Chapter 342

IVORY

She sat through the initial checks with the compliance of someone who’d been through medical examinations before and understood what they required. Pulse, temperature, visual assessment, the diagnostic stones applied to the pressure points that gave the most reliable reading for systemic conditions. I worked methodically, not speaking, letting the examination proceed at its own pace.

The stones told me what I needed to know before I’d finished the first circuit.

“Silver poisoning,” I said.

Sera looked at me sharply. “I haven’t shown you any files. I haven’t given you any-”

“There are reasons,” I said, setting the stones aside and making notes in the clinical shorthand I’d developed over years, “why people travel distances to see me. The silver accumulation in your lymphatic system is significant. Chronic exposure over a long period – this isn’t recent. This has been building for months, possibly longer.” I looked up from my notes. “What were you using it on?”

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s not relevant.”

“It’s entirely relevant,” I said. “The source and duration of exposure determines the treatment approach. But we can come back to that.” I set my pen down and looked at her with the clinical assessment I used with all patients – seeing the person and the condition separately, treating the condition with the skills I had regardless of everything else. “How long have you been experiencing symptoms?”

“Several months,” she said. “Fatigue. Joint pain. Some cognitive-” she stopped, as if deciding how much to give me.

“Cognitive interference,” I said. “Memory gaps. Difficulty sustaining focus. Yes. That’s consistent with the level of accumulation I’m seeing.” I picked up the pen again. “The silver is in your system at a level that’s past what the body can manage naturally. Left untreated, it progresses. The cognitive effects become permanent. Eventually it affects cardiac function.” I said this without inflection, because it was clinical information rather than a threat. “You need treatment.”

“Then treat me,” she said.

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“I will,” I said. “After we’ve had a conversation.”

She looked at me. Recalibrated.

“You came a very long way,” I said, “and you arranged coalition witnesses and invoked a formal policy and tolerated significant social inconvenience to get into this clinic. That’s not the behavior of someone who’s here purely for medical treatment. So let’s have the conversation you actually came to have, and then I can treat you, and then you can leave.” I folded my hands. “What do you want.”

The mask settled back into place

–

the composed, deliberate Sera, the one who’d arrived at the gate with the pre-arranged witnesses and the knowledge of the open door policy and the conviction that she’d thought this through. She reached into the bag again, this time producing something that wasn’t

A letter.

money.

She set it on the desk between us the way she’d set down the cedis with precision, with intent, with the specific placement of someone producing a weapon rather than just an object.

I looked at it without touching it.

I knew what the letter was before Sera told me.

“Addressed to my mother,” Sera said, watching my face. “Luna Margaret of the WestSpring pack, my former pack before i got mated to Alpha Damon of Blackwood Pack.” She tilted her head. “You wrote to her. Proposing that Aria be sent to Shadowmere as the potential mate to break Alpha Kael’s curse. You cited several things – the bloodline compatibility, the timing, the availability.” She paused, and her expression did something that was trying to be warm and wasn’t. “And you mentioned that Aria’s presence in the Blackwood pack was complicating things. That Damon’s bond to me would be more settled if Aria was elsewhere.”

I looked at the letter.

I did not pick it up.

—

“You engineered it,” Sera said. “Their bond. You wrote to my mother before any of it, arranged for Aria to be proposed as the candidate, facilitated the entire thing yourself. You went against your own Alpha’s back. Did what was best for Shadowmere, yes but also what was best for you. Getting Aria out of the picture. Solving the curse. Keeping Damon’s attention on me.” She leaned forward slightly,

“That’s not self-sacrifice, Ivory. That’s strategy. That’s someone who knows exactly what they want and knows how to get it without anyone realizing they were the one who moved the

pieces.”

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Tee Coiris

I looked at the letter for another moment.

Then I looked at Sera.

“You want me to panic,” I said. “You want me to look at that letter and understand that you have evidence that could be used to complicate my position here, and then you want to use that fear to make me cooperate with whatever you’ve come here to propose.” I kept my voice even.

“Let me save us both time. I’m not going to panic. So tell me what you want.”

Sera blinked. She’d prepared for several responses. This hadn’t been among them.

She recovered. “I want you to stop protecting Aria. Stop giving her the benefit of your expertise, your credibility, your whatever it is you’re giving her that makes the pack reconsider her. You have influence here. Significant influence. Enough to tip things, if you chose to use it against her instead of for her.” She sat back.

“Kael’s curse is broken. The bond served its purpose. If you stopped being noble, about this, if you chose yourself for once, removing Aria from the Luna position would be straightforward. And Kael would be free to….”

I laughed.

—

It came out genuine, actual laughter the kind that arrives when something lands in exactly the wrong yet most absurd way and your body responds before your composure can intercept

Sera stopped talking.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not very apologetically, composing myself. “Please continue. You were explaining how I could get what I want by betraying several people I care about and aligning myself with someone who helped the man I watched try to destroy this pack for years.” I looked at her pleasantly.

“What was the next part?”