Chapter 363

“She didn’t do it for you,” Sera continued. “She did it because she wanted you gone from Damon’s orbit and because she needed a solution for the curse that she could execute without asking Kael, who would have refused. You were useful. You were a bloodline she identified and a convenient solution to two problems simultaneously.” She paused, letting this sit. “You think she’s on your side. You think the training tips and the rule she put in the protocol are about you. They’re not. Everything Ivory does is about Kael. You’re still just a piece she moved.”

She sat back, with the expression of someone who’d placed the weapon and was waiting to see the damage.

I looked at her for a moment.

Then I looked at my hands. Then at the window. Then back at Sera, with the considered. attention of someone who’d heard what she’d said and was taking it seriously.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

She waited, clearly expecting a different response than a question.

“Have you ever been kissed by a woman before?”

—

The silence that followed this was a different category of silence from any of the previous ones. Sera’s expression moved through several stages in rapid succession confusion, the specific blankness of someone whose conversational roadmap had suddenly become useless, and then a wary recalibration.

“What?” she said.

I sighed. The sigh of someone deeply, genuinely disappointed by a response they hadn’t hoped for but had feared. “I’ll repeat the question,” I said, with patient clarity. “Have you ever been kissed by a woman before?”

Sera stared at me. “What does that have to do with-

“I’m getting there,” I said. I leaned back slightly in my chair, in the manner of someone settling in for an explanation they’d been hoping to avoid having to give. “The day Ivory kissed me, I understood something that I hadn’t fully understood before. About myself. About what I wanted.” I looked at Sera with the specific warmth of someone sharing a personal revelation.

they’d made peace with. “I realized I was always meant to be in a poly. It’s honestly the best of both worlds. I don’t know why it took me this long.” D

The expression on Sera’s face was doing something I was going to treasure for a considerable time.

–

I continued, with the serene momentum of someone who had committed to a direction and was seeing it through. “So when you tell me that Ivory and Kael were together in the clinic this morning — that they were in each other’s arms, cosy, close-” I waved a hand, “—I’m trying to understand why you think that information is going to produce the response you’re looking for. Why would I be jealous? Why would I be hurt?”

Sera’s mouth opened. Closed.

“The reason I’m not in that clinic right now,” I said, “is because you’re in here. Annoying me. By existing in my office when I have other things I’d rather be doing.” I looked at her with the patient expression of someone explaining something obvious to someone who’d been slow to grasp it. “If you weren’t here, I might be there. That’s the more accurate reading of the situation.”

—

I watched the specific journey Sera’s face was taking — through confusion, into the dawning of something, into the specific horror of someone whose weapon has just been picked up, examined, and handed back to them with a note attached that says *this doesn’t work on me.*

I was absolutely, completely, entirely bluffing.

Ivory and I had not kissed. Ivory and I were not in a poly. Ivory had offered to help me with lunar power training in the context of pack resources and had been very specific about what that was and wasn’t. I was reasonably confident that the idea of a romantic arrangement involving me would make Ivory want to clean something with vigorous scrubbing just to have something to do with the feeling.

But Sera didn’t know that.

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And the look on Sera’s face – the recalibration happening in real time, the weapon going uselessly inert, the entire strategy of *I’ll tell her about Ivory and Kael* dissolving because the target was apparently not threatened by Ivory and Kael and was describing it as a positive development – was one of the most satisfying things I’d witnessed since arriving in

Shadowmere,

Shadowmere was a terrible influence on me. I was going to fit in here eventually,

“I” Sera started.

“I’ve been going through your case file,” I said, returning to the papers on my desk with the

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Chapter 363

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smooth efficiency of someone moving from one agenda item to the next. “The authorization request. The medical situation Ivory documented.” I turned a page. Turned another. Considered something on the third page with a small, thoughtful frown. “There’s quite a backlog, I’m afraid.”

Sera stared at me.

“The open door policy generates significant demand,” I said. “Ivory’s clinic is one of the most sought-after medical resources in the region. People travel considerable distances.” I set the papers down and looked at Sera with the apologetic expression of someone delivering unfortunate news they had no control over. “There are a number of patients currently in the queue ahead of you. Priority is determined by urgency and by order of legitimate request.” I paused. “Taking into account your position in the queue and the current scheduling demands

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I looked at the calendar on my desk.

“-the nearest convenient time I can authorize your treatment is approximately five months from now.”

The silence that followed was the specific silence of a room in which someone has just processed information that has broken several of their remaining assumptions simultaneously.

Celine, at the window, appeared to have stopped breathing entirely as a precautionary

measure.

“Five months,” Sera said. The words came out flat. Disbelieving.

“Approximately,” I said. “These things can shift depending on scheduling. It could be slightly longer if additional urgent cases are referred through.”