Chapter 430
Eight months of Shadowmere. Eight months of mobile phones and walkie-talkies and nobody casually shifting and the training yard having specific concrete reinforcements. Eight months of Amber’s wink and Martha’s kitchen and Margo appearing from nowhere with documentation and Elite’s efficiency benchpressing and the rope in the cabinet.
All of it built on top of a pack that had been, for three years, protecting itself and its Alpha while an Alpha’s wolf deteriorated in a. locked den broadcasting violence through a connection they’d ultimately had to sever.
“The mindlink being broken,” I said. “It’s still broken.”
“Yes,” Nina said.
“And the wolf,” I said. “Kael’s wolf. The two entities still aren’t fully integrated.”
“The bond helped,” Jordan said. “When you bonded with Kael and broke the curse – the two of them came closer together. The human and the wolf. But closer isn’t complete. The integration is ongoing. The wolf is more stable than it was during the curse. But
“But with Ivory gone,” I said.
They both went quiet.
“The wolf remembers what Ivory meant to him during the curse years,” Nina said carefully. “When the human consciousness was barely present, when everything was deteriorating, Ivory was the consistent point. The wolf recognized her. Accepted her. She was the one thing the wolf protected rather than threatened.” She looked at the door. “With her gone – taken by people the wolf registered as threat last night on the lower slope-”
“The deterioration,” I said.
“Not the curse,” Jordan said quickly. “The curse is broken. This isn’t the curse returning. But the wolf’s response to significant threat or loss when the integration is already incomplete-”
From inside the office, a sound.
Not voices. Not the sound of someone moving around. The sound of something hitting the wall from the inside — not the deliberate controlled impact of Kael putting holes in training concrete. The involuntary sound of something contained in a space that was becoming too small for it.
Nina was on her feet before I’d processed the sound, her hand going to the door. Not to open it- she pressed her palm flat against it and said his name through the wood.
“Kael.”
The sound from inside changed.
“Kael. It’s Nina. I’m here.” Her voice was the older one – not the security chief, the person who’d grown up in the same trouble with the same people and was still here twenty years later. “I’m right outside. Jordan’s here. We’re not going anywhere.”
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Chapter 430
Another sound from inside. Then quiet.
Then the specific quality of something pulled back from an edge.
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“The wolf,” I said quietly to Jordan while Nina kept her hand on the door. “He said on the lower slope – when the wolf went to Ivory in the clinic, he said the wolf’s older attachments lead in threat response.”
“Yes,” Jordan said.
“And right now the threat is Ivory being gone,” I said.
“Yes,” Jordan said.
“And the wolf’s response to that is-”
“Looking for what he’s lost,” Jordan said. “In the way the wolf knows how to look, which is not the same way the man looks.” He held my gaze. “If the wolf takes control right now and forces the shift, we don’t have a mindlink to contain the communication. We don’t have the integration to bring him back easily. And the wolf in full threat response looking for Ivory-”
“Can’t tell friend from enemy,” I said.
“Can barely tell person from obstacle,” Jordan said. “During the curse years at the worst, the wolf didn’t recognize Nina. Didn’t recognize any of us. Ivory was the only one it consistently recognized. And now she’s-”
The sound from inside the office came again. Louder.
The door shuddered. Not from a punch-from something pressing against it from the inside. The sustained pressure of something that was running out of patience with being contained.
Nina had both hands on the door now. “Kael. Stay with me. Stay with yourself. I know where you are, I know what you’re feeling, stay with me.”
“Does he hear her,” I said to Jordan.
“He does,” Jordan said. “The man does. Whether the man is winning the conversation with the wolf right now-” he looked at the door.
I stood up.
Nina looked at me. The sharp look.
“You said call for Kael not his wolf,” I said. “Ivory told me that on the lower slope. She said they weren’t the same. She said the wolf responds to different things.”
“Aria-”
“She said the wolf went to Ivory first because of older attachments,” I said. “The wolf doesn’t know me yet. But Ivory told me to call for Kael. Not his wolf. And it worked on the lower slope.”
“That was through the bond,” Jordan said. “Direct connection. This is-”
“Still through the bond,” I said. “The bond hasn’t changed.”
I stepped up to the door beside Nina.
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She looked at me for a moment. Then she moved aside.
I put my hand on the door. Wood, solid, warm from where Nina’s hands had been. The anchor was present in my chest, warm and steady. The bond ran from that center outward.
Not toward Ivory – I’d been reaching toward her for thirty minutes in the east courtyard and finding nothing. In the other direction. The direction that had received my signal on the lower slope and had sent a wolf down a hillside in response.
“Kael,” I said.
Not loudly. Not with the authority I’d been developing for Luna situations- the backbone that Ivory had told me to find, the voice that had the anchor in it. Something different. Something that was just me talking to the person I was connected to through a bond we hadn’t chosen and had been building toward slowly in all the ways that mattered.
“Kael. It’s me. I’m right here.”
The pressure against the door didn’t stop immediately.
“I know where she is,” I said, which wasn’t true and was the most important thing I could say. “We’re going to find her. Elite has two hours. We’re going to know where she is and we’re going to go get her.” I pressed my palm flat against the door the way Nina had. “But I need you here. Not the wolf. You. Kael. I need the person who negotiated thirty-five hours and came down to forty-five because he knew how she negotiated.”