Chapter 574

The specific sequence of Killian

–

Ivory

fated mate- and everything that followed from that, the

chain of implications that unspooled in the few seconds after the sentence landed.

“Ivory,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Your fated mate is Ivory,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And she-” I started.

“Doesn’t feel it,” he said. “The pack’s wolf infrastructure is broken. She can’t feel the bond the way she would if Shadowmere’s link was intact. But she knows.” He paused. “She was told during the captivity. Before Kael came to get her.”

I thought about the captivity. About what Ivory had been through in that facility before Kael’s team had arrived. About the specific information that had been delivered to her in that context.

“She knows,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Does she-” I stopped. Reconfigured. “Does Kael know.”

Killian looked at me with the expression of someone who’d considered this question extensively.

“No,” he said.

“He’d-” I started.

1

“He’d rip my head off,” Killian said, with the flatness of someone stating a fact they’d arrived at through careful analysis. “He barely allowed me into his pack. The conversation we had – I know what it cost him. I know where we are. And telling him that the universe decided I’m fated to the person he’s been in love with for twelve years-” he paused “The timing is not right for that conversation.”

“Does Ivory-” I tried again.

“Love me?” he said. “No.” He said it without bitterness. The specific evenness of someone who’d accepted a thing fully and was no longer in the phase of fighting the acceptance. “She doesn’t dislike me. She’s been fair. She’s been-” he paused, “-more than fair, given everything. But she doesn’t love me. She loves Kael. She’s loved Kael since they were sixteen and she spent four years arranging a solution to a curse that was killing him and she gave him up to do it.”

“And now she can’t have him.” I said.

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Chapter 574-

*Finished

“And now she can’t have him,” he said. “Because he’s bonded to you. Because she arranged it that way.” He looked at the nightbloom “And I’m fated to someone who is in love with someone who is bonded to someone else. And you’re bonded to someone who is in love with the person fated to me.” He paused. “The moon goddess has a very specific sense of humor.”

I stood on the path and felt the specific weight of all four of us, the constellation of it, the interlocking complications.

“She’s not trying to take him from you,” Killian said. “Ivory isn’t-that’s not what she’s doing. She gave him up. She meant it.”

“I know,” I said.

“She just―” he stopped.

“She’s just there,” I said. “She’s just exactly who she is, right there, and she’s not doing anything wrong and neither is he, and it would be so much simpler if someone was doing something wrong.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I could be furious,” I said. “If someone was cheating, if someone was lying, if there was a clear thing to point at. But there isn’t.” I looked at the night. “There’s just two people who love each other and a bond that exists and a history that doesn’t disappear because the future changed.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

We stood there for a moment. Two people on a path in the dark, holding the specific complicated weight of loving people who were oriented somewhere else,

“You’re not alone in it,* Silver said.

I know, I said.

That’s something,* she said.

It’s something, I said.

The voices reached us before they came around the bend in the path.

Nina’s voice first -the specific register she used when she was making a point and was prepared to make t repeatedly until it was acknowledged. Then Jordan’s, the dry defensive tone he used when Nina was making a point he technically agreed with but wasn’t going to concede without appropriate resistance.

-not saying it’s unreasonable in principle,” Jordan was saying. “I’m saying that the specific implementation-

The implementation, Nina said. “is perfectly practical-”

Sleeping with a wolfsbane gun-

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Chapter 574*

“Getting there-”

* Finishe

used to the weight of it,” Nina said. “So that in an active situation the muscle memory is already

“The muscle memory for what, Jordan said. “For turning over at three in the morning and shooting me-

“I have better aim than that-”

“While asleep-”

“I don’t shoot in my sleep-”

“You’ve never had a gun in your bed before,” Jordan said. “We don’t have baseline data.”

“If you’re that concerned,” Nina said, “you can sleep on the couch.”

“My choices are share a bed with a wolfsbane firearm or sleep on the couch,” Jordan said.

“Yes,” Nina said.

“Those are my options,” Jordan said.

“Those are your options,” Nina confirmed.

They came around the bend and saw us.

The argument stopped.

Nina and Jordan stood on the path approximately eight feet away, looking at me and Killian standing close together in the nightbloom’s light, and their expressions went through a sequence that I recognized as the inner circle’s specific response to walking into a scene they were choosing to interpret.

“Oh,” Nina said.

“Hello,” Jordan said.

The tone of both words was doing considerable work.

“What do we have here,” Nina said, and the warmth in her voice had the specific quality it got when she’d found something she was going to enjoy for an extended period. “The Luna and Kael’s brother. In the dark. On the path.”

“We were talking,” Killian said.

“Talking,” Jordan said.

“Just talking,” Killian said.

“You’re very close together for just talking,” Jordan said.

“We were on the same path.” Killian said. “Paths are narrow.”

“This path is eight feet wide, Jordan said.

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Chapter 574

“I wasn’t measuring,” Killian said.

“I was,” Jordan said.

“We were talking,” I said. “That’s what was happening.”

Finished

“Of course,” Nina said, with the serenity of someone who had arrived at a conclusion and was not moving from it regardless of what was said. She tilted her head. “Is anyone dying? Injured? In need of immediate medical attention?”

“Why do you all lead with that,” I said.