Chapter 529
KAEL
My wolf had been talking to me since Tuesday.
:
95
Finished
Not the way the wolf had talked to me before the curse – that had been seamless, the way your own thoughts were seamless, the internal dialogue of a person who was also an animal being fully both at the same time. Three years of the curse had broken that. The wolf and I had become two separate things sharing one body, and the integration that should have happened when the curse broke had been happening slowly, unevenly, with significant gaps.
Tuesday was the first time since the break that the wolf had said something clear enough to qualify as a statement.
The statement was: *Killian should not have been alone that long.*
I’d been in the corridor outside the secondary clinic when this arrived. Not standing there intentionally — I’d been passing through, redirecting from one part of the main building to another, and the secondary clinic’s door had been in my path. I’d walked past it. My wolf had said what he said.
I’d stopped walking.
The specific thing about the wolf’s opinions was that they weren’t opinions in the way my opinions were opinions. I arrived at positions through reasoning – information gathered, weighed, assessed against other information, organized into conclusions. The wolf arrived at positions through something older and more direct, the way animals understood things before there was language for the understanding.
The wolf was telling me something about Killian.
I spent Wednesday ignoring this.
I spent Wednesday well. The elder council meeting had been productive in the specific way of meetings where everyone had been chastened by recent events and was choosing cooperation over posturing. Morrison had been thorough and professional, which was what Morrison was when he wasn’t being territorial, and the formal protocols had been re-established without the drama of the previous session.
The root investigation was progressing. Ivory had the mechanism largely mapped by now – the full moon window, the specific casting structure the witches had used, the connection between Vela’s remaining network capacity and the activation event. The modifications to the bunker’s defensive systems were complete. The bond between me and Aria had been doing
1/4
9:24 Tue, Aug 25
Chapter 529
Finished
something since the Monday meeting that I hadn’t quite identified but that the wolf was very much aware of.
I spent Thursday and Friday ignoring the wolf’s statement about Killian.
On Saturday morning, the wolf stopped being subtle about it.
I was in the training yard, working through the drills that Elite had reestablished after the break, and the wolf’s input was so consistent and so present that I finally stopped mid-sequence
nd stood in the middle of the yard and had a direct internal conversation with myself.
lian has been here for a week,* the wolf said.
know,* I said.
*He came when he was
inted,* the wolf said.
*I know,* I said.
*He saved Ivory
*I know,* I sai
*He is your
*I kno
T
P
volf said.
or a moment. Then: *You know all of it and you’re still sulking.*
said.
rough the gate wall,* the wolf said.
*
m through the gate wall,* the wolf said again. *And then you’ve been in the same him for a week and you’ve gone through the specific route planning required to secondary clinic corridor.*
ute planning is-*
n noticed,* the wolf said.
landed differently than
noticing my ro
document
mentation of my route planning
t would be reviewed at a moment
2/4
9:24 Tue, Aug 25
Chapter 529
specifically chosen to be inconvenient.
:
*Killian has suffered long enough,* the wolf said. *That is my position.*
*The wolf has a position now,* I said.
*The wolf has always had positions,* the wolf said. *You just stopped listening.*
(95
Finished
I stood in the training yard and breathed through the specific discomfort of a conversation I’d been having with myself for fifteen years and had never gotten comfortable with.
The wolf wasn’t wrong.
That was about tac that live
Killi
–
wrong
- The wolf was almost never wrong about the things that mattered sionally, wrong about timing sometimes, but about the deep things, the things he processing layer, the wolf was generally right.
red long enough.
d been not-examining – the thing I’d been routing around in the specific way of who knew where the difficult subject was and was navigating around it with elaborate S― was my mother.
ed believing she’d been the only one for my father.
was the specific wound. Not the affair – I’d understood by the time I was a teenager that ather was not a good man, that the Alpha title had been his by birth rather than by acter. I’d made peace with the fact of my father’s failures in the way that you made peace
something you couldn’t change.
he wound was my mother.
She’d believed the fated bond meant something absolute. She’d believed that fated meant permanent, meant chosen, meant you were the only one. She’d built her whole understanding of herself on the foundation of being his fated mate and what that meant.
And then she’d found out about Killian’s mother.
And then she’d found out about Killian.
–
And then she’d found out that my father had been providing for Killian — had been in and out of their lives, had been what passed for a parent to the son he couldn’t publicly claim – while telling my mother she w
She’d died from th
3/4
9:25 Tue, Aug 25
Chapter 529
Finished
Not immediately. Not in the way of things that killed you quickly. She’d died the slow way, the way people died when something foundational was removed and they didn’t know how to rebuild. And then she died quickly because Killian had decided to test my mother against gravity from a high place and gravity had won the battle in front of my eyes.
That was what I’d held against Killian.
A/n: Oh Kael, my little baby.
合
2.9K
2
4/4
9:25 Tue, Aug 25
Mated To My Mate’s Worst Enemy
Chapter 530
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.