Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 329

Chapter 329

Chapter 329

ARIA

Not comfortable. Not resolved.

But present, Standing on the floor. Doing the thing rather than surviving the space around the thing.

I turned back to the storage rack and got out a third dummy.

Behind me,

the training yard settled into the particular quiet of people who were going to stay for as long as this lasted and had made their peace with that decision.

The wall, I gathered, could wait.

I set up the third dummy, positioned the pearl, found the warmth, and started again.

I looked at my notes on the bench. The next section described something the texts called a lunar burst – a larger release than the focused pulse, less precise but more powerful. The kind of thing that, according to the text, was used when precision wasn’t the priority. I had no context for when precision wouldn’t be the priority but I was trying things in the order the book presented them, which seemed reasonable.

More energy. Less focus on the line, more on the release. The text had used the word *exhale*, which I’d read three times trying to figure out if it was metaphorical and had decided probably

wasn’t.

I exhaled. Let the energy come forward all at once rather than directing it narrowly.

–

The light that left my hands was different – wider, brighter, the silver-white expanding into a broader shape that crossed the distance in a way the pulses hadn’t. It hit the dummy and the dummy a solid practice target, packed tight, built to absorb significant physical impact rocked backward on its base and cracked. A clean fracture across the midsection, the top half tilting at a sharp angle.

The training ground erupted.

Cheering. Actual cheering, unmistakable and genuine, coming from every direction. I spun around and the wall-watchers were not watching the wall anymore. They were watching me, and the number of them had somehow more than doubled while I hadn’t been paying attention thirty people, maybe more, ranging from the eight-year-old who was now

–

1/3

+5 Free Coins

5 Free Coins

“This is fun,” Ivory said.

“Yes it is,” Nina agreed, with a serenity that I found slightly concerning.

“So we all collectively agree,” Elite said, appearing from somewhere to my left with the uncanny timing she always had for arriving exactly when a sentence needed completing, “that this is what we’re supposed to be doing with our morning.”

“Obviously,” Jordan said, from my right. Then: “Oh. Look at that.”

–

a controlled burst, better than the

Aria had done something in the center of the grounds ones before it, a proper lunar blast that sent silver light expanding outward in a shape that was clearly intentional rather than accidental. One of the watching groups actually broke their studied casualness and let out a collective sound.

The watching groups were not subtle about it. Several people near the running drills stopped entirely. Someone near the equipment storage dropped a weight, which hit the ground with a sound that made several other people look up.

Aria turned.

Every single person standing at my wall simultaneously found something else to look at. Nina developed a sudden interest in the horizon. Jordan crouched down to look at the ground near his feet as though he’d spotted something significant in the dirt. Elite turned and appeared to be reading the structural features of the wall behind us. Ivory became intensely focused on something in the middle distance that was probably not actually there.

I looked forward, which was technically neutral, and felt the combined weight of my own absurdity and the absurdity of everyone around me.

“This,” I said, very quietly, “is the most undignified I have felt in a significant period of time.”

TOM

7

3/3

+5 Free Coins

jumping up and down with no remaining pretense of wall-interest to adults who were clapping with the enthusiasm of people who’d been waiting to do exactly this and were very glad the moment had arrived.

Standing in the front of them, caught completely mid-reaction – Kael had his arms crossed and was very deliberately not smiling with an amount of effort that made the not-smiling visible. Ivory was beside him, and she’d turned slightly sideways in a move that suggested she’d intended to look like she was facing elsewhere but had not completed the turn in time. Jordan was behind them with his hand over his mouth. Elite, who I hadn’t seen arrive, had her arms crossed in a mirror of Kael and was looking at the cracked dummy with an expression that was professional and impressed in equal measure. Nina, slightly to the side, had the look of someone filing information rapidly.

They’d all been here. They’d all been watching – the senior pack members, my fellow champions, Kael himself – pretending to be occupied with anything except what I was doing, and when the dummy had cracked they’d lost the pretense completely.

The cheering faded as people registered they’d been caught. Wall-watchers found new reasons to look at the wall. The teenagers on the ground resumed their conversation. Kael unfolded his arms and said something to Jordan who said something back and they both found compelling reasons to look at the sky.

Ivory, who seemed to have decided that dignity was a thing that had already left the building and therefore couldn’t be retrieved through effort, simply stayed where she was and looked at me with an expression that was neutral but not unkind.

I stood there for a moment, holding the aftermath.

—

The certainty I’d been working myself toward – the one where they were here to watch me fail, where the audience was predatory, where stopping was the wrong choice but staying was just extended vulnerability had cracked along with the dummy. Maybe earlier than that. Maybe when the eight-year-old had been trying to watch me with her peripheral vision and hadn’t quite managed it. Maybe when the number had kept growing despite the fact that watching walls was allegedly the priority.

They’d come to see this. Had come in ones and twos and small groups and had constructed an elaborate collective performance of not-watching so that I wouldn’t stop, so that I wouldn’t feel observed and shut down. So I’d keep going.

I turned back to the broken dummy and let the thought settle where it needed to settle.

Behind me, with the determined energy of people getting back to important business, the wall-watching resumed.

I tried three more things from the notes before I let myself stop.

2/3

A sustained beam rather than a pulse

G

harder to maintain than to produce, requiring continuous concentration in a way the bursts didn’t. I held it for approximately six seconds before it flickered out, which wasn’t impressive but was a start. The text said duration was built through practice rather than innate capacity, which I’d chosen to take as genuinely encouraging rather than just something old books said.

A deflection attempt, which the texts described as using the lunar energy to interrupt or redirect an incoming force rather than to create one outward. I had nothing incoming to work with so I improvised by picking up a stone from the ground and throwing it at myself, which was the kind of thing that seemed logical before you did it and slightly less logical once the stone was coming toward your face. The deflection worked

sort of.

Someone behind me made a sound that was equal parts alarm and impressed, which meant they’d seen me throw a stone at my own face and were processing this.

I did not turn around.

”

11

3/3