Chapter 479

JORDAN

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“You don’t get to choose who your fans are,” she said.

“I feel like that should be something I get to choose,” I said.

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“Ivory’s paper,” Nina said, with the specific quality of someone settling into a thought that was amusing her, “is going to be cited in pack documentation. It’s going to be findable. Future intelligence officers and security chiefs are going to read it and find Jordan’s warmth recognition entry.”

“I asked for a footnote,” I said.

“She said subsection,” Nina said.

“I know what she said,” I said. “I was there.”

“You were also being systematically catalogued by plant life,” she said.

“I’m aware,” I said.

“I’m just saying,” she said. “For the record. They’re mine. That warmth is mine. Those plants can catalogue elsewhere.”

“Are you jealous,” I said, “of a vine.”

“I’m establishing territorial priority,” Nina said.

“With a vine,” I said.

“With everything,” she said, and meant it the way she meant things – completely, without the protective softening she used in professional contexts, the direct version that came out in the rare situations when she’d decided to let it.

I looked at the ceiling for a moment.

“I should thank Aria,” Nina said.

“I thought you said you weren’t siding with anyone,” I said.

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“I wasn’t siding with anyone,” she said. “I needed the break. The siding with Aria was a side effect of the break being necessary.” She paused. “But also she deserved the siding. Both things.”

“Both things,” I agreed.

“She got us fired,” Nina said. “For being right. Which means we got fired for being right, which is the best possible reason to be fired.”

“We weren’t technically fired,” I said.

“We walked out,” Nina said.

“In support of Kael’s decision to walk out,” I said.

“Which was itself in support of Aria,” Nina said. “So transitively we got fired for Aria being right.”

“The transitivity is doing some work there,” I said.

“The transitivity is accurate,” she said. She was quiet for a moment. “I can’t remember the last time I slept in this bed. My actual bed. Not a cot in the security office or Kael’s sitting room or that terrible chair outside his office door.”

“The floor,” I said. “We sat on the floor outside his office door.”

“The floor was better than the chair,” she said.

“The floor was not better than the chair,” I said.

“The chair has uneven legs,” she said. “It tilts. The floor doesn’t tilt.”

“The floor is the floor,” I said.

“It doesn’t tilt,” she said again, with the conviction of someone who’d had opinions about that chair for a long time.

“Your priorities are interesting,” I said.

“My priorities,” she said, “have been Kael’s wellbeing and the pack’s security for three consecutive years without a meaningful pause. I’ve earned having opinions about furniture.” She looked at the ceiling. “I can’t believe we had sex. I mean, I can, because it’s been nine months and the circumstances were-” she stopped. “I can’t remember the last time I had time to just-” she gestured at the room around us.

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“Exist,” I said.

“Exist,” she confirmed. “Without it being in service of something.”

“The bunker,” I said.

She groaned.

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“If Aria hadn’t stepped out and cleaned our messes,” I said, “we’d be stuck on bunker duty.”

Nina groaned again. Not the good kind. The specific sound of a person who’d been reminded of something they found deeply irritating.

“Do not,” she said, “remind me about that bunker.”

“The bunker is-”

“We spent years on that bunker,” she said, and the word years had the full weight of what years had meant during the curse period, the specific exhaustion of people who’d been maintaining something that should not have needed maintaining for that long. “Frustrated. Running drills. Doing the checks. Making sure the systems were current.” She kissed me to stop herself from continuing, which was efficient, and then continued anyway. “All those touchups. All those enhancements.”

“All those enhancements,” I agreed, and found the zipper at the back of her top, and was about to address it when something struck me.

I stopped.

Not deliberately. The cognitive event that had just occurred was the kind that produced involuntary physical stillness, the specific interruption of a brain that had just connected two pieces of information that had been sitting in separate files for months and had not previously been cross-referenced.

“Nina,” I said.

“I swear to God,” she said, and her voice had the specific quality of someone whose patience had very precise dimensions, “I will do actual damage to you if you don’t get your tongue-‘

“Nina,” I said.

“Jordan-”

“Enhancements,” I said.

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She went still.

“NINA,” I said. “We enhanced that bunker.”

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She pulled back far enough to look at me directly.

“Yes,” she said. “So?”

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“When Kael was at his worst,” I said, and the intelligence function had fully engaged now, the professional part of my brain that had been responsible for Shadowmere’s information security for fifteen years coming fully online in a moment that was objectively terrible timing. “When we were worried about the wolf getting loose. When Ivory was concerned about moon- adjacent power signatures being used to destabilize the containment-”

“Yes,” Nina said, slowly, with the tone of someone who was following the thread and was about three seconds behind where it was going.

“We modified the bunker to resist moon-adjacent bloodline signatures,” I said. “Because the coven that cursed Kael used moon-adjacent techniques and we were worried about a repeat incursion through the bunker access points. We built in a defensive response to that specific energy signature.”

Nina stared at me.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“We just tried to kill our Luna,” Nina said.

“We built a defensive system in the pack’s primary emergency shelter,” I said, “that would engage against the pack’s own Luna.”

“She has a moon bloodline,” Nina said.

“She has a moon bloodline,” I said. “The bunker reads moon-adjacent power as a threat. We built it to read moon-adjacent power as a threat.”

“Because it was,” Nina said.

“When we built it,” I said.

“When we built it,” she agreed.

We looked at each other.

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Chapter 479

“Does she know?” Nina said.

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The question landed in the room with significant weight.