Chapter 600

The footsteps in the curridor were familiar.

Not Kael – I knew Kael’s footsteps, had known them since we were teenagers, had learned the specific pattern of them through years of knowing where he was by sound alone. Not Nina’s efficiency, not Jordan’s measured pace, not Elite’s absence of sound.

Killian.

He appeared in the doorway with the expression I’d been learning to read over the weeks of his presence in Shadowmere the one that was different from the performing version, the one that was actually him, which was careful and present and had a specific weight in it that I was becoming more capable of seeing the longer he was here.

Ivy said: “Oh.*

“Don’t.” I said.

“He’s here,” she said.

*I can see that,” I said.

“His wolf is-*

*Ivy.” I said.

*Kain is very present, she said. “I can feel him in the link from here.*

*Manage it, I said.

*Easy for you to say,” she said.

It was not easy for me to say. But I said it anyway because the alternative was not managing it, and not managing it had consequences I’d already decided on.

Killian looked at me.

“You shut down the link,” he said. “When you shifted.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I noticed,” he said.

“I assumed you would,” I said.

“Kain noticed,” he said.

“Kain can manage,” I said.

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Chapter 600

Killian looked at me with the specific expression of someone who had something to say and was deciding How to say it. He came into the lab – not presuming the desk, not taking the patient chair, standing in the mdle of the space with the quality of someone who’d learned to occupy Ivory’s spaces carefully, who understood that space in this lab was something granted rather than assumed.

I’d noticed that about him. The carefulness. The way he took up exactly as much space as was offered any

not more.

“Kain wanted to meet Ivy,” he said.

“Kain has met Ivy,” I said. “Through the link. Several times. We’ve been in the same link since the restoration.”

“Meet her properly,” he said.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “The answer is that Ivy and Kain meeting properly is not something that’s going to happen today.”

He was quiet.

“Or soon.” I said.

“Ivory,” he said.

“Killian,” I said.

We looked at each other across the lab with the specific weight of everything we’d said and not said and were saying now without saying it.

Ivy said: “He looks like Kael.”

“I’m aware, I said.

*From the side specifically,” she said. “The jaw.”

*They share a father,* I said.

*Oh,* Ivy said. “That explains it.*

*Yes,* I said.

*He smells like Kael, Ivy said. “But different. Like the same base notes arranged differently.*

“Ivy,” I said.

*I’m just observing.* she said.

*Stop observing, I said..

*It’s the fated bond, she said. *The attraction is biological. You can’t stop me from noticing.*

*I can manage the noticing,” I said.

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Chapter 600

You can try, Ivy said, with the specific energy of something that had been suppressed for three years an was not going back into suppression without negotiating the terms.

is is not a negotiation, I said.

You’re not in control of me the way you’re in control of the clinical register, Ivy said. “I’m the part of you that doesn’t manage. I’m the part that wants.”

*I know what you are,* I said.

*Then you know I’m going to keep noticing, she said. “You can’t stop it. You can only decide what to do with the noticing.

I had decided what to do with the noticing. The decision was made. The countdown was proceeding. Wha did with the noticing was put it in the same place I put the wanting–Kael and the hating–the–failsafe and the specific grief that arrived at four in the morning when the documentation was spread across the desk – put it in the place where I kept the things that were real and had no remedy, and I kept working.

“Kain can meet Ivy through the link.” I said, to Killian. “That’s the extent of it.”

“Why,” he said.

The question was simple. Direct. The Killian version of directness, which I’d been developing a specific relationship with over the weeks – the way he asked the actual question rather than the one that was easier

to answer.

“Because meeting properly,” I said. “implies a development that isn’t going to happen.”

“You’ve decided that,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Without-”

“Killian,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I told you not to hope,” I said. “I told you to find someone else. I meant it. I’m not-” I stopped. “I’m not being cruel. I’m being accurate. Ivy and Kain meeting properly is the beginning of something that isn’t going to have space to be what it should be. And I’d rather not start something that-”

I stopped.

He was very still.

“That what,” he said.

“That I can’t finish,” I said.

It was more honest than I’d intended to be. The specific four–in–the–morning honesty that arrived when the management was thin and the actual thing slipped through the gap.

Killian heard it.

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Chapter 600

I watched him hear it – the specific quality of someone receiving a sentence and understanding that the tence meant something other than what it appeared to mean on its surface. He was good at that The intelligence background, the years of reading situations from the outside – he heard the layers in things

“Can’t finish,” he said. “Not won’t”

“Killian,” I said.

“Those are different words,” he said.

“They’re not different in this context,” I said.

“They’re always different,” he said. “Won’t is a choice. Can’t is a circumstance.” He held my gaze. “You said

can’t.”

“I misspoke,” I said.

“You don’t misspeak,” he said.

He wasn’t wrong. I was precise with language in the specific way of someone whose work required precision and who’d extended the habit into every other area. I didn’t misspeak. I sometimes said things I hadn’t intended to say, but the things I said were always the accurate ones.