Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 375

Chapter 375

Chapter 375

Chapter 375

KAEL

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“And I-“I stopped. Started again with the honesty the moment required. “I dealt with it. In my own way. Which involved telling her something that was not true but that I calculated would destroy the specific weapon she’d brought.”

The stillness continued.

“What did you tell her?” he asked. And his voice was the careful version – not the dangerous careful, not the contained fury careful, but the version that meant he was genuinely asking and wanted the genuine answer.

I looked at the conference table for a moment. At the grain of the wood, which was unremarkable and steadying in its unremarkableness.

“I told her,” I said, “that Ivory had kissed me. And that in that moment I’d realized I was always meant to be in a poly. And that this was why the information she was producing about you and Ivory being close wasn’t a weapon, because I was aware of and participating in and enjoying the situation she was describing.” I looked up. “And that the reason I wasn’t in the clinic with both of you was because she was in my office annoying me by existing.”

The silence in the conference room lasted approximately four seconds.

Kael sat down.

Not with the controlled deliberateness of someone choosing to sit. With the quality of someone whose legs had made a unilateral

decision.

“You told Sera Quinn,” he said slowly, “that you and Ivory-”

“Were in a relationship,” I said. “With you. All three of us. Yes.”

“And that Ivory had kissed you,”

“Yes.”

“And that this was why you weren’t threatened by the information about-”

“Yes,” I said, “All of that, In that order. With Celine present.”

Kael looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before on his face. It was trying to be several things simultaneously and not succeeding at any of them with full coherence the components visible as components rather than as a unified expression, the assembly in progress rather than complete.

“Celine,” he said.

“Who told Margo,” I said.

“Who told Nina,” he said, with the specific resignation of someone who’d just identified the precise mechanism by which information had traveled at the speed it had traveled.

“And Martha was in the corridor,” I said.

1/3

10:45 am Pppp.

Chapter 375

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He pressed both hands over his face. The gesture of a man applying significant pressure to a situation through the medium of his own palms. It lasted several seconds.

Then he lowered his hands.

“Why,” he said, and the word came out genuinely asking rather than accusing. “What was the calculation.”

I thought about how to explain this in a way that was honest about the reasoning without making it sound more considered than it had been, because the truth was that the reasoning had happened quickly and partly on instinct and the instinct had been Shadowmere-flavored in ways I was still getting used to.

“She came in with a specific weapon,” I said. “The weapon was: Ivory and Kael are in each other’s arms in the clinic and you should care about that. The weapon’s effectiveness depended on me receiving that information as a threat. On it producing jealousy, or insecurity, or conflict.” I held his gaze. “If I was in a poly, the information produced none of those things. The weapon became. useless because the premise it relied on – that I’d be threatened by you and Ivory being close – didn’t apply.”

Kael was quiet.

“It also,” I said, “protected Ivory. The information Sera was trying to use against you and Ivory – the clinic, the closeness, whatever she’d seen – I took it and made it into something she couldn’t deploy. Because if I was there too, in whatever version Sera had constructed, she couldn’t use it as evidence of betrayal.”

He looked at me for a long moment. The expression had finished assembling itself into something I could read now thing, several things, but organized rather than scattered.

“You protected Ivory,” he said.

“I protected the situation,” I said. “Ivory was part of the situation.”

“By telling Sera Quinn you were in a relationship with both of us.”

“Yes.”

“Which is now circulating through the entire pack.”

“At remarkable speed,” I agreed. “I did not fully anticipate the speed.”

–

not one

“Margo,” he said, with the tone of someone who absolutely should have anticipated the speed and was being gracious about not saying so.

“And Martha,” I said.

He sat back in his chair. Looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man conducting a private conversation with whatever higher power he’d decided was responsible for his circumstances.

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