Chapter 394

“She could have made this considerably worse,” I said.

“She gave you scratches that will heal overnight,” he said. “For someone who interrupted her training exercise, refused to leave when told to, used a lunar scream on her, and then split a discharge into two simultaneous targeted impacts without being taught to.” He met my eyes. “By Ivory’s standards, she liked you.”

Something sat in that. I turned it over.

“The scream,” I said. “The six seconds.”

“Nina told me,” he said.

“Ivory seemed “I paused, trying to describe it accurately. “Surprised isn’t quite the right word. Something past surprise.”

“Ivory is rarely genuinely surprised by capabilities,” he said. “She usually sees them coming before they fully manifest. For something to catch her-” he stopped, seemed to consider how to finish that. “It means the capability is past what she projected. Further along the bloodline’s development than her timeline accounted for.”

“She said the bloodline was further along than she’d estimated,” I said. “During the training. Before everything else happened.”

“Yes,” he said. He was quiet for a moment. “The attacker.”

D

“Ivory said she made enemies,” I said. “During the search. When she was following the bloodline’s trail, trying to find the curse’s origin, trying to find me. She went to people who didn’t want to be found. Took information that wasn’t freely given.”

“I know some of it,” he said. “Not all of it. She hasn’t-”

“She hasn’t told you everything,” I said.

“No,” he said. “She hasn’t told me everything.”

“She told me she was protecting you,” I said. “That if you’d known the danger involved you would have stopped her. And that she couldn’t let you stop her because the timeline was-“I stopped.

“Was what,” he said.

I looked at him. He was looking at me with the specific quality of someone who was going to hear something they already suspected and needed someone to say it plainly so they could stop suspecting and start knowing.

“She did the math,” I said. “On your deterioration rate. In the third year. She tracked the progression and calculated the timeline and-“I met his eyes, “-she couldn’t let you stop her because stopping meant the timeline finished the way the timeline was going to finish.”

The silence in the room was different from the silence in the corridor.

“She never said that to me,” he said.

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Chapter 394

+5 Free Coins

“I know,” I said. “She wouldn’t.”

He was looking at the ointment tin in his hand without seeing it. The look of someone taking in a shape they’d suspected was there and finding it exactly as large as they’d feared.

“How long did she look?” he asked.

“Two years,” I said. “Before she found me. That’s what she said.”

He set the tin down on the table with the care of someone putting something down so their hands could be empty.

“Two years,” he said.

“Tracking the bloodline through records and family lines and old histories,” I said. “Most of the lines had diluted past activation. She followed each one until it thinned out and then followed the next. Until she found the Blackwood pack’s records.”

He was quiet.

“And then someone shot her with a silver bolt tonight,” I said, “and there are apparently more people like the attacker out there. People she made enemies with during the search, who she’s been hiding from everyone since.”

“I know,” he said, and this version of those two words had the weight of someone who had been adding things up all evening and had finally arrived at the full sum.

“She’s going to argue that it’s her problem,” I said. “That she handled it alone before tonight and she’ll handle it alone going forward. She’s going to tell you you have enough to manage without adding her old enemies to the list.”

“She’s going to tell me that,” he agreed.

“And you’re going to-”

“Tell her that I don’t care what she thinks she’s handling alone,” he said, with the quiet certainty of someone who’d had several versions of this conversation with someone over many years and knew exactly how it went. “And that the alone part stopped being an option when she ended up on a stretcher in the lower slopes at eleven at night.”

“She’ll argue that the stretcher was a coincidence,” I said. “That she had it managed until the attacker got through the shield.”

vory’s never had something she’d managed end with her on a stretcher before,” he said. “I’m going to point that out.”

“She’ll say there’s a first time for everything.”

“‘ll say I prefer it be the last time for this specific thing.”

I looked at him. At the expression that had been doing several things all evening and had settled, here in the quiet of the quarters, into something more honest than the managed version. Not the Alpha. Not the man conducting himself under the observation of his pack and the assessment of visiting Alphas and the weight of decisions that affected hundreds of people.

Just Kael. Sitting on a low table with ointment on his hands and the look of someone who’d been frightened tonight in the specific way that happened when the fear was for someone else rather than yourself.

“She’s going to be alright,” I said. “The healer said the artery was peripheral and manageable. She had pressure on it for most of the time. Nina’s people have it.”

“I know,” he said.

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Chapter 394

+5 Free Going

“She also said “I stopped.

He looked at me.

“The attacker,” I said. “Before she escaped. She said the curse was still there. That the root was still intact, that breaking it open didn’t destroy the root. That it would still-“I couldn’t finish the sentence the way the attacker had finished it.

Kael was very still.

“She said it like she knew what she was talking about,” I said. “Like it wasn’t a threat, just a statement of fact.”

“I heard her,” he said. “The wolf was still-I was still partially in the shift. But I heard her.”