Chapter 506
IVORY
Finished
I had forgotten about the fake mustache. had forgotten because the gate situation had bypassed the twenty minutes of preparatory quiet I usually needed to get between leaving one context and entering another, and I’d come straight from a morning that had included things that were significantly more restrained than fake mustaches.
Killian looked at the mustache. Then at Jordan. Then at the mustache again.
“When did you start wearing a beard,” Killian said.
Jordan’s hand wer
His expressio specific hor
mustache
“The-
everal stages. First the not-understanding, then the understanding, then the d been conducting a serious operational situation while still wearing a fake me and had not noticed until someone pointed it out.
He
ed a sound that was also not in any treatment protocol.
an said.
e mustache.
at Killian.
Jordan said.
were wearing-” Killian started.
aid don’t,” Jordan said.
It was quite convincing,” Killian sasi.
“Jordan,” Nina said, with the tone of someone who’d been maintaining significant composure all day and was finding the fake mustache to be the specific thing that was testing it most severely, please put the Inustache somewhere that isn’t your face or your hand. Both options are currently making me unable to conduct a professional interroion”
Jordan put the m
It remained.
ket, like a small furry creature that had found refuge
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Chapter 506-
“Right,” Nina said. “The interrogation.”
Finished
Killian looked around the room. At Kael, who was still looking at him with the flat expression but had moved away from the checking Ivory position to a position that was closer to the neutral-operational than the immediate-threat. At Nina, who had her notebook. At Jordan and the pocket mustache. At Elite, who’d come in at some point without my registering her arrival and was in the corner with the specific quality of someone who’d been briefed and was now conducting her own assessment. At Aria, who was near the door and had the expression of someone reading the room with genuine attention rather than social politeness.
And at me, still in the middle of the treatment space with my hands slightly unsteady from the adrenaline and the partial wolfsbane contact and the wall and the forty-five seconds of lost professionalism.
“Fine,” Killian said. “Ask your questions.”
“We’ll start with the network hierarchy,” Nina said. Her pen was ready. “Everything you know about who runs what and where.”
“You know I was per
“We know what
the facility sug
knows.” She h
said. “And what Aleric told us. We know what the documentation from ow what the person who was in the room with the decision-makers were in the room.”
He was qu
I retur
app
protocol. The fourth compound. The final stage. He needed the full
the conversation, and I needed something to do with my hands that was going to could be professionally satisfied with.
hile I worked. “The weakening you did. I need to understand the mechanism. For the
he said.
verything,” I said. “You know this.”
- Then at the compound I was applying with the specific controlled care I used when I was ething I needed to do correctly and was having feelings about simultaneously.
mpound in the chains,” he said. “I inverted the compound’s directional charge. Wolfsbane applied ally creates a barrier. Wolfsbane with an inverted charge destabilizes from the inside. I’ve been ng modified applications since:-” he stopped.
nce,” I said.
Since I left,” he said. I had time. I studied things.”
“Useful things,” I said.
“Userul things, he co
‘Why Kael sai
of semente
Killian – toward him, but with the distaner
ver him for the remainder of the clinical
9:53 am P
Chapter 506
procedure. “Did you stay with them that long.”
Killian looked at his half brother.
Finished
“Because they came to me,” he said. “When I had nothing and nowhere. They came with an offer and the offer included resources and purpose and a reason to be somewhere rather than nowhere.” He paused. “I took it. And I stayed because leaving looked harder than staying until-”
“Until what,” Kael said.
Until they told me what they were actually trying to do, Killian said. “The full scope of it. Not just the Ivory situation – the root, and what activating it would mean. What Kael would become if it worked.” He looked at his half-brother. “I knew I wasn’t going to cooperate with that.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
“So you betrayed them,”
“I helped Ivory,” Killi
“And then they hy
I left.”
“And then they
agreed.
“And you ca
“And I ca
Ano
C
c kind that had several things in it – the history and the present and all the tween them.
pound and began the closure work. The injury was going to require monitoring t hours, the specific window where the network’s compound could resurge if not was going to have to arrange that monitoring, which meant arrangements with the ith Nina’s security parameters and with Kael about what level of access Killian was while the arrangements were being made
be a significant administrative conversation.
have it after I finished the treatment, in the professional voice, with the clinical framing that ng manageable.
mentation,” I said to Nina, without looking up from the closure work, “needs to note that the is provisional pending forty-eight-hour monitoring. He can’t be moved to a standard holding aring that window. The compound requires climate-controlled conditions and access to the third he secondary storage.”
rrange for the secondary clinic to remain in use,” Nina said.
d someone qualified to mon
Fargo, Nina said.
guard.”
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Chapter 506-
“Margo,” I agreed.
“I’ll be right here,” Kael said.
I stopped working. Looked at him.
“No you won’t,” I said.
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Finished
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Mated To My Mate’s Worst Enemy
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.