Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 360

Chapter 360

Chapter 360

a/n: slighly longer author note in this chapter.

Chapter 360

ARIA

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Jordan considered this with the seriousness he brought to questions about Kael’s emotional state. “He’s not angry,” he said. “He’s sad, I think. And grateful in a way that’s complicated to be grateful about because it requires acknowledging what it cost her. And he’s going to be in that clinic for a while because Ivory-” he paused, “–because she needed it.”

“I know,” I said. “I heard.”

He looked at me. Not asking what I’d heard share and what I hadn’t.

—

respecting the boundary of what I’d chosen to

“She did it for him,” I said. “Not for me. Not because she thought I was the right person or the best outcome or anything involving me at all. I was the solution to a problem that was going to kill him if it wasn’t solved.” I pressed my palms against my knees, feeling the solidness of it. “I

I was a piece that fit the space. That’s what I was.”

was

–

Jordan was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully: “Is that how you feel about it?”

—

I turned to look at him directly. “I don’t know how I feel about it yet,” I said. “That’s the honest answer. Part of me the

part that spent months being told I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t chosen, didn’t earn this – that part finds it very easy to read it as confirmation. That I was never the choice, just the available option. Just the convenient bloodline.” I paused. “But the other part-”

“What does the other part say?” Jordan asked.

“The other part says she was watching him die,” I said. “And she did the thing that kept him alive. And the fact that the thing that kept him alive happened to involve me doesn’t make me the central figure in the story. I was the mechanism. And she was-” I stopped.

“She was the person who loved someone enough to give up what she’d built toward to keep him here,”

“That’s an honest reading,” Jordan said.

“It makes it harder to be angry about,” I said. “I want to be angry about it. Having my entire presence here explained as a solution someone engineered without asking me feels like the

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Chapter 360

kind of thing I should be angry about.” I exhaled. 1

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“But she was watching him disappear. And she’s been paying the cost of fixing it ever since. And I don’t I can’t maintain anger at that. I can’t make that into something to be angry

–

about when I hear what it sounds like for her to finally break down about it.”

Jordan looked at me for a long moment. Something in his expression that I’d come to understand was his version of the quiet before a considered thing.

“You know,” he said, “that the mechanism being arranged doesn’t make what came after it arranged. She set the piece in the space. What you’ve done since you got here – the Hunt, the work, the things you’ve chosen to do and who you’ve chosen to be when you had every opportunity to be smaller – none of that was in her letter.”

I sat with that.

“She identified a bloodline compatibility,” he said. “She found a solution. She didn’t write into that letter who you’d turn out to be. That part was you.”

The pearl, in my pocket. Warm and steady, the way it always was now — a constant background presence that I’d stopped noticing in the way you stopped noticing your own heartbeat.

I thought about the trials. About the mirror chamber and what I’d seen in it, and what I’d had to reckon with, and what I’d chosen to do after the reckoning. About Ivory collapsed in the chamber and the specific terror of that moment. About four fragments and what each one had cost to claim and what it had felt like to claim them anyway.

None of that had been arranged.

“I’m going to need some time,” I said. “To figure out what I actually feel about this rather than what I feel right now in the immediate version.”

“That’s reasonable,” Jordan said.

“And I’m going to need to talk to Kael about it eventually,” I said. “Not today. Not this week maybe. But eventually, when he’s processed his side of it and I’ve processed mine.”

“He’ll talk to you,” Jordan said. “When you’re both ready.”

I nodded.

We sat for a moment in the quiet of the east courtyard, in the mid-morning that had become something heavier than it had started as and was carrying all the things that the morning had

added to it.

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Chapter 360

“The lunar power questions,” I said. “The ones I was going to ask Ivory.”

“Still unanswered,” Jordan said.

“They’ll keep,” I said.

“They’ll keep,” he agreed.

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I stood from the bench. Looked at the entrance to the courtyard where my guard was still stationed, steady and present, doing her job. Looked at the buildings around me – the clinic somewhere past the east wing, the main hall visible from here, the pack grounds doing their ongoing thing in all directions.

