Chapter 598

“Killian asked,” Nina said.

“I didn’t ask,” Killiatr said.

“You were going to,” Nina said.

“I was considering it,” Killian allowed.

“The blackberry incident,” Jordan said, with the resignation of a man who’d realized the conversation had already happened and he was simply the last to accept it, “is not something that needs to be in the packs collective knowledge base.”

“It’s already in the link,” Edna said, from wherever Edna was.

“IT IS NOT IN THE LINK,” Jordan said.

*It might be a little bit in the link,* Edna said.

“HOW.” Jordan said.

*Someone was remembering it,* Edna said. *Memories can bleed. The link is new and people haven’t learned to manage it yet.*

“Whose memories,” Jordan said.

Silence.

“Whose memories were they,” Jordan said.

*It’s hard to say,* Edna said. *They were quite vivid. Whoever was remembering it remembers it very specifically.*

Every member of the inner circle was looking at every other member of the inner circle.

“I wasn’t thinking about it,” Kael said.

“I wasn’t thinking about it,” Nina said.

“I may have been,” Ivory said.

“IVORY,” Jordan said.

“I was cataloguing the methodology for a research note,” she said. “I

professional memory retrieval.”

–“Jordan stopped. “You know what. Fine. Fine. The blackberry incident is in the link. Two hundred wolves have fragments of the blackberry incident. This is fine. This is my life.”

“It’s a good life,” Kael said.

“THE BLACKBERRY INCIDENT-”

“Is behind you,” Kael said. “Moving forward. The pack is whole. The link is active. We have our wolves. This is a good day.”

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Whapter 597

Jordan looked at him.

“This is a good day,” he said, in the tone of a man making peace with circumstances.

“Yes,” Kael said.

The pack settled into the afternoon with the specific quality of people who’d been given something back and were learning how to hold it again.

The link was quieter – not silent, it would probably never be silent in the way that suppression had been silent, there were always going to be threads of presence and communication running through it, that was what a functional mindlink was. But the initial volume of rediscovery had settled into the lower–level warmth of people who’d integrated the connection back into their baseline..

Theo and Luca had been given space by general unspoken consensus, the pack’s instinct recognizing that two people at the beginning of a significant thing needed room to have it without an audience. The last I’d seen them they were at the edge of the grounds having what appeared to be a very careful conversation.

Kael was in the middle of the main group, moving through the pack with the ease of someone who’d come back to something and found it exactly as they’d needed it to be. He was talking to people – not Alpha- talking, the formal engagement of a leader with constituents, but the other version, the one I’d been watching develop since the book club, the version where the management layer wasn’t at full capacity and something more direct came through.

He was happy.

I’d thought it before, in the clearing, and I thought it again now – the specific word for the specific thing, not the functional satisfaction of good leadership, the actual version.

Silver said: *Look.*

I looked.

Kael had stopped in the middle of the grounds with the specific expression of someone who’d become aware of something approaching from behind and was assessing it.

The link was doing something – a warmth building in a specific thread of it, the thread that had arrived when Ivory shifted and then immediately been muted and managed. The muting was still there. The management was still in place.

But underneath it, something was building.

Not anger.

Something older than anger.

The sound of knuckles cracking was audible from where I was standing.

Kael turned slowly.

Ivory was standing ten feet away.

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She was smiling

or

gentle was the spredt – not the professional one, not the contain–warmth one to oder the one that examed when Ivory had made a decision and was enjoying the decision fully before w exrced

She won cracking her knuckles

Kael looked at her harts.

At the knuckles.

At the smile

Something moved through his expression that I’d never seen there before- a very specific combinationed guilt and recognition and the dawning awareness of someone who’d just understood that a dets had come due

“Ivory” he said. “Wait”

She took one step forward.

“We can talk about this,” he said.

Another step.

I have he started. “There are things I want to say. In my defense. Before whatever this is—

–

Silver said, in my chest, with the warmth of something that had been waiting to feel this: “He knows what he did.

“What did he do,” I said.

*In the curse years, Silver said. “He was not always in control And Ivory was always there. And some of the not–in–control moments-

“He hurt her,” I said.

“Accidentally, Silver said. “But yes.”

The guilt in his expression made more sense.

