Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 328

Chapter 328

Chapter 328

ARIA

I turned around slowly.

A

The training ground contained, at my best estimate, thirty nine people. Packed into the wall- adjacent area with the shoulder-to-shoulder density of people who’d been gradually accumulating for the past twenty minutes. The wall had apparently inspired every single one of them to come stand beside it this morning. The child I’d noticed earlier was sitting on an adult’s shoulders to get a better view of the stonework.

Not one of them was looking at me.

The cheer had definitively not come from any of them. Something else had produced it. Possibly structural settling in the surrounding buildings. Probably that.

I stared at fourty people examining a wall.

One woman near the front had her hand pressed firmly over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking very slightly in a way that could have been cold.

I turned back to the practice space.

The dummy’s remains needed to be cleared before I could try again, which gave me a moment to breathe and to notice that my hands were not shaking, which they had been the last time I’d produced something at that intensity. The pearl’s steadying effect was real. The control was better than it had been.

I cleared the dummy’s remains to the side, set up the second one from the storage rack, and positioned myself again.

Heard footsteps. New footsteps, from the main entrance.

I did not turn around immediately. Let myself finish the breath I was taking. Let myself locate the warmth again, find the connection with the pearl, confirm that I was centered before I did anything that could be read as reacting to whoever had just arrived.

Then I turned.

Kael was at the main entrance. With Ivory beside him, which I hadn’t expected – she was still in her recovery period, still moving more carefully than her usual pace, but standing and

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present with her arms crossed and her expression arranged in the look of someone who had somewhere else to be and was choosing this instead. Jordan was there. Elite, who’d been one of the quieter members of our Hunt team and who I’d spoken to maybe twice since the trials ended. Nina, carrying a cup of something hot with the energy of someone who’d designated this a working observation rather than a social occasion.

They were not looking at me.

–

Kael had found something in the middle distance that required his attention something in the vicinity of the far wall, approximately the same section the thirty other people were currently examining. Ivory was apparently in conversation with Jordan, their heads bent toward each other, discussing something that was clearly more interesting than anything happening in the center of the training yard. Elite was checking something on his wrist. Nina was drinking from her cup with great focus.

I looked at them.

Nina drank.

I looked at the fourty people near the wall, who were studying stonework with renewed intensity since the new arrivals had appeared.

I looked back at Kael and Ivory and Jordan and Elite and Nina, who had all independently decided that the training yard was an excellent place to be this morning and that the wall and each other and Nina’s drink were all significantly more interesting than anything I was doing.

Something happened in my chest that was warmer than the moon magic a

and less complicated than almost everything else I’d been feeling for weeks.

They were here. All of them. The pack members who’d been gradually accumulating with their wall-based interests, and now Kael and Ivory and the people I’d stood beside during trials that had nearly killed us, and none of them were technically watching me, and all of them were completely, absolutely, obviously watching me.

Not to mock. Not to collect failure.

To see.

—

the

I faced the training dummy, and the uncertainty that had been threading through me *am I good enough, will this work, what happens if it doesn’t* – didn’t disappear but became quieter. Smaller. Less able to take up space when a significant portion of the pack had apparently decided that examining a wall in the training yard was how they were going to spend their morning,

I found the warmth. Found the connection with the pearl. Let them settle into the together-

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quality that had produced the clean blast.

And then I tried something the texts had described that I hadn’t attempted yet. Not a single directed blast but something more sustained a held output, energy continuous rather than released all at once, the equivalent of the difference between throwing something and pushing it. It required more control. Required the steadying effect of the pearl to keep from either fading or spiking. Required me to find a place in my own concentration that I’d been building toward but hadn’t been sure I could locate.

I pushed outward. Held it. Let the silver-white extend and maintain and stay.

The second dummy took longer to fall than the first one had. But it fell completely – steadily, structurally, from the continuous pressure rather than the single impact. A different kind of

result. Cleaner in some ways. Morerolled.

The sound that came from behind me this time was larger than the first one and made less effort to disguise itself. Actual applause. Several voices saying things I couldn’t make out over the general noise of it.

I turned around.

Every person yard was looking at me.

in the trainin

The wall had, for the moment, apparently lost its appeal.

Kael’s arms were crossed and he was nodding with the expression of someone registering something and filing it. Ivory was and this cost me nothing to notice because I was trying to see clearly rather than through what I wanted to see – actually interested. The healer’s focus she turned on things that required understanding was visible in the way she was watching, the particular quality of attention that wasn’t casual.

Jordan said something to Elite that I couldn’t hear.

Nina had lowered her cup.

The fifty pack members who’d been studying the wall were now simply standing in the training yard looking at me with the released honesty of people who’d given up the pretense and were comfortable with what replaced it. The woman with her hand over her mouth had lowered it. The child on the adult’s shoulders was pointing at me with the uncomplicated interest of someone who hadn’t yet learned that pointing was impolite.

I stood in the center of the training yard with the pearl warm in my hand and thirty- something pairs of eyes on me and felt, for one clear and uncomplicated moment, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

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