Chapter Four: Into the Fire

Ivy

Training under the ACSC was nothing like I’d imagined.

My handler, Marco, was a wolf carved from stone, sharp edges, cold eyes, no mercy. He didn’t waste words, didn’t care for sympathy. He watched me like I was both his burden and his weapon.

“You’ll have to be more than convincing,” he said on day one, voice low, gravelled. “The Obsidian isn’t a club, it’s a crucible. Everyone there has eyes. Everyone there wants something. Slip once, you’re done.”

We trained under blinding lights in a mirrored hall that reflected every weakness back at me. For two weeks, he stripped me down and rebuilt me, taught me how to move, how to breathe, how to sell seduction without surrender.

“You’re not Ivy Mooncrest anymore,” he reminded me daily. “You’re no one. A rogue with nothing left to lose. That’s how you survive.”

Some nights, the weight of it almost broke me. Pretending I was nothing. Pretending my bloodline and pain meant nothing. But my family’s lives were the price. Breaking wasn’t an option.

One evening I finally asked the question that had been clawing at me.

“Will I be required to sleep with them?”

Marco looked up from his notes. The silence stretched, then, to my surprise, he shook his head.

“The Obsidian doesn’t allow patrons to sleep with their dancers.”

Relief hit so hard my knees nearly gave out.

“You’re there to perform,” he said. “To entertain. To lure secrets out of drunk Alphas and loose-tongued council members. Not to sell yourself.” His tone softened a fraction. “They deal in power, not pleasure. Use that.”

A shaky breath left me. The fear Brian planted with that single word, dancer, loosened its grip. I wasn’t safe, but at least I wasn’t for sale.

“Your task is simple,” Marco continued. “Watch. Listen. Remember. Take photos when you can. Every secret you uncover, every whisper you catch, you report only to me. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said, even though my gut twisted. Simple, he called it. Nothing about dancing in a den of wolves was simple.

By the end of week two, I could move the way he demanded, fluid, graceful, alluring without crossing the line. My body ached, my pride was raw, but when Marco finally nodded in approval, something sharp inside me steadied.

“You’re ready,” he said.

The next day, they began the transformation.

The salon gleamed like a temple, mirrors, silver instruments, hands that knew how to sculpt illusions. They stripped me bare, bleached my ginger hair until the stranger in the glass didn’t look like Ivy Mooncrest anymore. My skin was scrubbed, treated, softened until even my scars seemed borrowed.

It wasn’t transformation. It was erasure.

Then came the part I dreaded.

The chip.

A technician in a white coat gestured for me to sit. The machine beside him glowed sterile blue. “This will sting,” he said.

I clenched my fists. I knew what was coming, but nothing could prepare me for the memories it dragged to the surface.

The silver blade sliced my palm, heat flared, and suddenly I was seventeen again.

Dragged into the courtyard. My mother screaming. Jamie clutching her skirts. The pack gathered, hungry for blood.

My father on his knees, hands bound, neck bared to the block.

Brian standing nearby, eighteen, harder, already lost to vengeance.

The Gamma’s decree rang out: “For betrayal, the price is death.”

The blade fell.

My father’s head hit the dirt. My mother’s scream split the sky. Jamie sobbed until he vomited. And me? I went still. Hollow. Dead inside before the body cooled.

But it didn’t end there.

Guards seized us, my mother, Jamie, me. Dragged us forward like cattle. The branding machine glowed silver.

“This family will carry the mark,” the Gamma declared. “A reminder of their bloodline’s shame.”

The smell of burnt flesh. My mother’s cry. Jamie’s shrill scream.

Then me.

I looked straight at Brian as they drove the chip under my skin. His face was stone. His eyes, cold. Like he couldn’t remember the girl he once promised forever.

The burn crawled up my arm, searing itself into my bones. I bit my lip until blood filled my mouth, refusing to scream. The rejection of our bond followed, and he never looked back.

That was the day I learned what it meant to be owned.

Now, as the ACSC machine beeped and the new chip slid into my wrist, blood welled. My eyes blurred.

I wasn’t free.

I was just trading one master for another.

The technician pressed a bandage to my skin, voice clinical.

“This model’s premium. More than a tracker, it’s a leash. Try to remove it, it detonates. The silver floods your bloodstream. Instant death.”

My throat closed. A weapon under my skin.

Marco stood in the corner, arms folded. “Remember this, Ivy. You belong to the ACSC now. Betray us, even whisper your mission to the Thorns, and you’ll be executed before you reach their gates.”

Executed. By them. By Brian. By the Thorns. It didn’t matter who held the blade, the ending stayed the same.

He slid a document toward me. “Your cover: Rhea Black. Rogue. Desperate. Looking for work. Go to The Obsidian. Make them believe you’re theirs.”

I picked up the file with numb fingers. My new life stared back, apartment location, alias, falsified history.

Another cage dressed as freedom.

Marco’s gaze didn’t waver. “Do you understand your role?”

I nodded. No choice. No voice. Only obedience.

My mother’s face flashed in my mind. Jamie’s eyes. If I didn’t walk into The Obsidian, they’d be the ones dragged into that courtyard again.

“I understand,” I whispered.

Marco didn’t answer. He just stepped aside and opened the door.

The message was clear: the world I knew was gone.

I clutched the papers, feeling the chip pulse in my wrist like a curse.

I wasn’t free. I wasn’t safe.

But I was alive.

And I was walking straight into the Thorn Brothers’ world.

The wolves’ den.

The Obsidian.

And I prayed to every god that I’d walk back out again.