Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 316

Chapter 316

ARIA

Dan's expression did something complicated. "I'm not sure what you've—"

"And your cousin," Ivory continued, with the serene momentum of someone who'd identified a direction and was committing to it fully. "I know it's a sensitive situation. Family dynamics can be so complicated." A brief, sympathetic pause. "And your bodyguard, the one who's been with you for—what is it, eight years? That must be particularly difficult to navigate given his proximity."

Dan had gone very still in the way of someone who'd walked into a situation they hadn't anticipated and was recalibrating rapidly.

"I mention it," Ivory said, her voice dropping into something more confidential while remaining entirely audible to everyone within a ten-foot radius, "because there are healers who specialize in — well, in the kinds of difficulties that can develop for alphas under sustained stress, leading to you not being able to raise it up when needed. To clarify, I am talking about your impotency, for instance. I know it's not something people discuss openly, but you shouldn't feel ashamed. It's more common than—"

"I don't have—" Dan started.

"Of course," Ivory said, with such warm understanding that it was devastating. "I didn't mean to suggest anything definitive. But if you ever find yourself in Shadowmere's territory, like you did tonight, my clinic is available. We handle these things with complete discretion." She looked at him with the specific expression of a healer who was being genuinely helpful. "I would have thought you might have come looking for me already, actually. Given the circumstances. But I'm here now, so."

Dan looked like a man who'd been efficiently and thoroughly defused by someone who hadn't raised her voice or changed her expression once during the process. He set down his plate, said something about needing to find his attendant, and extracted himself from our vicinity with the focused purposefulness of someone who needed to be somewhere that was not here.

I watched him go.

Beside me, Ivory exhaled slowly. Then, very quietly, almost to herself: "Where the hell is Martha with a spoiled dish when you need her."

From somewhere to my left — in the direction of where Kael had been moving through the crowd heading towards us in order to intervene and stop Dan from saying something hurtful — I heard what was unmistakably a suppressed laugh followed by the sound of Jordan saying something in an undertone that probably involved the phrase *not here* and *for the love of*.

As Kael shoulders was shaking with suppressed laughter and Jordan was focused on getting him out before he would cause a diplomatic incident.

Good instincts, Jordan. Good, pragmatic, save-us-all instincts.

She held my gaze for a moment. "But while we're standing here — you need to throw a backbone, Aria. The Luna position isn't soft ground. It's not somewhere you get to be uncertain and tentative and hope people will eventually decide to be kind to you. People like Dan will keep coming if they think you'll stand there and take it." Something shifted in her expression, not softer exactly, but less armored. "You completed the Hunt. You have a moon pearl in your hand that I'd wager you haven't even fully understood yet. Whatever you are — whatever the bloodline means and what the Council thinks about it — you have actual capability. Use it like you believe it exists."

She picked up her own plate, assembled it with the focused efficiency of someone who was hungry and wasn't going to apologize for having human needs even at a formal celebration, and moved away into the crowd.

I stood at the food table for a moment after she left, the pearl warm in my hand, Shadowmere's celebration moving around me in its gold-lit, complicated entirety.

Dan had wanted to make me feel like I didn't matter. Had aimed at the places he'd identified as vulnerable — the Damon question, the position I was supposedly pretending to hold, the fundamental inadequacy that everyone apparently knew about.

And Ivory — Ivory who had every reason to let him finish his work, who had earned the right to want me diminished, who I had wronged in ways that I was still understanding the full shape of — had dismantled him with information about his wife's infidelity and his impotency dragging out his own dirty linens public, delivered with the professional serenity of someone offering a wellness check.

Not for me. For the pack. For the principle that nobody insulted Shadowmere's Luna in front of outside wolves, regardless of how the pack itself felt about her.