Chapter 571
KAEL
Finished
Then what happened,” she said. She was already sitting up straighter, the pen coming out of her mouth, the clinical assessment running. “You have the expression.”
“What expression,” I said.
“The one you have when you need to say something and you don’t know how to start,” she said. “I’ve been seeing that expression for twelve years. Sit down.”
I sat down.
The chair across the desk from her. The one patients sat in. I’d sat in it before – during the curse years, in the early period when I was still trying to hold things together enough to be present for the briefings Ivory ran from the clinic, when sitting down had been easier than standing because standing required more of me than I had available.
She looked at me and waited.
This was the thing about Ivory. She waited. Most people filled silences – offered starting points, asked follow-up questions, made the beginning easier. Ivory waited, because she understood that the beginning wasn’t where the difficulty was. The difficulty was in knowing that once you started, the thing was real.
“How are you,” I said.
“You came at eleven at night to ask how I am,” she said.
said.
“I came to talk,” I said.
“About,” she said.
“Us,” I said.
She was quiet.
Not surprised
7
Ivory was rarely surprised, she was too good at reading what was coming. But the quiet had a different quality from the one she used when she was waiting for me to start. This quiet was the one she used when something had arrived that she’d been expecting and wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for
“Yeah,” she said, finally. “I guess.”
I looked at the structural maps on the desk.
“You’ve been in here every night,” I said. “For three weeks.”
“The root architecture is complex,” she said.
“I know.” I said, “You’ve explained the complexity. What I’m asking is whether the complexity is actually
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Chapter 574-
what’s keeping you in here every night.”
She held my gaze.
“What else would it be,” she said.
“Ivory,” I said.
She looked at the maps.
“I’m working on the removal,” she said. “The full removal mechanism. It requires-”
“You gave me up,” I said.
Finishe
The words arrived the way words arrived when you’d been carrying them long enough that they’d worn a groove — they came out smoothly, without the roughness of something being said for the first time. I’d been carrying this one for nine months and the groove was very established.
She was very still.
“You spent four years finding the solution,” I said. “You found Aria. You arranged it. You knew what it meant – for the bond, for the mate connection, for-“I stopped. “You knew what you were doing.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You never told me,” I said.
“You would have said no,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I would have.”
“And you would have died,” she said. “The curse was going to kill you. The timeline-Kael, the timeline of the deterioration was four months from when Aria arrived. Without the bond break, without the moon child bloodline interrupting the root’s progress, you had four months.”
*I didn’t know it was that close,* Khris said, quietly.
*Neither did I.* I said.
“You knew exactly how long I had,” I said.
“I was tracking it,” she said. “The clinical markers. I’d been tracking them for two years by the time I wrote the letter to Margaret. She looked at the maps. “I knew what the bond breaking would mean. I’d known for years. The specific cost of it.” She paused. “I decided the cost was acceptable,”
“You decided for both of us,” I said.
I decided for the part that was mine to decide,” she said. “You didn’t know the timeline. You were you were still fighting it, you were still telling everyone you were fine, you were still refusing to let the deterioranon be what it was. Her voice was very even. “If I’d told you, you would have refused the solution. And you would have been dead in four months.”
And you decided you were willing to live with that,” I said. “With giving it up.”
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Chapter 524-
Finished
“Yes,” she said.
“Because the alternative was me dying,” I said.
“Because the alternative was you dying,” she said. “And the pack losing their Alpha. And the curse winning.” She looked at me directly.”I wasn’t willing to let the curse win.”
The clinic was very quiet.
“The past nine months,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, before I’d finished the sentence.
“I should have-” I started.
“You’ve been integrating,” she said. “And rebuilding. And learning what the bond actually is versus what you thought fated bonds were. And managing the pack through a war and a kidnapping and an elder council crisis and a border battle.” She paused. “I didn’t expect-”
“What,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment.
“I didn’t expect it to still be there,” she said. “After nine months. I thought-I knew the bond would change things. I thought the bond would-” she stopped. “I thought it would be cleaner than this. That the bond would settle things.”
“It didn’t settle things,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Because what we had,” I said, “isn’t something that settles.”