Chapter 512
ARIA
Fin
She was quiet again. Then she said: “Fated bonds don’t generate love. That’s the thing people get wron about them. They tell you who the person is. They make the connection available. But you still have t build the love. You still have to choose it.” She looked at the wall of the lab rather than at me. “In a peri world, when I wasn’t quite so broken, maybe I’d be curious enough to build it.”
“You’re not that broken,” I said.
She looked at me with the expression that was both the healer’s assessment and something more persc
she said, and it sounded like something she was saying to herself as much as to me.
to ask something else.
“I’m wo
I op
tside, close enough to feel as well as hear- the specific sound of a wolf in full cry, not t es howled in communication or patrol signals. This was different. This was the howl that it, something red at the edges, something that wasn’t communication and wasn’t
or drained out of her face in the specific way that happened when a person recognized somethin eir body understood before their mind caught up.
turned to face me and she shook her head – not a conversation, a warning. The specific shorthand c meone who didn’t have time for words.
Then the screaming started outside.
Then the clinic wall came in.
I had a fraction of a second – the fraction whese Ivory’s body was already moving, already putting hersel between me and the door – and then she shoved me sideways and Kael came through the entrance.
Not the way Kael moved when he was walking or running or even the combat-speed movement I’d seen ui the facility infiltration. The other way. The full wolf form way, except this wasn’t the wolf I’d seen on the lower slope with the amber eyes and the wolf intelligence behind them.
The eyes were wrong.
That was the first thi a room – but 1 response flat
This v
The size was right – the enormous black wolf, the presence that filled mber was too bright. Flat in a way that was different from threat
the lower slope had never been empty.
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Chapter 512-
First
This was what had lived inside his wolf during the curse years.
It moved toward me.
Ivory threw something – one of the compound bottles, heavy, accurate, hitting the wolf across the shoulder hard enough to redirect its momentum. The wolf swung toward her instead and she yelled at 1 to leave, and I was already moving but not away, I was moving toward the worktable where I’d seen Ivor emergency kit because I was not leaving her in here alone with this.
The wolf went for Ivory. She went under the table with the speed of someone who’d done this before had lived this before, three years of being the only person in the room with the cursed wolf — and the table came apart around her. Wood everywhere. The wolf was methodical in a way that was worse than frantic would have been. It wasn’t wild. It was directed.
It had been
I raised
don’t
towa
r something specific.
–
he lunar blast came up but Silver pulled it back before it fully formed — *don’t, hurt Kael* – and the pulling-back cost me a second that the wolf used to move
ordan.
ding a baseball bat. I had a moment of complete confusion about the baseball bat – the on of where Jordan had gotten a baseball bat in Shadowmere and when and why – and the g it.
the wolf’s head.
f did not stop.
wolf did not even slow down.
rdan flew sideways. Not from the swing – from the wolf’s, shoulder catching him as it turned, the reless dismissal of something that had a target and had been interrupted. Jordan hit the clinic wall hard and I heard the impact sound and went to him before I’d made the decision to go to lum.
He was alive. Dazed, cuts from the wall, pressing himself upright with the single-minded quality of someone who’d been hit and was going to keep being present regardless.
“I’m fine,” he said, before I asked.
Nina was doing something remarkable. She’d gotten a piece of the broken bottle – the compound bottle Ivory had thrown-an
specific quality of
‘Don’t make
“You hear
The y
ing the broken shard and she was stepping toward the wolf with the
erous things before and had inade peace with the doing
pice was steady in a way that was costing her something
ays been in there. Don’t make me do this
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Chapter 512
Something shifted in the eyes. Just for a mornent – a flicker of something that was familiar rather tl
empty.
Then it was gone.
Nina stabbed the broken glass into the wolf’s side.
He howled and the howl filled the clinic and rattled things on shelves and I pressed my hands over n and then immediately lowered them because pressing my hands over my ears was not useful.
“Close the door!” Nina yelled at me. “Don’t let him out!”
I went to the door. Pulled it closed. Pressed my back against it because it was the only thing available press against it and my weight wasn’t going to stop a wolf but it was what I had.
The
en
Ivory had gotten out from under the destroyed table and was moving toward the et with the focused urgency of someone who knew exactly what she was reaching for et the situation stop her from reaching it.
d faster.
inned before she reached the cabinet. Both of Ivory’s hands on the cabinet’s edge, the wolf ove her, and I saw the moment when the wolf’s head lowered toward her neck and I stopped
indow broke.
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目 2
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Mated To My Mate’s Worst Enemy
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.