Chapter 532
KAEL
“And then you helped Ivory,” I said.
“And then I helped Ivory,” he said. “Which got me hunted. Which led me here.” A pause. “I know how it looks. Showing up after so long. Expecting-”
“I’m not going to kick you out,” I said. “That’s not-I’m not kicking you out while you’re being hunted by people my pack is already dealing with.” I paused. “What happens after the immediate threat is resolved is a different conversation. But right now, you’re here and you’re under Aria’s protection and the threat is still active and you’re not leaving.”
He looked at me with the expression of someone receiving something they’d stopped expecting.
“She’s good,” he said. “Aria.”
“Yes,” I said.
“She didn’t know me,” he said. “Had no reason to-”
“She has good instincts,” I said.
He nodded.
I looked at him. At the exiled years visible in his face, the specific accumulation of that time in the way time accumulated in people who’d been carrying something heavy. He looked like me in the way that distant relatives sometimes looked like each other – the same raw materials arranged differently, the same foundation producing different walls.
My father’s face. My mother’s eyes.
His mother’s way of holding his shoulders.
The wolf, inside, said: *He needed a win.*
“The interrogation,” I said. “The one Jordan conducted. He said you were cooperative.”
“I told them everything I knew,” Killian said.
“Including the casting structure,” I said.
“Everything.” he said.
“That helped us,” I said. “Understanding the mechanism – Ivory needed the specific details of what they were doing to map the full moon window. You gave her those details.”
“It was the least I could do,” he said.
“It was more than that,” I said. “It was actionable. It moved the investigation forward.”
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Chapter 532
+5 Pestis
He looked at me.
You’re telling me I was useful,” he said.
“I’m telling you what you did mattered,” I said. “The distinction is relevant.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“The pack,” he said. “The butcher.”
“The butcher has opinions,” I said. “The butcher also has the right to his opinions. What he does with them in terms of actual actions is the concern.”
“He made the neck gesture,” Killian said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m aware of the neck gesture. I’m addressing it.”
“Martha stared at me,” Killian said.
“Martha stares at everyone she has feelings about,” I said. “The stare is actually a form of engagement rather than avoidance.”
“That’s a generous interpretation,” Killian said.
“It’s accurate,” I said.
He looked at the window again. At the garden.
“I noticed,” I said, “that you’ve been in the secondary section of the eastern garden.”
He turned back.
“The companion planting,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“It did the thing,” he said.
“The warmth recognition,” I said.
“It stayed for four minutes,” he said.
Jordan’s was three and a half,” I said.
–
Something happened in his expression. Not a smile or not just a smile. The specific look of someone who’d been given a small piece of something ordinary and was registering that it was the kind of thing they hadn’t expected to be given.
“Ivory’s garden,” he said.
“She built it over years.” I said. “It knows the people who spend time in it.”
Tim not someone who’s supposed to be here,” he said.
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Chapter 532
“The garden doesn’t seem to agree,” I said.
He looked at the window for a long moment.
“I also noticed,” I said, which was where I was going to be careful, where I was going to say the thing I’d noticed and not the thing I understood about what I’d noticed, “that when Ivory came to do the monitoring check, you stayed in the room. And that when she left, you were quieter than usual. In the way that people are quieter after something they were waiting for happened.”
He was very still.
“I don’t know anything about that situation,” I said. “I don’t know what exists between you and Ivory and I’m not asking. That’s not my- that’s hers to say or not say. But I noticed.”
“Kael,” he said.
“I’m not saying anything else about it,” I said. “I’m just telling you I noticed.”
He looked at me with the fifteen years in his face and the loneliness the wolf had named and something underneath both of those that was the small beginning of something neither of us knew how to characterize yet.
“Thank you,” he said.
“The butcher will come around. I said. “Rosa will make her accounting and she’ll find it acceptable eventually. Martha
“Martha will stare indefinitely,” Killian said.
“Martha has been staring at Morrison for twelve years,” I said. “It’s her primary mode of communication for people she hasn’t forgiven. Consider it engagement.”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Not quite. But adjacent to it.
“The pack never gave up on you,” I said. “Even in the hardest part of the curse years, even when there were reasons to. That’s what they do here.” I looked at him steadily. “I’m not saying you’ve earned your way in. I’m saying the door isn’t permanently closed. There’s a difference.”
“A meaningful difference,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
I moved to leave.
“Kael,” he said.
I stopped.
“She didn’t have to say yes,” he said. “Aria. She didn’t have to put herself between me and the pack. She didn’t have to name me as under her protection.”
“No.” I said. “She didn’t.”
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Chapter 532
“She’s the reason I’m not dead,” he said.
ure the reason Ivory isn’t,” I said. “The accounting is complicated.”
He nodded.
“I put you through a gate wall,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“I’m not apologizing for it,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“But,” I said, and this part was what the wolf had been building toward, the thing I’d been carrying for twelve years and was finally setting down, “it was complete. The gate wall was the thing I needed it to be. And carrying it further-“I stopped. “My pack never gave up on me. Even when giving up was the reasonable thing to do.”
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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.