Chapter 384

The silence was long.

“You tracked me,” I said. “Not to Blackwood’s pack by accident. You found where a child of the moon bloodline had ended up and you identified which one it was and you arranged accordingly.”

Ivory said nothing.

“How desperate were you?” I asked, and the question came out quiet. Not angry. Just wanting to understand the full size of it. “How far did you go? How long did you spend looking?”

“Aria-”

“I want to know,” I said. “Not to be angry about it. I’m past being angry about it. I want to understand what it cost.”

Ivory looked at the dark hillside around us. At the pack grounds visible in the distance, the lights of Shadowmere warm against the night.

“Two years,” she said finally. “I spent two years before I found you. Following the bloodline through records, through histories, through family lines that had gone quiet over generations.” She paused. “Children of the moon are rare. The bloodline dilutes. Most of the lines I followed had thinned past activation – there was something in them but not enough. And then I found the Blackwood pack’s records and cross-referenced them with what I needed and-”

The attack came without warning.

Not from the training trap mechanisms – from outside the slope entirely. From the tree line to our left, where the forest began, where the dark was deepest.

It was a bolt. Silver-tipped, fast, aimed directly at Ivory.

The shield she wore – Aryada’s gift, the protection the elder had given her at the Hunt ceremony-activated. I’d seen it before. A brief flare of something, a different color from my silver more gold, the specific warmth of another kind of power. It came up late. Not late enough to stop the bolt entirely, but enough to deflect most of the force,

Ivory flew backward anyway. Not forward, not sideways – the remaining impact of the bolt caught her in the left shoulder and threw her back, and she hit the ground ten feet from where she’d been sitting with a sound that I felt in my own chest.

I was on my feet before I’d decided to stand.

At the tree line, a figure stepped out of the darkness,

Tall. Moving with the specific confidence of someone who’d planned this. Wearing the kind of clothes that were designed not to be seen in the dark.

“Finally.” The voice was female. Carrying across the space between us with the cold satisfaction of someone who’d been searching for a long time. “I’ve found you, Ivory. You will pay.”

I was already moving toward Ivory. She was trying to get up, the left arm not cooperating, her face showing the controlled

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Chapter 384

expression of someone in significant pain who was managing it with professionalism.

I got to her and grabbed her right arm and pulled her upright.

“What is happening.” I said quietly. “Who is that.”

“Help me stand properly,” she said, instead of answering.

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I helped her stand. She was steady on her feet but the left arm was wrong – hanging slightly, the shoulder hit bad enough that the arm wasn’t fully responding.

“Who is that person,” I said again.

The figure across the flat ground was watching us. Not advancing yet. The stillness of someone who was in no hurry because they believed they had the advantage.

“Someone I made an enemy of,” Ivory said, equally quietly. “During the search. When I was tracking the bloodline – when I was finding information about the curse’s origin, about who created it – I had to go to places and people who didn’t want to be found. I made enemies.” She met my eyes. “I made a lot of enemies. I hid what I was doing from everyone because if Kael had known the danger he would have stopped me.”

“Even from Nina,” I said.

“Even from Nina,” she confirmed. “Some of it.”

The figure across the space moved. Not attacking-circling. Getting a better angle.

“She has power,” I said. “Similar to mine.”

“Similar,” Ivory said. “Not the same. Her bloodline is related but further from the source. She’s been hunting me for-” she stopped. “It doesn’t matter for how long. What matters is that she’s here and she knows where the pack is and she’s not going to leave without finishing what she came for.”

“What did you do to her?” I asked.

“I took something,” Ivory said, quietly. “Information she was protecting. About the curse’s origin. About who created it.” A pause that was the pause of someone deciding how much to say. “I needed it and I took it without permission and she lost something because of what I took and she’s been looking for me since.”

1 processed this.

“Go back to the pack,” Ivory said. “Now. Take the path, run, don’t stop.”

“No,” I said.

“Aria-”

“No,” I said again, and my voice came out more firmly than I’d planned, the anchor underneath it making it land differently than it might have before tonight’s training. “I’m not leaving you here with a damaged shoulder against someone with power.”

–

“You don’t understand what’s at stake,” Ivory said, lowering her voice further. “If something happens to you if you die, if your bond with Kael is severed – I don’t know what happens to the curse. Whether it holds or whether losing the mate who broke it undoes the breaking.” She looked at me directly. “I don’t know if you dying means Kael goes back to what he was. I can’t risk that. You have to go.” 1

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Chapter 384

The figure had stopped circling. Was looking at us with the specific focus of someone who’d made a decision..

“I can help,” I said.

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“Not without revealing what you are,” Ivory said. “She has bloodline sensitivity-she’ll recognize a child of the moon if you use the full power. And if she knows what you are, that information will go to the people she reports to, and we will have a much larger problem than we have right now.” Her voice was urgent in the controlled way. “You cannot use the power. Not the real version. Not

anything that identifies you.”

“Then what do I do?” I said.