Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 225

Chapter 225

ARIA

Finished

Vines that hadn’t been there moments ago erupted from the bark. Thick, rope-like appendages that moved with disturbing speed and coordination. They wrapped around my waist, my arms, pulling me tighter against the trunk. Preventing escape. Preventing movement. Preventing anything except standing there while the tree-the plant, whatever the hell this was-claimed me as prey.

Then vines wrapped around my throat.

The pressure was immediate and overwhelming. Not gradual strangulation but instant crushing force that cut off my air completely. I tried to gasp, tried to breathe, tried to do anything except die against this tree that had decided I was food or threat or whatever passed for motivation in magically enhanced plant

consciousness.

My hands scrabbled uselessly at the vines, trying to pull them away from my neck, trying to create space for air. But they were too strong, too thick, too completely wrapped around my throat for me to gain any leverage.

I was dying. Actually dying. Stabbed and strangled and bleeding out all at once. Multiple causes of death competing to see which would kill me first.

Through my darkening vision, I saw Ivory turn. Saw her register what was happening. Saw her face transform from focused combat to something like horror.

She was too far away. Even if she ran, even if she abandoned fighting the wolves to help me, she’d never reach me before the vines strangled me to death.

The wolves saw her distraction. Saw their opening. Pressed their attack with renewed aggression, forcing her to defend herself or die.

She had to choose.

Fight the wolves and live, but let me suffocate.

Or come to help me and get torn apart by enhanced predators while she was vulnerable and focused elsewhere.

Save herself or save me.

The choice that the Hunt had been designed to force. The impossible decision between partnership and

survival.

I watched her face as she made her choice. Watched the calculation happen in real-time. Watched her decide which of us deserved to live.

My vision was going dark. Not from blood loss this time. From lack of oxygen. From my brain being starved of air. The vines tightened further, crushing my throat, making even desperate gasping impossible.

This was it. This was how I died. Strangled by a homicidal plant while my partner chose to save herself.

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14:50 Mon, Jan 19 G

Chapter 225

48

Finished

While my mate watched helplessly from a distance. While I proved once and for all that I never should have been Luna, never should have competed in this Hunt, never should have tried to be anything more than the adequate, second-choice replacement I’d always been.

Ivory moved.

Not toward safety. Not away from the wolves.

Toward me.

She moved with speed that seemed impossible given her exhaustion. Abandoned her defensive position, turned her back on the wolves, and ran directly toward the tree that was killing me.

The wolves pursued immediately. Saw their chance. Went for her unprotected back with coordinated precision that would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so terrifying.

She was going to die. We were both going to die. She’d made the wrong choice. The stupid, emotional, partnership-over-survival choice that would get us both killed.

Ivory reached me and her knives flashed, cutting at the vines around my throat. Not hacking wildly but precisely, finding the connection points where they emerged from the tree trunk, severing them at the source rather than trying to cut through their thickness.

The pressure eased slightly. Enough for me to draw half a breath. Enough to buy seconds of consciousness that were rapidly running out.

A wolf hit Ivory from behind, its momentum driving her forward into the tree beside me. She twisted mid- impact, using the force to her advantage, bringing her knife up into the wolf’s exposed throat even as its weight crashed into her.

The wolf dissolved into magical smoke. But two more were right behind it.

Ivory kept cutting. Kept sawing through vines. Kept working to free me even as wolves attacked from multiple angles, even as blood started flowing from new wounds on her arms and back, even as it became clear she’d sacrificed her own survival for mine.

The vines around my throat finally gave way. I sucked in air desperately, my lungs burning, my throat on fire. But I could breathe. I was breathing.

Ivory grabbed me, pulling me away from the tree even as more vines tried to reclaim me. Her strength was failing. I could feel it in the way her grip trembled, in the way her breathing was ragged and desperate, in the way she was moving more slowly than before.

We were both dying. Just more slowly than if she’d left me to strangle.

A wolf lunged and Ivory met it with her knife, but her reaction time was off. The blade found flesh but not deeply enough. The wolf twisted away, injured but alive, regrouping for another attack.

“I’m sorry,” I tried to say, though my damaged throat made the words barely audible. “You should have… should have left me…”

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