Chapter 483
JORDAN
I looked at her.
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“Until someone else does,” she said. “Which will be Ivory. Who will probably remember before us even with everything she’s been through because Ivory’s memory retention is-”
“Infuriating,” I said.
“Comprehensive,” Nina said. “Ivory will remember the bunker. She’ll brief Kael. She’ll handle the specific conversation about the enhancements. And we won’t be the ones who have to say to our Alpha: in the midst of apologizing to your mate for not giving her the full picture, using the bunker as your example, you were accidentally missing the piece where the bunker is specifically designed to hurt her.”
I thought about this.
I thought about Kael’s face in the garden this morning. The conversation he’d had with Aria. The specific quality of a man who’d put something down and was working toward something
better.
I thought about the cracked mahogany table.
“Ivory,” I said.
“Ivory,” Nina confirmed.
“Will remember,” I said.
“Before us,” Nina confirmed.
“And she’ll handle it,” I said.
“She’ll handle it,” Nina said.
“Better than we would,” I said.
“With documentation,” Nina said. “And a color tab. And the clinical voice that makes everything land with exactly the right weight without anyone losing their hands.”
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“The hands situation,” I said.
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“Kael’s hands have been significantly active this week,” Nina said.
“He put them through a mahogany table,” I said. “In the council room.”
“In front of Morrison,” Nina said.
“Morrison’s face,” I said.
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The laugh came back. Not the helpless variety this time — the quieter one, the version that arrived after the bigger laugh had moved through and left something warmer behind it.
“We’re letting Ivory handle it,” I said.
“We’re letting Ivory handle it,” Nina confirmed.
“And if she asks-”
“We were swamped,” Nina said. “With calamities. Since the curse was broken. Literally every week there was something.” She counted on her fingers. “Almost execution. Damon and his crew. Ghost Council. Ghost Hunt. House arrest. The slope. Powers awakening. Failed integration. Another Damon situation. Ivory kidnapping. The attack. In that sequence, when exactly should the bunker conversation have come up?”
“Oh we have this bunker,” I said, in the tone of a person rehearsing something, “that we built to contain Kael if his wolf got out during the worst of the curse, but you’re his mate now so the wolf-containment function is technically obsolete, however we enhanced it with moon- adjacent power signature triggers because of the original curse caster, so actually it would hurt you specifically, you should probably know that.”
Nina looked at me. “We should have said that sentence on day one.”
“We should have said that sentence on day one,” I agreed.
“We didn’t,” she said.
“We didn’t,” I agreed.
“Because we were treating her like she might not stay,” she said.
“And then nine months went by,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment.
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“She stayed,” Nina said.
“She held the northern border,” I said.
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“With thirty wolves and a bloodline link she’d never tested,” she said. “Against one hundred fifty wolves and six witches and Damon.” A pause. “And then sat in the elder council meeting and didn’t back down from Morrison.”
“And got Kael to actually apologize,” I said.
“Which nobody thought was possible,” Nina said. “I’ve been trying to get Kael to have that specific conversation for eight months. Aria did it in a garden by sitting next to him without saying anything for thirty seconds.”
“The thirty seconds are doing some work,” I said.
“She’s very patient,” Nina said. “When she wants to be. She wasn’t always. But she learned it here.”
I thought about that. About Aria in the first months — the specific fragility of someone who felt everything directly and hadn’t yet learned how to sit with the feeling before responding. The way the pack grounds had changed her incrementally, or more accurately the way she’d changed herself incrementally, using the pack grounds and Ivory’s training and the bond and all of it as the material.
She was different now from the person who’d arrived.
So was Kael.
“We should probably tell someone about the bunker,” I said.
“Ivory,” Nina said.
“Yes,” I said. “But soon.”
“When she’s not on emergency compound,” Nina said.
“When her wrist has healed properly,” I said.
“When she’s had at least one full night of real sleep,” Nina said.
“Which,” I said, “given that it’s Ivory-”
“Could be a while,” Nina said.
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“So in the interim,” I said.
“Nobody mentions the bunker,” Nina said.
“Nobody goes near the bunker,” I said.
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“Which they won’t,” Nina said. “Because nobody goes near the bunker. It’s a secure facility. It’s not a place people wander into.”
“Aria doesn’t know where it is,” I said.
“Aria doesn’t know it’s a problem,” Nina said.
“Right,” I said.
“So the risk is,” Nina said, “essentially theoretical for the next-”
“However long it takes Ivory to remember,” I said.
“Yes,” Nina said.
“And Ivory,” I said, “is going to remember.”
“Before us,” Nina said.
“Significantly before us,” I said. “Because she designed the system and she’s Ivory and she probably has a mental accounting thread that’s already running.”
“The thread is probably at the bunker already,” Nina said. “She’s just been distracted by the kidnapping recovery and the documentation and the runes on Aria’s hands.”
“The runes are going to keep her distracted,” I said.
“For a while,” Nina said.
“We have a window,” I said.
“We have a window,” she confirmed.
We looked at each other.
“This is devious,” Nina said.
“It’s practical,” I said.
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“Jordan,” she said.
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“I don’t want to be the person who tells Kael that we accidentally built something that would hurt Aria and then forgot about it during the apology conversation where he used the bunker as an example of not giving her the full picture.” I held her gaze. “I am not that person. I refuse to be that person.”
“You’re absolutely that person,” Nina said.
“I’m choosing not to be,” I said.
“That’s not how it works,” she said. 2