate breath, every clawing move she made to try and stop her backward momentum.
Ivy could barely see past the black spots dancing across her vision, but what she did see was a hulking bear throwing down with her father, holding nothing back as he charged and slashed at the sonofabitch.
The two battled it out with such ferocity Ivy couldn't keep up, clawing at the dirt to try and escape the pain that was swiftly swallowing her whole.
Her movement suddenly stopped, the jarring thud that vibrated up her leg pulled another scream out of her. Dimly she heard Ilex shouting something, but the ringing in her ears was painful too.
Worse, was the moment her scream distracted Uriah long enough for Donnatar to duck his head and use his antlers to charge. Time slowed to a crawl, the pain eating her alive momentarily forgotten as she watched those wicked sharp points drive into Uriah's chest and belly.
With a toss of Donnatar's head, the enormous bear flew through the air like a pillow, and the points of the forest god's antlers were red now. Red and dripping.
The bear landed hard enough to shake the ground, and he didn't get up.
Everything sped up then, the play button hit, and time snapped back in place. The lions attacked, their gold and black coats flashing in the sunlight as they fell on Donnatar in a tornado of claws, fangs, and fury.
Someone screamed like they were dying, and it took Ivy a minute to realize it was her. She tried to crawl across the meadow to where Uriah laid, but strong arms wrapped around her, and she was held back.
It didn't matter that her leg felt like it had been pushed through a meat grinder, she didn't care that every twist and buck she gave to get free only made the thorns bite deeper. Uriah was over there dying, bleeding out in the grass, and someone was holding her back.
“Ivy, IVY!” The authoritative, slightly accented voice shouted in her ear, the