Chapter 635

s the curse years,” Nina said. “We needed hobbies that had applications.”

bought BL novels,” I said.

s hobby is significantly less practical than ours,” Nina said.

hird bag was the armoury’s general selection – wolfsbane in additional forms, smoke- I compounds that Ivory had developed, the specific defensive tools that Nina had been taining with the loving attention of someone who’d been told their purpose and had waiting for that purpose to arrive.

shouldered the third bag.

lid it with a quality that I understood

h

ai

It

T

n

a

S

—

not the carrying of something heavy. There

S

12

ing of something that was finally going to be used for what it was made for.

appeared.

oked at the bags.

e moon bullets case specifically.

,” he said.

she said.

moon bullets,” he said.

she said.

e bringing all of them,” he said.

e bringing the case,” she said.

7

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Finished

private car had been in the secondary garage since the first year of the curse.

–

‘t known it existed. Not the fact of it speretitically I knew Kael had vehicles, the pack ehicles for various functions – but his sara was different from the pack’s utility fleet,

e difference was visible immediately when Kael opened the garage door.

personal.

not

pecific quality of something that bodiclonged to a person rather than a function not a statement of status, a car that had been used for things that mattered and hadd mulated the evidence of those dinings over years. Dark, well-made, the kind of vehicle le young Alpha in his early twenties would have chosen when he was just beginning to to stand what he wanted from things.

stopped when she saw itt.

copped completely, boshings in her hands, and looked at the car with the expressioon ad when something ararvived from the past and required a moment before she couldld through it.

‘t believe we gerotonese this again,” she said.

pice had a quality that wasn’t Nina’s usual register.

1 stopped besedele her.

looked atathccacar.

aid shed b burn it,” Jordan said.

aid sixtid’d burn it if she failed to save him,” Nina said.

arrear” Jordan said.

7

od the first year,” Nina said. “She put it in here and she said she wasntre letting anyone use

if she failed-” she stopped.

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Finished

ked at the car and thought about Ivory paining it in this garage in the first year of the e, making that decision, and the car sisting here untouched for three years and then her nine months while de curse brokkasid the aftermath accumulated and the pack

ilt.

ing.

looked at the car with the expressssion that was very controlled and was controlling ething specific.

in,” she said. “We’re going

inside of the car was something else.

e was a passenger seat with a name tag. I saw it when Nina got in and moved something small laminated taggon the back of the seat that said *Ivory* in the handwriting off cone who’d been approximately eighteen when they wrote it. The writing had the quality mething done definitively, with ownership and humor simultaneously.

in saw it and natale a sound.

called shotgun permanently,” he said.

called permanent shotgun in 2015,” Nina said. “It has been honored.””

since the curse years,” Jordan said.

ssdoored in absentia,” Nina said.

enggot shotgun,” Jordan said.

Niina said.

fifteen years,” Jordan said.

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Chapter 635

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The cassette was still in the player.

Finished

Kael saw it first the specific recognition of something he’d put there years ago, the small bject that had been sitting in this scars since before the curse and had been waiting in the lark of the garage.

He didn’t say anything about it.

He put his hands on the wheel hand dooked at it for a moment.

Jina had found her quilts..

They were in the back. foodded in the specific careful way of something that had been placed nere deliberately and had stayed – the specific pattern I recognized as Shadowmere’s haracteristic work thed kind of thing that got made during long evenings and then ended up verywhere.

My quilts,” Nina ssaid.

You left them in the car,” Jordan said.

I left them in the car,” she confirmed.

On purposee, he said.

might have been optimistic,” she said.

liaanwas in the back beside me, looking at the interior with the specific quality of someone holl been given access to something that had existed before they were admitted to the spacent belonged to. His eyes moved over the cassette and the name tag and the quilts and cante to rest on the photographs.

are in the door pocket.

neonle didn’t make anymore

–

dar and

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Chapter 635

1

**Finished

The photograph was of five people – Kael, Nina, Jordan, Elite, Ivory – in a location I recognized as the outer edge of Shadowmere’s territory, the specific treeline where the pack grounds ended and the wider territory began. They were young. Younger than I’d been able to fully map from knowing them now. Kael was maybe seventeen, the Alpha’s quality already present but not yet the full weight of it, the person underneath it more visible. Nina had the quality of someone who’d be Nina but wasn’t quite there yet, the security chief’s composure in process. Jordan’s expression was the specific look of a teenager who found everything interesting and was not yet skilled at managing how much of that interest showed. Elite was Elite – the composure had apparently been present since birth. And Ivory was-

Laughing.

Fully, completely, the real laugh, the one that was normally contained in the specific careful way she contained it. In the photograph she was not containing anything, she was entirely present in the laughing with her head back and her eyes closed and both hands on the person beside her’s arm, which was Kael’s arm, and Kael was laughing too.

The same laugh.

The specific quality of two people who’d been laughing at the same thing for long enough that the laughs had started to sound like each other.

Killian had found a different photograph.

“This one,” he said, and his voice had a quality in it that was – careful, the specific careful of someone who was receiving something they hadn’t expected.

I looked.

The photograph was dated on the back. Twelve years ago.

It was the inner circle – the same five people, younger, the specific goofiness of teenagers who didn’t know yet what was coming for them and were therefore entirely present in the moment without the weight of the knowing. Jordan was making a face that was so un-Jordan that I looked twice. Nina had her arm around Ivory’s shoulder in the specific way of someone who’d claimed a person as theirs and was demonstrating it. Elite was in the back doing something that was possibly a dance move. Kael was doing something eyebrows that should not have been possible on a human face.

And in the corner, partially cropped, with the slightly separate quality of some been included and wasn’t entirely sure of the terms of the inclusion yet-

Killian.

Younger Killian. The teenager he’d been, before the exile, before the network, before twelve years of not belonging. Looking at the camera with the specific expression of someone who

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was in a photograph with people he wanted to belong to and was not yet certain whether he did.

“That’s-” I started.

“Fifteen years ago,” Killian said.

“You’re in it,” I said.

“I’m in some of them,” he said. “The ones from before.”

Before.

The word had a specific weight.

“Killian,” I said.

He looked at the photograph for a long moment.

Then he put it carefully back in the stack.

“Road trip,” Jordan said, from the front.

“Road trip,” Nina confirmed.

Jordan found the journal approximately twenty minutes into the drive.

It was in the door pocket on his side – the same place as the photographs on the other side – and he produced it with the expression of someone who’d found something they hadn’t expected.

“What is this,” he said.

anoned it

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“Oh god,” Nina said.

Finished

“I forgot about that.” Ivory/said, from the passenger seat, in the tone of someone who had not forgotten about it and was choosing her response.

“You have sections,” Jordan said.

“Yes,” Ivory said.

“Both of you,” Jordan said. “You and Kael.”

“Yes,” Ivory said.

“These sections are-” Jordan paused, turning a page. “These sections are comprehensive.”

“That was in the past,” Ivory said.

“You guys were animals,” Jordan said.

“We were not animals,” Kael said. “We were responsible.”

The car went completely silent.

Then Nina turned in her seat and looked at Kael/with the specific expression of someone who had received a statement and was assessing it.