Chapter 345

IVORY

Nina had looked up from her documentation. She was still for a moment, clearly running through the implications of what i had just suggested out of the blue with the intelligence she brought to everything.

“That rule,” she said, “has technically been in the protocol documentation for twelve years.”

“In small print,” I said.

“Very small print,” Nina agreed. “We’ll be increasing the font size. For clarity.”

“It should probably have its own page,” Kael said. “Given the importance of the rule.”

“Agreed,” Nina said. “A full page. Clear font. Probably a border.”

“A border,” Kael said. “Definitely.”

I looked at the damaged floor of my clinic and felt, despite everything, something that was adjacent to satisfaction.

Not about Sera – Sera’s situation was genuinely terrible in ways that existed underneath all the hostility and manipulation, and I would treat the silver poisoning eventually, through the correct channels, because that was what the policy was for. But about this.

About the rule.

“Does Aria know about this rule?” I asked.

Kael and Nina looked at each other in the brief way of people exchanging a complete communication.

“She should be told,” I said. “She needs to know that she has that authority. And someone should probably also explain to her-” I looked at the floor again, at the very specific outcome of this very specific morning,

“-that pettiness is not a character flaw in this pack. It is a primary qualification. Perhaps the most important one.” I glanced at Nina. “For being a Shadowmere Luna.”

Nina’s expression suggested this was something she’d been thinking for some time and was

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glad to have confirmed.

“I’ll inform her of the rule,” Nina said.

“I’ll update the pack members,” Kael said.

I waited for one of them to address the training component. Neither did.

“Who’s going to explain the pettiness qualification?” I asked.

A pause.

“What pettiness qualification?” Kael said.

“What rule?” Nina said.

I looked at them. They looked at me with the combined expression of two people who had decided, in real time and with complete coordination, that the conversation had ended at a specific moment and they were simply no longer aware of any subsequent content.

I thought about twelve years of this. About the specific comedy of people I loved being completely impossible in ways that were entirely characteristic and entirely predictable and somehow still capable of being funny.

“The qualification that Shadowmere Luna demands a lot of grovelling from people who deserves it, especially people who realize they can’t mock her and demand to be treated in the same pack by a very comepetent healer that can’t be found elsewhere.”

“That’s a very good qualification,” he said. He said it with the measured appreciation of someone acknowledging an elegant solution. “It should absolutely have its own page.”

“It’s been there for twelve years,” Nina said, with a serenity that was doing a great deal of work. She was already writing. “Small print. Given that some visitors have demonstrated difficulty with small print, we’re increasing the font size. For their convenience.”

“Thoughtful,” Kael said.

“We try,” Nina said.

“I love that qualification written down as a rule. that obviously had been existing before today,” I said, with the genuine appreciation of someone who had just used it to its full effect. “I think it’s one of the better rules we have,” I set the tray down and looked at them. “Does Aria know about it?”

“She should know,” Kael said. “Someone should tell her.”

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“I’ll inform her,” Nina said, making a note.

“And the pack members,” Kael added. “The rule should be communicated to the full pack. Updated documentation. Everyone will be aware.”

“Absolutely,” Nina agreed. “Very important that everyone knows about the twelve-year-old rule that has always been there in small print.”

I looked at the two of them.

“What rule?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Kael and Nina, simultaneously, in the identical tone of two people who were absolutely not coordinating.

I turned back to the cleanup and allowed myself exactly one moment of something that was close to satisfaction. Not about Sera – the situation was genuinely serious, Damon was still out there, the silver poisoning was real and the information about the letter was a complication that would need to be thought through carefully. None of that was resolved.

But there was a certain quality to watching a plan that had been designed to exploit the open door policy find itself stuck in a rule book that had not existed since this morning, but already have 12 years of existence tied to the name and the fact the rules keeps being updated every passing minute, out of pure spite and pettiness that had caterogized shadowmere as a nightmare but very efficient pack.

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The years I’d spent building this clinic, this policy, this reputation I’d built it carefully. Thoughtfully.

Sera had known the open door policy. She’d clearly researched it carefully enough to know how to invoke it. She just hadn’t realized how quickly shadowmere worked together when addressing a problem that needed to be gotten rid of through diplomatic means and in such a way that we can never be in the wrong and suing us or demanding retribution will only end up making you the unstable one. Alpha Dan learned that the hard way, and now so does Sera Quinn.

That was the thing about Shadowmere. People who came here expecting soft spots to exploit consistently found that the structure was denser than it looked, and by the time they’d discovered the density, they were already inside it.