“Ivory,” Kael said, “Come on. I was cursed. There were extenuating-

She cracked her knuckles again.

“-circumstances,” he said. “I’m a completely different–the wolf is integrated–I’m significantly more-” he stopped. “The bond is-”

She took another step.

Sat, Sep 12

Mate To My Mate’s Worst Enemy

Chapter 598

Chapter 598

ARIA

“JORDAN,” Kael said.

Jordan appeared at my elbow. He looked at the situation. Looked at Ivory’s expression. Looked at Kael? expression.

“No,” Jordan said.

“NINA,” Kael said.

Nina appeared on my other side. She looked at Ivory. She looked at Kael. Her expression did the small thing that was the precursor to the larger thing.

“Also no,” Nina said.

“You’re supposed to-” Kael started.

“You had this coming.” Nina said. “Literally for years.”

“Years,” Jordan confirmed.

“I hurt her accidentally.” Kael said. “The wolf was not in-”

“Yes,” Ivory said. “Accidentally.”

She was using her voice. The specific quiet register that was somehow louder than her loud voice, the one that indicated she’d thought carefully about what she was going to say and was saying it with precision.

“Accidentally,” she said again. “I know.” She took another step. “This is also going to be an accident.”

“It’s not going to be an accident,” Kael said. “You’re planning it. You just cracked your knuckles twice.”

“The knuckle cracking is unrelated,” she said.

“IVORY-”

She moved.

The thing about Ivory, which I had been building documentation. aine months, was that she was not slow. She was smaller than most of the wolves she’d spent years adjacent to and she was frequently described in terms that implied fragility – the healer, the botanist, the weakest member of the inner circle – and none of those terms came with adequate warning about what Ivory was actually like when she decided to move.

She was fast.

She got to Kael in the time it took me to process that she’d started moving, and what happened in the next three seconds was a sequence I wasn’t entirely able to follow in real time. The outcome was Kael on the

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Chapter 5958

ground and Ivory standing over him with the expression of someone who’d made a point and was satisfies! with the making of it.

The pack

-two hundred and fourteen wolves, all in the link, all watching – went absolutely silent

Then erupted.

The link was a wall of sound, the specific sound of people who’d been waiting for something and had just received it and had very strong feelings about what they’d received.

Kael, on the ground, looked up at Ivory.

“That,” he said, “was not-”

“An accident,” she agreed. “No. That one wasn’t.” She offered him a hand. “The next one will be.”

He looked at the hand.

Took it.

She pulled him up with the ease of someone whose strength had been recalibrated by the restoration and was still learning the new parameters.

They stood facing each other with the twelve years and the debt paid and something that was lighter than what had been there before the debt’s payment.

“Better?” he said.

“Getting there,” she said.

Silver said: “She’s happy.*

I looked at Ivory.

At the expression that was the real one- not the clinical layer, not the professional precision, the thing underneath that existed when she let it exist.

*She is, I said.

*This is what she wanted,* Silver said. “This morning. Her pack with their wolves, and running, and the link alive, and this. This specific ordinary terrible wonderful thing.*

I stood in the middle of Shadowmere’s pack grounds with the link Silver warm in my chest, and I watched Ivory laugh at something and I held the shape of the unnamed thing that had been sitting in edge of the clearing.

The countdown.

Whatever it was counting toward.

I was going to find out.

Before the root came out.

and loud and alive around me and

-the real laugh, the full one- est since I’d watched her at the

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Super 598

I was going to find out, and then I was going to do something about it, because that was what I was here for

hot just the bond, not just the pack connection, not just the lunar power that Silver had been building toward.

I was the Luna of Shadowmere.

And Ivory was my pack.

And I was not going to stand by while she counted down to something she’d decided to carry alone.

“Good, Silver said.

*Don’t say good,* I said.

*Why not,” she said.

*Because every time you say good something difficult happens immediately after, I said

3

Silver was quiet for a moment.

“Fair,” she said.

The link hummed around me.

The pack was alive.

I held all of it – the warmth and the chaos and the noise and the bench situation that was apparently still unresolved and Edna’s running commentary and the muted thread in the link that was Ivory’s wolf managing what it was willing to let through.

I held it.

And I paid attention.