Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 285

Chapter 285

Chapter 285

NINA

“It isn’t fair,” she kept saying, the words muffled, broken apart by sobs. “It isn’t fair. I lost him twice. I lost him twice, Nina. First the curse took him piece by piece and I watched it happen every day for three years, and then I got him back but not really because the curse breaking meant he was someone else’s, and then I lost the memories of even having had him in the first place, and now I have them back and I still can’t keep him, and it isn’t it isn’t ”

—

“I know,” I said. There wasn’t anything better. Sometimes there wasn’t anything better and I’d learned early not to try to improve on the truth by papering over it with comfort that wasn’t earned.

“Why do I have to be the one who’s not selfish?” The question came out raw, genuinely asking, not rhetorical. “Why is it always me? Why can’t I just – why can’t I tell him to choose me instead? Damn the bond, damn the consequences, damn all of it, just choose me because I was there first and I stayed and I earned it and I deserve it more than she does?”

She looked up at me then, and her face was a wreck, beautiful and devastated in equal measure, and I felt the particular ache of watching someone you love suffer through something you can’t fix for them.

“Why can’t I do that, Nina? Why can’t I just be selfish for once in

my life?”

I thought about how to answer that honestly. Took my time with it. “Because if you were the kind of person who could do that, you wouldn’t be the person Kael fell in love with in the first place.”

She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and another sob. Wiped her face with the back of her hand in a gesture that was so familiar it hurt to see it. “That is the least comforting thing you could possibly have said.”

“I know. It’s still true.”

“I hate it.”

“Also valid.”

She pulled back slightly, enough to breathe properly, keeping one hand fisted in the fabric of my sleeve like an anchor. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut now. She looked like she’d been

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fighting, which in a sense she had been, for months, and the battle had just changed shape in ways that were going to require significant adjustment.

“They wanted me to do it, you know,” she said, quieter now. The storm not over but settling into something she could speak through. “When Kael first announced the bond. When everyone realized what it meant and who Aria was and what she was replacing. People came to me, Nina. Pack members who thought they were helping. They’d stop me in corridors and say things like, *we’re behind you if you want to fight this,* or *nobody would blame you,* or -” She stopped. Started again. “There was a delegation. Did you know that? Three of the senior pack members came to my quarters the week after the bonding announcement and very formally suggested that I had grounds to challenge Aria’s position. That the pack would support it. That Kael couldn’t bond with someone he’d known for five minutes and had no real relationship with while I was still available and willing.”

“I didn’t know about the delegation,” I said, which was honest. I’d known about the general sentiment in those early weeks but not the organized version of it.

“I sent them away,” Ivory said. “Told them I didn’t want to challenge anything. Told them the bond was real regardless of circumstances and that undermining it would only destabilize the pack. Told them I would be finding my own path forward and they should focus their concern elsewhere.” She paused. “And part of me was furious at myself for saying it. For being the responsible one again. For being the person who smoothed everything over and protected everyone and kept the pack stable while I was the one bleeding.”

“That’s why I came,” I said. “That’s why I came to find you as soon as they said you were stable. Because someone needed to be in this room who wasn’t expecting you to be reasonable about any of this.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “Are you not expecting me to be reasonable?”

“Ivory, you tried to murder the Luna in front of the assembled pack and the full Ghost Council during a competitive Hunt that was being magically projected to spectators. You were having a pretty understandable moment.”

Something complicated happened in her expression. “Is that how the pack is reading it?”

“Some of them were actively rooting for you,” I said. “I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The crowd had feelings. There were people who wanted you to finish what you started, and people who were horrified, and people who were doing the complicated math of caring about you and also caring about pack stability and not being quite sure which way to fall.”

“God.” She pressed her hands over her face briefly. “What a disaster.”

“A dramatic disaster,” I corrected. “Which is at least interesting.”

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