Chapter 568

KAEL

My wolf had been narrating my exhaustion for the better part of an hour.

First

Not helpfully. Khris – the name had arrived sometime during the integration, the wolf deciding that if we were going to be one thing we might as well have a way to distinguish the commentary – had been providing a running account of every muscle that was tired, every hour since the last adequate sleep, every decision I’d made in the past week that had contributed to the current state of comprehensive physical depletion.

*The shoulders,* Khris said. *And the left knee. The left knee has opinions.*

*I know about the left knee,* I said.

*The left knee has had opinions since Tuesday,* Khris said. *You’ve been ignoring them.*

*I’ve been busy,* I said.

*Too busy for your own knee,* Khris said. *This is the life we’ve built.*

I pulled a clean shirt from the wardrobe and changed with the efficiency of someone who didn’t have the bandwidth for anything that took longer than necessary. The quarters were quiet – Aria’s things were on her side of the room in the specific organized arrangement she maintained, the small evidence of someone who’d learned to occupy space carefully, who’d arrived here with nothing and had been building a presence incrementally. Her jacket on the hook. Her boots by the door. The book on her nightstand that she’d been working through for two weeks, the bookmark about two-thirds in.

I grabbed my things for the den.

*The den floor is not better for the knee,* Khris said.

*The den floor is fine,* I said.

*You’re twenty-four,* Khris said. “You sleep on floors like an old man and call it wolf preference.*

*It is wolf preference,* I said.

*It is avoidance, Khris said. *The bed is fine. The bed is very good, actually. I remember the bed.

*Khris,” I said.

*I’m just noting,” he said. “The bed exists and we have been choosing the floor for six months and it is a choice, not a preference.*

I was about to respond when the door opened.

Aria came in.

1:40 pm

Chapter 568

Finished

She stopped when she saw me. I stopped when I saw her – not because her presence was unexpected, she lived here, but because of the specific quality of her expression, which was the one she wore when she’d been working up to something and had arrived at the moment and was going to do it regardless of the timing.

“Kael,” she said. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”

I looked at her. Looked at the bag in my hand, Looked at the hour.

“Is something wrong,” I said. “Are you dying?”

She blinked.

“No,” she said. “Why do you always ask that when I want to bring something up?”

–

“Because it sounds ominous,” I said, “and I have a team that treats life and death as a jump rope. But — are the runes doing something they shouldn’t? If you don’t want to fight, we can change the plan-”

“I’m fighting,” she said. “That’s not-” She stopped. Looked at me with the directness that she’d been developing since the book club, the specific willingness to be clear that she hadn’t had when she first arrived. “I want to talk about us.”

I processed this.

“Us,” I said. “As in U, S. You and I. Feelings.”

“Yes,” she said.

*Oh,* Khris said.

*I know,* I said.

–

*What does she mean specifically,* Khris said. *There are several possible directions.*

“I don’t know yet,* I said.

“Ask her,* Khris said.

‘Okay,” I said, to Aria. “What did I do? Did I disrespect something, or talk you down about the plan, or-

“No,” she said. “You haven’t.” She looked at the wall briefly. The look of someone organizing themselves. “What do you feel for me?”

I looked at her.

“Well, Khris said.

I heard it, I said.

“What’s the answer,” Khris said.

“I’m working on it, 1 said.

1:40 pm

pp

Chapter 568-

Finished

The problem with the question was not that I didn’t have an answer. The problem was that the answer I had wasn’t organized in the specific way the question seemed to be requesting, and I was aware that delivering a disorganized answer to a question someone had clearly been building toward for a significant amount of time was not the move.

“I care for you,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Just care?” she said.

“I worry,” I said. “Consistently. The border battle – when you held the shield and I couldn’t-” I stopped. “I worry.”

“Do you love me?” she said.

“Of course I do,” I said. “You’re my fated mate-”

“I don’t think you do,” she said.

The sentence landed in the room and stayed there.

“You’re in love with Ivory,” she said.

*Oh,* Khris said, differently from before.

“What,” I said.

“I said what I said,” she said. “I watched you for nine months. I know what I saw.”

“I said I was choosing you,” I said. “At the book club. I said it directly and I meant it. I haven’t done anything-”

“That’s the point,” she said, and her voice was very steady, the specific steadiness of someone who’d rehearsed this enough times that the emotion was under the words rather than in them. “You chose me. You didn’t want me. You haven’t touched me since the Ghost Hunt. You sleep in the den.”

“I sleep as a wolf,” I said. “Khris prefers-”

“Don’t bring me into this,* Khris said.

–

“The point,” Aria said, cutting through whatever I’d been about to add, “is that I feel neglected. I’m in your cle. I see how you are with the pack, with the team, I understand who you are. The team accepted

But you’re my mate, and for nine months your eyes have been on someone else.”

ked at her.

Jie’s not wrong. Khris said.

Khris,” I said.

*I’m stating facts, Khris said. “She’s not wrong. The eyes situation is documented. *