Chapter 318

Chapter 318

Chapter 318

KAEL

I finally got enough air to look up. Caught sight of Ivory across the crowd.

She was watching me. Of course she was watching me. She’d heard, probably, because she heard everything, and she’d known I was over here, and she’d timed her glance to land at exactly the right moment. Her expression was completely composed. Perfectly controlled. But she made a small gesture – barely anything, just a slight movement of her hand that managed to convey *you absolute disaster* and *you’re welcome* in the same motion – and that was the end of whatever control I’d been rebuilding.

I lost it completely.

Jordan put his face in his hand. “Moon Goddess,” he said, to no one in particular, in the tone of a man sincerely seeking divine intervention. “I need her to help me. Because Dan is going to start a war. He’s going to go back to his territory and tell every alpha in the region that Shadowmere’s host laughed at him during a formal celebration, and we are going to have a war, and it is going to be because Kael could not keep it together for thirty seconds, and I will have to explain to historians that this is how it started p>

“There won’t be a war,” I managed.

“How do you know? You can barely breathe p>

“Because Dan’s not going to tell anyone what happened,” I said, getting my voice back to something approaching functional. “He’d have to explain why Ivory was talking about his domestic situation at a celebration. He’d have to explain what she said. He’s not going to repeat any of that p>

Jordan’s expression shifted as this logic settled in. He thought about it. “That’s… actually

correct p>

“He’ll go home,” I said, wiping my eyes because apparently that had happened, “and he’ll tell his people the celebration was fine and Shadowmere sends their regards. He’s not going to tell a single person about the impotency consultation p>

Jordan was quiet for a moment. Then: “You’re right. He definitely won’t tell anyone p>

“No p>

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Jordan exhaled slowly, the tension of a man who’d been braced for international consequences releasing from his shoulders. “That was too close p>

“It was fine,” I said.

“It was a disaster that happened to resolve itself,” Jordan corrected. “Those are different things p>

He was right, but I didn’t say so because the distinction didn’t feel important compared to the quality of what I’d just witnessed. Ivory had walked into that situation with nothing but her knowledge of Dan’s personal circumstances and her complete willingness to deploy that knowledge in the service of ending a conversation she’d decided needed ending. No hesitation. No calculation visible from the outside. Just the clean, decisive movement of someone who’d identified a problem and handled it before it could develop further.

Three years of working beside her during the curse, and she could still surprise me.

Lunaris’s voice carried across the gathering grounds with the particular quality that Ghost Council members had not loud exactly, but present in a way that reached every corner of the space regardless of background noise. The celebration quieted in response, the instinctive hush of people who recognized authority when it spoke.

“Alpha Kael,” Lunaris said. “If you would p>

The formal welcome. The part of the evening where I thanked the visiting alphas, acknowledged the celebration, represented Shadowmere to its guests with the full weight of the Host Alpha’s authority. I’d done this before, at previous celebrations, at other formal occasions. It was familiar ground.

What was less familiar was the other

part.

The Ghost Hunt champion passed their medal to the next winner. It was tradition – had been for as long as the Hunt had been running, the physical symbol of the title changing hands in front of the assembled pack and guests so that both the ending of one championship and the beginning of the next were witnessed and official. Which meant Ivory and I were both going to the front of the gathering grounds together.

I straightened my jacket. Found my composed expression. Put the laughter somewhere it could be accessed later in private when nobody was assessing whether I was an authority worth respecting.

Ivory was already moving toward the front when I started walking. The crowd parted for her the way it always did – not because she demanded it but because Shadowmere people simply reorganized themselves around her presence without thinking about it, the way water moved

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around something solid. And the sound that went up when they saw her heading to the front was the same sound that had gone up earlier when her name was called.

*Ivory. Ivory. Ivory p>

It moved through the crowd like a wave, like something with physical weight, like the pack had a single voice for exactly this purpose and was using it. I watched her stop walking for just a second when the sound hit her fully. Watched her press her free hand briefly to her chest not a performance, not calculated for the crowd’s benefit. Just a real response, the involuntary gesture of someone receiving something that reached past their defenses.

She looked like a mother watching her children do something that made her proud of them even when they’d driven her to the edge of her patience for years. Like someone who’d been holding herself together through pure determination for days and had just been given something that made the holding together feel worth it.

I gave her

a moment. Let the

crowd give her a moment. She’d edi

a hundred times over.

Then the sound shifted as I moved further into the front space, and Shadowmere being Shadowmere, they did not do things by halves.

My name went up alongside hers and the volume did not decrease. The pack was not going to let their Alpha walk to the front of his own celebration without making their feelings known about it, and their feelings were loud and completely unambiguous. Visiting alphas in the crowd were watching this with expressions that ranged from impressed to slightly unnerved, which was roughly the response I’d aimed for.

Margo appeared at Ivory’s side with a microphone and the quiet competence of someone who had been managing Ivory’s public moments for long enough to know exactly when to appear and exactly how.

Ivory took the microphone.

The crowd went silent. Not the polite quiet of people waiting for a speech – the actual silence of people who wanted to hear every word.

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