Chapter 391

“That’s not-”

“I’m fine,” she said again, with the specific firmness of someone who had said this word so many times it had become a reflex. “Nina has it. The bolt hit the joint but not the artery. It’s bleeding more than it looks.”

“It looks like a lot,” he said.

“It’s less than a lot,” she said. “Proportionally.”

Nina said something to the second healer who’d appeared from the back of the clinic, who moved immediately to the supply cabinet.

I stood in the clinic entrance and watched Kael stand at the side of the examination table and look at Ivory and not quite find words for what he was looking at.

He’d run down a hillside in wolf form in response to a bond signal he’d never felt before. He’d taken down an attacker, shifted back, come up the slope, and now he was standing in his clinic looking at Ivory bleeding from a wound she’d been minimizing since it happened.

“Who,” he said, and then stopped and changed the sentence. “She knew your name. The attacker. She’d been looking for you specifically.”

Ivory was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”

“For how long.”

“A while,” she said.

“Ivory.”

“A year,” she said. “Approximately.”

The silence in the clinic was a specific kind.

“A year,” he said.

“I was going to tell you,” she said, with the composure of someone who knew how that sentence sounded and was saying it anyway because it was true. “When I had more information. When I understood what I was dealing with well enough to explain it without-”

“Without me making you stop,” he said.

Ivory met his eyes. “Yes,” she said, the honesty of it clean and simple.

Jordan, standing near the entrance beside me, made a sound that he immediately converted to nothing. His eyes were on the middle distance with the determined focus of a man who had decided that the middle distance was where he would be residing for the next several minutes.

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Chapter 391

Kael looked at the blood again. At the arm. At Ivory’s pale, controlled face.

“We’re going to have a very long conversation,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“About all of it,” he said.

“I know,” she said again.

“When you’re not on an examination table.”

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“I look forward to it,” she said, with the serenity of someone who had already been through several very long conversations recently and had survived them all.

Kael looked at her for another moment. Then he turned, because Nina had started the shoulder work and it was going to require the space, and he moved back toward where Jordan and I were standing near the entrance.

He stopped in front of me.

Looked at the scratches again.

“She found the gap in my shield,” I said, before he could ask. “On purpose. To show me where it was.”

He looked at Ivory.

Ivory was very focused on the wall ahead of her while Nina worked on her shoulder. Not looking in our direction.

“She did the bruise too,” I said.

Jordan made the almost-sound again. His middle distance remained uninterrupted.

“Ivory,” Kael said.

“Mm,” she said, to the wall.

“You gave my mate a blade scratch,” he said.

“Educational,” she said, still to the wall.

“And a bruise.”

“Illustrative,” she said.

“With a blade,” he said.

“The shield work required practical demonstration,” she said, in the tone of a person delivering a clinical justification with full commitment. “Textbook learning has significant limitations when it comes to pressure response. The gap wouldn’t have been as memorable if it hadn’t been found in a practical context.”

“The gap,” Kael said slowly, “in my mate’s shield.”

“She fixed it immediately,” Ivory said, with the air of someone presenting a positive outcome. “The lesson was effective. As training methods go-”

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Chapter 391

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“Ivory,” he said.

She finally looked at him. Her expression had the specific quality of someone who was in enough pain that certain defenses had thinned out, combined with the specific quality of someone who knew exactly how this looked and had decided to meet it with composure anyway. “The training was thorough,” she said. “She needed thorough. What’s coming what we’re dealing with – she needed to be ready for more than she was.”

The clinic was quiet for a moment. Just the sounds of Nina working, the second healer assisting, the ordinary efficient sounds of a medical space doing what it was built for.

“I know,” Kael said, finally. Not agreeing that giving me a blade scratch was fine. Something more complicated than that. Something that acknowledged the reason behind it even while objecting to the method.

Ivory looked back at the wall. Nina said something technical to the second healer.

I stood at the clinic entrance with Jordan and watched the room and thought about the evening – all of it, from the note under my door to the techniques on the hillside to the bolt and the wolf and the attacker’s last words before she’d escaped.

‘The breaking was temporary. The original caster built a reversal into it.*

–

That was sitting somewhere in my chest where I was going to have to deal with it eventually. Not tonight tonight had reached its capacity – but soon. The question of whether what I’d done by breaking the curse was permanent or whether there was a clock running somewhere that I didn’t know about.

But that was tomorrow’s problem.

Tonight Ivory was bleeding and getting fixed and Kael was standing in his clinic checking on his mate after running down a hillside in wolf form, and Jordan was maintaining his professional composure with the effort of a man who’d been doing it all evening and would probably need somewhere private to process it soon.

And I was standing upright with scratches and a bruise and the warm weight of the pearl in my pocket and the knowledge of what the bond felt like when you reached into it properly and sent something real through it.

That was tonight’s accounting.

I’d count the rest tomorrow.