Chapter 366

I know, I said internally, in the way we communicated.

*You left*, he said again, and the repetition carried the specific weight of something he found fundamentally wrong about the sequence of events.

I had commitments. I have a bond.

*You have a bond with someone who visited our enemy.*

That’s not-

C

*Someone who we don’t know yet.* Not aggressive – just accurate, in the flat way he stated things he considered obvious. *Eight months and we don’t know her the way we know Ivory. We will never know anyone the way we know Ivory.*

I understand that.

*You don’t act like you understand it.* The pressure shifted – not increasing, just moving, the tide adjusting its position. *She arranged everything. She gave us up to keep us alive. And we are spending our energy on the one she gave us up for.* 1

She’s my bonded mate, I said. That means something. I made a commitment.

*She visited Damon.* Simple. Flat. Not cruel – he was incapable of cruelty as a motivation, operated only on instinct and priority and the specific animal logic of what made a pack safe and whole. *She carries feelings for someone who wants to destroy what is ours.*

I’m aware of that.

*And yet.*

The yet sat in my chest with all the weight he could put into two letters,

I set down the pen. Looked at the window.

–

The grounds were going gold in the late afternoon light the specific gold of winter sun at a low angle, the kind that made everything look warmer than it was. Through the glass I could see pack members crossing between buildings, the ordinary movement of the day ending and

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Chapter 366

the evening beginning.

—

:

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I’d held Ivory this morning while she cried. Had held her with the specific care of someone who understood what they were holding- not just the person, but the full weight of what she’d been carrying, the three years and the amnesia and the memories returned and the eight months of being professional about an unprofessional cost. I’d said the right things because I knew her well enough to know what the right things were, the specific knowledge that twelve years of something builds into you.

And then I’d left. Because the bond existed. Because Aria was in my territory and had been navigating her own impossible position with more genuine effort than she’d been given credit for. Because staying had been the one thing that would have sent a message I couldn’t take back.

My wolf didn’t understand why that mattered. He understood priority, territory, pack. He understood that Ivory was ours in a way that predated any ceremony and would outlast any arrangement. He didn’t understand why the arrangement superseded the older, more fundamental thing.

*The bond was made without asking me*, he said, and the flatness of it was the closest he got to reproach.

I know.

*You asked Ivory to set aside what is ours. She did it. She set it aside and arranged the solution and carried the cost and didn’t complain. And you are asking me to set aside what is ours as well. Except you didn’t ask. You just expected it.*

I sat very still.

*I have been patient*, he said. *I have been waiting because she asked for time and time is reasonable and I understand time. But she cried this morning. And you held her and she let you hold her and that is not something she does with people who are not ours. And then you left.* D

1

I know, I said again. And this time the words landed differently because he’d said the thing I’d been not-saying, the thing I’d been letting myself not quite look at since the clinic. She’d let me hold her. Ivory, who was private about cost and competent about everything and hadn’t let

she’d let me in. In the the composure go in front of anyone since the memory restoration specific way that she only let people in when she trusted them with the full thing, not the professional version.

That meant something. It meant the same thing it had meant during three years of a curse, when she’d been the one person who could sit beside me in wolf form and talk without performing for me and trust that I was still there inside the animal.

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Chapter 366

*She is still ours*, my wolf said. *Nothing that has happened has changed that.*

She’s not mine to claim, I said. Not right now. Maybe not ever in the way you mean it.

*Then what is she?*

The question sat there.

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What was she? She was Ivory. She was the person who’d known my wolf form better than most people knew my human one. She was the healer who’d kept Shadowmere functional when I couldn’t and who’d given up her future to extend mine. She was the woman who’d laughed when she’d read my note about the novels and pressed the Hunt medal to her face like she was losing a child and told the assembled pack that my fragile ego had required her charity.

She was the woman who’d made a rule in a protocol document to protect Aria’s position because the Luna position deserved protection regardless of who was standing in it, and who had given training tips in a courtyard with the specific Ivory quality of helping even when helping cost her something.

She was the person I’d loved since before I’d known that love was what I was feeling, in the years when we were young enough that the word would have felt too large to say.

*Yes*, my wolf said. *All of that. And she is ours.*

I can’t act on that, I said. I have a bond. Aria is my mate. The bond is real regardless of how it was formed.

*I did not say act. I said know.* A distinction I hadn’t expected from him – the animal not usually interested in the nuance between knowing and acting. *Know what she is. Stop telling yourself it is old feeling. Stop calling it something that will fade. It has not faded in twelve

years

and it will not fade. Know what it is.* 1

I was quiet for a moment.

He was right. I’d been calling it old feeling. Had been telling myself that the pull toward Ivory was the remnant of the curse years, the muscle memory of an extended period in which she’d been the primary constant. Had been treating it like something that would naturally soften as the bond with Aria deepened, as time accumulated, as the new thing became the familiar thing.

It had not softened. It had not diminished. It had become more clearly itself as the months passed and I’d accumulated more evidence of who she was and what she was capable of and what she’d chosen to give up for no reason except that she’d loved me enough to put my survival above her future.

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:

*She is not a past thing*, my wolf said. *Stop keeping her in the past.

She’s not my present, I said. The bond-

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*The bond is with someone who is also still figuring out what she is*, he said. Not cruel – he had no interest in cruelty toward Aria, felt something closer to the cautious assessment of something unfamiliar that might become familiar in time. *She is not wrong. She is not bad. But she is not ours yet. And you are asking me to pretend that the one who is ours is past, so that the one who might be ours can have the space to become it.*