Chapter 593

She was on him before the growl finished – not fighting in the combat sense, in the specific roughhousing sense that had its own rules and its own vocabulary and existed in the specific language of people who‘ known each other since before they could articulate what knowing someone meant. She was fast, unreasonably fast for her size, the three years of not running having done nothing to whatever Ivory’s specific physical quality was that kept outlasting everything thrown at it.

Kael was trying to get purchase and she wouldn’t let him.

Jay was on his feet.

*Nina,” he said.

“I know.” I said.

*Should we-*

*Yes.* I said.

We moved.

From opposite sides, the way we’d moved in a thousand training exercises and half a dozen actual engagements, the coordinated flanking that Nina and Jay had built over years of working together until it was below conscious thought.

*On your left, I said.

*I have the right,* Jay said.

Kael saw us coming.

“No,” he said. *Guys. Wait. Wait-*

We hit him from both sides.

The three of us – me and Jay and Ivy, who’d apparently had the same instinct simultaneously – piled onto an enormous Alpha wolf who was trying to maintain his dignity under the assault of three people who had very specific opinions about his dignity and where it ranked relative to the occasion.

It ranked low.

We rolled.

The pack cheered.

Someone

Jordan later said it was Edna, and I believe this entirely – started taking bets. The crowd that gathered was enthusiastic and had opinions and was placing them loudly.

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Chapter 593

Kael was fighting back, which was the specific Kael version of fighting back that understood the difference between winning and participating, because he could have sent all three of us off him in approximately fou

onds and he wasn’t doing that. He was playing. His wolf was playing. Khris, the enormous terrifying black wolf wiro neighboring packs feared and small pups fled from, was rolling in the grass with three friends and it was the most undignified he’d been in three years and it was the most present I’d seen him in three years and both of those things were the same thing.

Ivy was on his back.

“I have the high ground,” she said through the link.

“You have the high ground,* Jay confirmed, in the tone of a man doing sports commentary. “Khris is attempting the reversal-*

*Don’t you dare,” I said, to Kael.

*Nia, Khris said, I’m going to-”

*Don’t, I said.

He reversed.

We went sideways.

We hit the edge of the incline at the bottom of the clearing’s slight slope, the one I’d never given significant thought to as a topographical feature, and the momentum of a very large wolf and three smaller ones having a collective argument with gravity produced a predictable outcome.

We went into the pond.

All four of us.

The water was cold. Not unbearably the morning had been warming the clearing for hours – but cold enough to be entirely felt, the specific full–body awareness of sudden immersion.

*My fur.* Khris said, from somewhere in the pond.

The tone of it.

*Kael,* Jay said, barely holding it together.

*My fur,* Khris said again. This is–I’m an Alpha. This is not–I have a reputation. Ugh.*

I surfaced.

Ivy was already at the surface, shaking water off with the specific efficiency of a wolf who was not going to let being wet be anything other than a circumstance to be managed.

Jay surfaced beside me.

*You,* he said.

*Me.* I said.

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You pushed us into the pond,” he said.

he slope pushed us into the pond, I said.

“You pushed us toward the slope, he said.

*I was flanking, I said.

*You aimed the flank at the slope specifically, he said.

*I was flanking. I said again.

*Nina,* he said.

*Jay,* I said.

–

The clearing was beyond cheering at this point. The pack had given up on any pretense of bets or observation and had arrived at the full response of people watching something they’d needed to see and were seeing it. The laughter in the link was the warmest thing I’d felt in years, the specific collective warmth of thirty–something wolves laughing together through a shared connection that had been broken and was back and was being used for this, which was exactly the right thing to use it for.

Kael emerged from the pond.

He stood at the edge of it, dripping, in the specific dignity of an Alpha who’d made certain decisions and was standing by them.

*Not a word, he said.

*I’m not saying anything.* Jay said.

*Not a word from any of you,* Kael said.

*The pups are watching. I said. The ones who came to challenge you.”

Kael looked at the clearing.

The grey pup was there. Front of the crowd. Looking at the we someone revising their worldview in real time.

*He fell in the pond, the pup said, to another small wolf beside them.

*He fell in the pond, the other confirmed.

*And we,* the grey pup said slowly, “challenged him first.

*Yes,” confirmed the other.

The grey pup’s tail started moving.

Kael looked at the pup.

The pup looked at Kael.

volf with the specific expression of

Chapter 593

Then the pup looked at the crowd of children behind them and said, with the complete certainty of someone who’d just won a very important thing:

MADE HIM FALL IN THE POND.

{children and their delusions, traha)

The clearing howled.

Kael sat down in the pond water with the specific dignity of an Alpha who had accepted his fate.

“I hate all of you,” he said through the link, in the tone that had never once meant it.

Ivy, dripping and white and present for the first time in three years in the full way, made the sound that was the wolf version of her real laugh.

I heard it through the link and through the air simultaneously.

i held it.

Both channels.

Both there.

*Good,” Nia said, very quietly, inside me.

“Yes, 1 said.

*Good, she said again.

a/n: you guys…..they are back!!!!! i think i am going to cry. But y’all came for me in the comment sections, saying i genuinely hated Aria, which okay, she is not my favourite character but…..fine.Well, i know you guys have opinions as well, please drop, i will read.