My pack. Still complicated. Still mostly not-quite-warm in their feelings about me. But mine, in the specific and increasingly real way that Shadowmere claimed things – not because they’d chosen me enthusiastically but because I was here and I was working at it and occasionally doing things worth defending.

Ivory was in that clinic crying in someone’s arms about everything she’d carried and given up and lost.

Kael was holding her and saying the right things with the specific rightness of someone who knew her well enough to know what the right things were.

And I was standing in the east courtyard with the pearl warm in my pocket and the technical questions about lunar power still unanswered and the full picture of how I’d come to be here finally visible, and deciding what to do with all of it.

The same thing I’d been doing since I’d arrived, I thought.

Keep going. Keep choosing to be here rather than just surviving being here. Keep finding the floor and standing on it.

The morning was still happening. There was still work to do.

I walked back into it.

a/n: so you guys have stated a lot, and i would like to clarify more things. One, do not blame Ivory for her attitude towards Aria[ me personally, i do not see anything wrong that she did when she was amnesiac] but ivory had forgotten about what she had engineered when she had her amnesia. she forgot everything about kael, anything relatted to kael follows and nobody NOBODY knew what Ivory did, hence why they felt like ivory was being cheated, she lost her

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Chapter 360

ཀློ (27)

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memories, got hurt so many times in realtion to aria from the manesia down to the poisoned dart, and ivory did not contest for the luna position despite the pack being her supporters. Two, everyone is all about aria was manipulated and she should have been told about ivory from the start. okay, have you ever thought why nina kept qquiet about it, aria literally just ran away from a pack when she was the OTHER WOMAN. Nina telling her, oh look, kael is sleeping with my cousin, they are in love. BUT we still need you to mate with him and subject yourself to a life of misery knowing people would prefer ivory to you? Like come on, obviously Nina would not do it, everyone was desperate at that point, because kael was dying and they were already getting threat notes from other packs to transfer ownership to them, they have already stayed three years under kael cursed years because of loyalty, despite the actual fact it was more dangerous for them cause Kael wolf and human were split into two, which made them more viable to them being killed by kael if he lost control rather than dying outside by external attacks. And you guys are hating kael big time, like guys, he is not just a dick you people get to decide if ivory or aria should bounce on it, he is human, he has feelings, he is also in a difficult, he loves ivory, yet he mated with aria, i do not understand, did you people just expected him to just drink a potion and forget about ivory, he did not meet aria, fall in love with her and mated her, yes they are mates but HOW did they become mates. kael had been feeling guilty for months thinking it was him that chose to mate with aria because the curse was getting worse and lived with the fact that ivory had to watch from the sidelines and still do nothing because of how ivory is, only to find out, that ivory was the one behind everything in the first place and it was much more harder for ivory to deal with all this. Let them process their feelings, kael held on for 8 months, all this were not done because the ivory this past months were not his ivory and he just got his ivory back like 8 days ago and they need to talk at the very least, ivory and kael are capable of loving each other and still not sleeping with each other, because they both valued each other presence in their life more than sex and ivory won’t do that to Aria no matter how she wants, and kael won’t do that either because he made a choice to stay with aria. This story is a slowburn, i will say it again, there are up and downs, but if you people don’t like it, i can scrap off the remaining plot and just give aria and kael the ending you think they deserve and call it a day. Because there is a LOT that is happening, story barely started guys, i thought this storyline was captivating, but now i do not know,. (21

I truly see your point that Aria is suffering but as the writer, i see everyone suffering..except Sera, there is no saving that bitch. i’m trying to balance everything. Also do well to comment, i will keep replying to all and defending ivory even if it’s only me, {felloe ivory supporters, please help.) 2

Sorry for the long author note and making this chapter short, but i have a limited chapter wordcount but i’ll try to make my chapters longer than usual as compensation like i did for the previous chapters, what do you say?

Whisper 119….OUT!

PS; my exams are starting next week, pray for me cause i need it. 5

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