Chapter 587
ARIA
Not dramatically. But the pack's attention moved, the specific orientation of wolves who'd felt the Luna's wolf arrive in the connection and were registering her physical presence alongside the link presence. A few of the wolves who'd been running around the edge of the clearing paused. Came closer. Not deferring exactly — orienting, the natural movement toward the moon child's wolf that I was still learning the implications of.
*Hello,* Silver said, to the link.
The link responded.
Thirty wolves, and growing.
I kept the threads, kept the weave, kept sending each new connection to Kael as the compound worked through the clearing. The mesh was taking shape — not complete yet, not the full pack, but more than the spoke system had been, more than anything we'd had in three years.
Nina's wolf was brown.
I hadn't known what to expect, which felt strange — she was Nina, I'd known her for nine months, she was one of the most constant presences in my daily life and I'd had no idea what her wolf looked like. The brown was a warm, rich brown, medium-sized, and when she arrived in her wolf form she did something I'd never seen her do in human form, which was immediately roll onto her back in the grass with the specific abandon of someone who'd been carrying something for a very long time and had just put it down.
She rolled.
Back and forth, legs in the air, the specific undignified joy of something that had needed to express itself for years and was finally expressing it.
Jordan's wolf was grey, lean and quick, and he went directly to Nina's wolf and bumped her with his nose with the specific affectionate precision of someone who'd been waiting to do exactly this.
She bit him.
Not hard. The playful version. He jumped back and then forward again and they were doing something that was half-wrestling and half-reunion and completely inappropriate for a pack that was supposed to be receiving a cure in an organized fashion, but Ivory had apparently decided this was not a moment for organized fashion because she let it happen.
I moved through the link.
Each wolf that came back was a warmth added to the weave — specific, individual, identifiable even before I could see them physically. Priya's wolf was quick and pale and arrived in the link with the specific energy I recognized from watching her train. The elder wolves were slower to come back, the suppression having settled more deeply in the longer time, but when they came back they came back fully, the specific wholeness of something that had been incomplete for years returning to completion.
Edna's wolf was small and grey and she sat down in the clearing grass with the dignity of someone who'd waited long enough and was going to take a moment.
Killian.
Ivory brought the vial to him herself.

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