Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 372

Chapter 372

Chapter 372

Chapter 372

KAEL

1

+5 Free Coins

I turned the corner into the central open area of the pack grounds the space that functioned as the natural intersection of several key paths through the territory, where the main building met the training complex and the domestic quarters and the clinic approach, where pack members moved through in sufficient numbers during the middle of the day that it never felt empty.

I stopped.

Because in the center of that space, walking in from the direction of the clinic, was Ivory. And walking in from the direction of the administrative building, not yet aware of each other, was Aria.

They were going to arrive in roughly the same location at roughly the same time.

I was already in the space, which meant the three of us were about to be standing in the center of the pack grounds

simultaneously, which in a different context would have been unremarkable and which in the current context, given whatever was circulating, was going to be something else entirely.

I registered this.

I also registered, in the same moment, that I was not alone in the central space.

There were pack members present. Of course there were pack members present – this was the central crossing, there were always pack members present. But these particular pack members had the specific quality of people who’d arrived at a place with some level of anticipation, who were being present with slightly more intentionality than the normal flow of midday traffic would account for.

My gaze went up.

The balcony that ran along the upper level of the main building’s east face was not usually occupied at this hour. It was occasionally used for observation during training exercises or for the kind of conversations that benefited from the elevated position and the view of the grounds.

Currently it held Nina. Jordan. Elite.

All three of them were leaning against the railing with the studied casualness of people who were definitely not here for any particular reason and had simply ended up in the same elevated location overlooking the central grounds simultaneously through pure coincidence.

Nina’s expression was the professional neutral she deployed for things she found entertaining but was not going to openly acknowledge finding entertaining.

Jordan had his arms crossed and was looking at a point slightly above the central space with the specific expression of someone working very hard to maintain a position that their face was actively trying to abandon.

Elite, who was not known for visible expressiveness, was smiling, An actual smile – present, genuine, the real thing rather than a professional approximation of one. Elite smiling was sufficiently unusual that I registered it immediately as evidence that whatever was happening was significant.”

The three of them knew. They’d known before this moment and had positioned themselves to watch the moment arrive.

1/3

0:44 am Pppp.

Chapter 372

+5 Free Coins

I did not have time to process what this meant before someone to my left – a pack member I recognized from the southern patrol rotation, a young man whose name I was momentarily failing to retrieve – cupped his hands around his mouth and produced a sound that carried across the entire central space with the specific carrying power of someone who’d committed fully to the contribution.

“Go Kael! Fucking two bad bitches at the same damn time!”

The central space responded.

Not with the shocked silence of a place that had heard something scandalous. With the sounds of multiple people having been waiting for exactly this moment, the specific joy of a crowd that had been anticipating something and had just received it.

I wanted to dissolve into the packed earth of the central grounds. I wanted it sincerely, with my whole body, in a way I hadn’t wanted anything this specific in recent memory. If the ground had opened I would have thanked it.

My wolf, who had been unsettled and strange since the first fragment of this information had reached me an hour ago and had been getting progressively less helpful about it as the picture assembled, was doing something that I could only describe as extremely pleased with himself. Not about the current moment – about the implied situation, the one that had clearly been filtering through his understanding of the circulating information and landing somewhere he found considerably more interesting than I found it.

*Stop it, I thought at him, with the specific forcefulness of someone who’d been having this internal argument since the first red- faced pack member.

He was not stopping it.

Aria was in the central space. She’d arrived in the last thirty seconds, had clearly also just registered the population of the grounds and the quality of the attention being paid, and was looking at me with an expression that contained several things I couldn’t quickly separate from each other. But she was red – the specific visible red that appeared on her face when something had caught her off guard.

Ivory was in the central space. She’d arrived from the clinic direction and had stopped, having registered approximately the same scene I was registering, and her expression was doing something that I recognized from years of learning her expressions – the specific thing that happened when Ivory encountered a situation that was simultaneously undignified and very funny and she was deciding how to handle the combination.

She looked at the balcony,

Nina gave a small wave. The wave of someone who was absolutely here coincidentally.

Ivory looked at Aria. Aria looked at Ivory. They both looked at me.

I was standing in the middle of the central grounds of my own pack being watched by approximately thirty people and the three most senior members of my inner leadership from an elevated position, with my wolf internally doing something I was refusing to examine, in a situation I didn’t fully understand but was fairly certain had been engineered by Sera Quinn for the specific purpose of making all of us uncomfortable.

I needed to do damage control. I needed to find a private space and have a direct conversation with Aria, who clearly had no idea what she’d been accused of being involved in, and explain that whatever Sera had said was Sera’s attempt to introduce conflict and that it had no basis and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

The problem was that thirty people were watching to see what happened next.

The problem was that the balcony contingent was wearing expressions that suggested they’d paid for very good seats and were

2/3

10:44 am Pppp.

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