Chapter 589

Nia had been waiting for three years.

I knew this the moment she arrived

the specific quality of her coming back, not gentle, no tentative, by the full force of something that had been compressed for a very long time and was now expanding into every available space simultaneously. She didn’t ease back into existence. She arrived.

*MATE.* she said, immediately and with complete certainty.

“I know, I said.

*MATE,” she said again, louder, in case I’d missed it the first time.

*Nia. I said.

*WHERE,” she said.

*Right there,” I said. The grey wolf. That’s Jordan.*

*MATE.* she said, for the third time, with the specific quality of someone who’d been given one piece of information and was not moving past it until it had been fully processed.

“I know.” I said. “We’ve been together for years. You know Jordan.*

*I know Jay,” she said, because Nia had apparently decided that Jordan’s wolf name was Jay and she was going to use it without negotiating. *Jay is my mate. Hi Jay. Why is he over there. He should be here. Why isn’t he here yet.”

*He’s coming. I said.

*He should be faster,* she said.

Jay came from the left, moving through the clearing with the specific grey–wolf efficiency that was entirely Jordan – not the fastest wolf in the clearing, not the biggest, but moving with the particular purposeful quality of something that knew exactly where it was going and had already calculated the optimal path

there.

He saw us.

He pounced.

This was not something Jordan did in human form. Jordan in human form was precise and controlled and moved through spaces with the considered deliberation of someone whose instinct was to assess before acting. Jordan’s wolf, apparently, had different opinions about appropriate response times when his mate was visible and within range.

He hit me at full speed.

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We went down together the specific full–body impact of two wolves meeting at velocity, the rolling

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tumble of it, grass and morning light and Nia’s complete delight flooding through every channel I had as we

opted out which way was up.

Jay had me pinned.

His paws on either side of my head, his weight over mine, his wolf eyes looking at me with the expression that was entirely his – the dry intelligence of it, the specific wätinth underneath the dry intelligence that he usually kept for private moments and was apparently not keeping private now.

*For someone in charge of security,* Jay said, through the link, *you are very easy to pin down.*

*Don’t push your luck, nerd, Nia said back, through me, at a volume that carried to everyone within link range, which was most of the clearing. “It was once. I was feeling gracious.*

*Hi,* Jay said. “I’ve missed you.*

The words arrived in the specific way things arrived when they were true without management – the specific quality of Jordan saying something he meant completely, in a form that couldn’t perform it, the wolf’s complete inability to manage the emotional register the way the human layer could.

Nia went warm all through me.

*I’ve missed you too,” she said. “Come on. Let’s run. I’m faster.*

“You’re not faster,* Jay said.

*I am absolutely faster,” she said.

*You were faster when we were nineteen,” he said. “I’ve been training.

“In the den. she said. “In human form. My four legs against your four legs. r now, let’s go.*

I scrambled out from under him.

He let me scramble because he was Jay and he understood the difference between a pin that was a point and a pin that was a cage, and was very good at the first and had never been the second.

*Go, he said.

I ran.

The clearing was extraordinary.

I’d been in these woods hundreds of times – thousands, probably, if you counted the years of the pack’s ordinary life before the curse and the years after. I knew every path and every root system and the specific smell of the eastern section where the nightbloom’s root network extended underground and made the earth slightly different beneath your feet.

I’d never run them as Nia in three years.

The sensation of it was I didn’t have adequate words for it, which was unusual for me, I tended to have

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Chapter 589

words for most things. The specific combination of four legs and the ground and the air and the link alive t a way it hadn’t been alive, the warmth of everyone around me through the connection, the pack visible as a

stellation of presences that were simultaneously physical bodies I could see and link–warmth I could fee an it was more than the sum of those two things, it was complete, the word that arrived was complete. in the specific way that something was complete when all its pieces were present.

Jay came up behind me.

*You’re slower,” he said.

*I was looking at the pack, I said.

*Sure,” he said.

*I was, I said.

*I’m also looking at the pack, he said. “And I’m still faster.”

“You’ve been practicing, I said.

*I told you I’d been practicing,” he said.

“In human form. I said. *That doesn’t-*

He went past me.

Nia made a sound that was extremely uncharacteristic and I let her make it because she’d earned it and also because it made Jay’s wolf’s tail do the thing that was the wolf equivalent of laughing.

We ran through the crowd of wolves – the ones who called out as we passed, the pack members who’d been in the link together for years before the curse and were back in it now, the specific recognition of people who’d been close and were close again. Someone bumped us from the side laughing in the link, with Andrew on her flank and both of them heading

I looked.

Elite’s wolf was dark red. Just as i remebered it to be.

riya, moving fast and

rection of Elite’s wolf.

I’d known Elite for years. I’d stood in briefings with Elite and trained with Elite and trusted Elite with the kind of trust that you only built through crisis, the kind that didn’t require articulating because it existed below the verbal.