Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 246

Chapter 246

Chapter 246

Chapter 246

ARIA

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The vision the amber crystal triggered was different from the first trial. Not fears of inadequacy this time-something deeper, more visceral. I saw my father. Not a memory I actually possessed, since he’d died when I was too young to remember him clearly, but a vision of him nonetheless. He was fighting. Protecting someone-my mother, maybe, or me as a child. Fighting rogues with desperate ferocity, knowing he was going to die, choosing to buy time for those he loved to escape.

I watched him fall. Watched the life leave his eyes. Watched him make the choice to sacrifice himself so others could live.

“This is what love costs,” a voice said-the crystals voice, or maybe something speaking through it. “Sacrifice without guarantee of success. Giving everything with no certainty that your gift will matter. Your father died for you. Your mother suppressed your bloodline to protect you. How many more will sacrifice before you’re strong enough to protect yourself?”

The question hit like a physical blow. How many people would pay the price for my survival? How much would others have to give up because I wasn’t capable enough to stand on my

own?

The vision shifted. Showed me Ivory carrying my unconscious body through the forest, blood seeping from her own wounds, pushing herself beyond exhaustion because I’d been too weak to walk. Showed me Kael watching helplessly as I nearly died, unable to intervene, forced to witness his mate’s suffering because I’d gotten myself into situations I couldn’t handle.

“You consume the strength of others,” the voice continued. “Drain their resources. Force them to choose between their own survival and yours. How many more will you sacrifice on the altar of your inadequacy before you admit the truth?”

“What truth?” I demanded, anger cutting through the guilt and shame the vision was trying to instill.

“That you are not strong enough. Not worthy enough. Not special enough to justify the price others pay for your existence.”

The words echoed my deepest fears, the ones I’d supposedly confronted in the first trial. But this was different. This wasn’t about my own inadequacy-it was about how my inadequacy affected others. Made them weaker. Put them in danger. Cost them in ways I could never

repay.

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Chapter 246

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I opened my mouth to respond, to argue, to defend myself against accusations that felt simultaneously unfair and absolutely true-

The ground beneath me gave way.

Not gradually. Not with warning. Just suddenly absent, the stone platform crumbling into. nothing, my body dropping straight down as the earth manipulation accelerated catastrophically.

The vision shattered. I was back in physical reality, falling through darkness, my hands scrabbling desperately for purchase on crumbling stone that disintegrated beneath my grip. Above me, I could see Ivory reaching down, trying to grab my wrist, but the distance was too great and the angle wrong.

My wounded abdomen screamed in protest at the strain, the stitches pulling in ways that suggested they might tear free entirely. Pain exploded through my torso but I couldn’t afford to focus on it, couldn’t let it distract me from the immediate crisis of falling into a trench with no bottom I could see.

Below me, in the darkness, something moved.

Not water this time. Something solid. Something that made scraping sounds against stone— nails or claws dragging across rock. Something that was climbing toward me rather than waiting at the bottom.

“Ivory!” I shouted, my voice cracking with fear and pain. “Something’s down here! Something’s-”

A hand emerged from the darkness below me.

Gray-skinned. Unnaturally long fingers that looked like they had too many joints. Nails that were more like claws-thick, yellowed, curved into points designed for gripping and tearing.

It grabbed my ankle and pulled.

I screamed as I was dragged downward, my tenuous grip on the crumbling edge failing completely, gravity and the creature below combining to rip me away from safety. My fingers scraped uselessly across stone as I fell, leaving skin and probably blood behind.

I fell into darkness, my body twisting, unable to control my descent. Hit something that wasn’t quite ground-softer, yielding, wrong in ways I couldn’t articulate through the panic flooding my system.

Then light bloomed around me.

Not bright-dim and sickly green, emanating from bioluminescent fungi that grew on the trench walls down here. But it was enough to see what I’d landed on.

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10:28 Wed, Jan 28 B G

Chapter 246

Bodies.

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