Chapter 528
KILLIAN
“Cautious about me specifically,” I said.
Finished
“About what you carry,” she said. “The wolf. The rogue status. The specific quality of someone who’s been separated from a pack for a long time and hasn’t fully settled into anything else.” She looked at the compound I’d collected. “The correct amount?”
“The instructions were specific,” I said.
“They were,” she said.
We stood in the garden with the plants between us and everything else between us and the vine doing its cautious thing.
“Why did you come,” I said.
“I check the garden daily,” she said.
“You knew I was going to be here,” I said. “The instructions you gave me, the time you gave
them to me
you knew when I’d be here.”
–
She didn’t say anything to this.
“Ivory,” I said.
“I wanted to see,” she said, with the specific quality of someone who’d decided the honest version was worth the discomfort, “if the companion planting’s response would tell me anything.”
“And did it,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“What did it tell you,” I said.
She looked at the vine. “That you’re not settled,” she said. “That you’ve been unsettled for a long time. And that the unsettled thing is looking for something to organize around and hasn’t found it yet.”
“It told you all of that ” said “From retracting.”
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“I’ve been working with plants that read energy signatures for years,” she said. “I know what the retraction means.”
My wolf had gone very still. The specific still of an animal that has found something it recognizes and is trying not to spook it.
“The fated bond,” I said. “You knew… before i told you in the basement.”
“I’ve known for some time,” she said. “The research into bloodlines and bonds I’ve been tracking fated bond mechanics for years. My own situation is in the documentation somewhere whether I chose to put it there or not.”
“When did you realize it.” I said.
“When you showed responded to cert
basement,” she said. “I had suspicions before. The way you But the basement confirmed it.”
“The basemen
“A fated ma
was mana
response
gave yo
with the clinical voice she used for things that were personal and she onal-ness of through the clinical, “experiences specific physical danger. The way you responded when Vela pushed the issue – when she that was consistent with a fated response, not a calculated one.”
said.
“Which is why you’re here and not there.” She looked at the compound in my th the morning meal. Not the evening one. The evening interaction with the compounds creates a—”
sking you for anything,” I said. “I know the situation. I know where you are. I know feel and what you don’t feel and what you’ve been through.” I held her
gaze with the effort of someone who’d been working on being honest in situations where dishonesty ier. “I know that I’m the last person you were expecting this from and the worst possible and the most complicated version of complicated.”
vas quiet.
not asking you to fix
watching this pa
tside happe
- I don’
ve wa
stopped. Found the real version. “I’ve
nd I know that I had a part in how aused. “I don’t know how to make that I came here because the
e only place I’ve ever thought of as home even
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Chapter 528
when I was banned from it.”
The garden was quiet.
“That’s not a claim,” I said. “It’s just the truth.”
Finished
Ivory looked at the vine. At the garden she’d built. At the secondary section with its specific cultivated magic.
The pack isn’t going to make this easy,” she said.
know,” I said. “Martha has a specific look.”
“Martha’s look is considered mild by her standards,” Ivory said.
“The butcher used his
said.
“That’s also mild,”
he’d used his hau
“I don’t want
e uses the knife gesture for people he’s reserving judgment on. If
“No,” she s
She tu
idn’t turn around.
- “Will it-” I stopped. “Never mind.”
ound.
n to you,” she said. “That’s what you were going to ask.”
ked at the vine. At me. At the vine again.
ends,” she said. “On what you do with the unsettled thing. Whether it finds something to
ize around.” She paused.
ntend. What you are.”
hat am I,” I said
ly,” she s
to what’s real. Not what you say. Not what
pe a basement and came here
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Chapter 528
Finished
because there was nowhere else to go, and is trying to be decent in a situation that has very few decent options.” She met my eyes. “That’s not nothing. It’s also not enough. But it’s not nothing.”
She left.
My wolf made a sound.
Not the pathetic sound from earlier. Something else. Something that was quieter and had been waiting to say something true.
I look at the vine.
The
as still retracted.
ery end of the closest tendril, barely visible, just at the tip of it —
est movement. Not toward me. Just a small, cautious, entirely non-committal nt that was not away from me either.
f noticed it.
ced it.
In’t say anything. I took the compound and left the garden the way I’d come in and went k to the secondary clinic guest space that Nina had arranged with the specific efficiency of meone who’d made a decision and was executing it completely while expressing no warmth out the decision whatsoever.
he room was functional.
The pack was not friendly.
The butcher had opinions.
Martha had made the food and the food was good and I’d eaten it and nothing had happened, which was apparently the specific version of welcome available to me.
And in the botanical garden, a vine that had retracted from me had made the smallest possible movement that was not quite the opposite of retraction.
It wasn’t nothing.
My wolf had decided i
was choosing to
Ngl, i d
pitiful and emotional.
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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.