Chapter 508
ARIA
I found them in the corridor outside Nina office.
019
Finished
This was becoming a recurring location for significant conversations in Shadowmere, which I’d noted and filed as something that said specific things about this inner circle and how it operated. When things needed to be processed, they came here. Not the formal council room, not the training complex, not the gard
The corridor outside Nina’s office, which had the right combination of privacy and proximity to
re they could be quickly if something happened.
told me they were agitated before I’d gotten close enough to confirm it myself. Not the combat- ity- the other kind, the specific agitation of people who’d been present for something and had ay from it with feelings they needed to put somewhere.
d the corner and found all five of them arranged in the corridor in positions that communicated itation quite specifically.
dan was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and the expression of someone running an ventory of something he’d wanted to do and hadn’t been able to.
Nina was pacing. Nina didn’t normally pace – she moved with purpose or she was still. Pacing meant the processing hadn’t finished.
Elite was in her corner position with her arms crossed and her jaw doing the thing I’d learned meant she was containing a response she’d decided was disproportionate for the current context but hadn’t fully let go of.
Ivory had arrived before me. She was standing with the specific quality of someone who’d been in a stressful situation and was coming down from it in real time, the professional composure present but thinner than usual, the underlying landscape of her feelings visible through it in a way that was more accessible than anything I’d seen from her before the crack in the wall had started.
Kael was the still point in the middle of all of it, which I was coming to understand was his specific function in this group – not the calm version, not serene, but the fixed reference that everyone else’s movement organized around.
He looked at me when I arrived with the warm quality that had been developing, and something in at also communicated that he was aware of the specific energy in the corridor and was managing it.
What’s happening.” I said,
“We are.” Jordan said, “discussing the situation.”
situation, Jordan said, “where Karl got to put him through the gate wall.
e got to-“he paused, searching for the accurate summary.’-stand
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Finisher
“You got to observe,” I said.
“We got to watch,” Nina said, on the return leg of her pacing. “Which is different. Watching is what you do when there’s nothing available for you to do. We had things we wanted to do. We were prevented from doing them by the fact that Kael had already done it and Ivory had done it and the clinical space was-”
“The clinical space was a clinical space,” Ivory said. “There are protocols.”
“The protocols,” Jordan said, “specifically excluded us from the part where someone got to put Killian through something.”
“I understand,” Nina said, pivoting, “that there are good reasons for those exclusions. I’m not arguing with the reasons. I’m noting that the outcome is that Killian has now been physically through one gate wall by
one clinic wall by Ivory, and the three of us have performed exclusively a
stances.”
Kael and physicall
spectator functi
“Four of us,
“Four of
“We
to
also present.”
with the deliberate neutrality of someone proposing something they were going about, “bribe Margo. To look the other way. For a period. During one of the
is non-negotiable,” Ivory said flatly.
dan,” Nina said.
essional,” Ivory said.
anion planting,” Nina said.
vant,” Ivory said.
“o documented the companion planting,” Nina said. “Which means she was paying attention to
- Which means there exists a warmer-than-baseline-”
argo is not bribing anyone for Jordan to punch a patient.” Ivory said.
We wouldn’t need to punch him,” Jordan said. “We could just make our grievances known. Physically.”
You want to gang up on him,” I said.
“We want,” Jordan said, “to express, in the specific language that this inner circle has occasionally found useful, that his presence her
history with this pack and his choices over the past fifteen years have
been noted and that
The language
Hitting a
“You
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“I want the option to hit Killian,” Jordan said. “The option I was denied when the situation resolved before my participation was available,
“Kael put him through a wall, I said. “That seems like a resolution.”
“Kael got to put him through a wall,” Jordan said. “We’re still discussing the equity of that.”
I looked at Kael.
“You can’t,” Kael said, to Jordan, “beat Killian whenever you want because you feel like it.”
“You did,” Jordan said.
“Yes,” Kael said,
“So you ca
said, “and we can’t.”
“That
tion,” Kael said.
afair distribution,” Jordan said.
ribution,” Kael agreed, with the complete evenness of someone who’d considered this ted it.” But…..if you want to show your grievances — count me in. I have at least one more et out of my system.”
eat people up just because you don’t like them,” I said.
dor went quiet.
he looked at me.
Kael said.
–
an serious,” I said. “You can’t just he’s in the secondary clinic with an injury. He came here because he was being hunted. He helped Ivory.”
‘He existed,” Jordan said.
I looked at Jordan.
“That’s his offense?” I said. “He existed?
It’s a significant offense,” Jordan said. “Given the specifics of how he chose to exist.”
“Wow,” I said.
The history”
“I know al Alpha
,”is considerable.”
His mother had an affair with Kael’s father, who was the new about it and didn’t say anything. That’s real that’s tion, which is also genuinely bad I looked at their le to help Ivory, and people are trying to kill him lor
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Chapter 508
it, and you want to gang up on him.”
“They’re not wrong about the wanting to,” Silver said, in my head.
“Not helping,” I said, internally
Finished
*I’m just saying it’s understandable,* Silver said. *Doesn’t mean they should do it. But understandable.*
Ivory had been quiet. She was standing with the expression of someone who was letting a conversation develop because she was still processing the version of it she’d been part of and hadn’t finished the processing yet.
“We could,” Kael said, and his voice had taken on the specific quality of someone testing an idea in the air before
ting to it, “just throw him back out.”
her way,” Kael said. “He leaves. The people hunting him continue hunting him. We didn’t We just-didn’t stop it.”
not,” I said.
ridor went quiet again.
under my protection,” I said. “For the meantime. That’s the position.”
ur protection,” Kael said.
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Mated To My Mate’s Worst Enemy
Chapter 509
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.