Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 386

Chapter 386

Chapter 386

ARIA

The wolves came down the slope like a storm that had learned to run.

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I heard them before I saw them – the sound of large bodies moving fast through undergrowth, branches breaking, paws hitting the earth with the kind of force that only came from something very big moving at full speed. Multiple wolves. Six at least, maybe more, spreading out across the lower slope in the coordinated way of a pack that had been sent rather than scattered.

Then I saw the first one through a gap in the rock formation and I understood why the Shadowmere wolves had the reputation they had.

They were big. I’d seen pack wolves before – had grown up near enough to shifting culture to have a reasonable baseline. But these were something different. Larger than the standard, moving with a purpose that made them look even bigger than they were, their eyes carrying the specific quality of wolves who weren’t just animals but were people in a different shape, people who could think through what they were doing while doing it.

Ivory had stopped trying to pretend her shoulder was fine approximately three minutes ago.

I’d noticed it first in her breathing – the specific effort of someone managing real pain rather than discomfort. Then in the way she was holding her left arm, pressed close to her body, not moving it at all rather than the occasional careful use she’d been attempting earlier. The impact from the bolt that had gotten through Aryada’s shield had done more than just knock her back. The shoulder was wrong in a way that was getting worse rather than better as the adrenaline cleared.

“How bad is it,” I said.

“I’ve had worse,” she said.

“Ivory,” I said.

“The shoulder is dislocated,” she said, in the specific flat tone of a healer giving a diagnosis about herself. “Probably some structural damage to the joint from the impact. The bolt itself didn’t penetrate – Aryada’s gift stopped the sharp end – but the blunt force at that velocity is-” she stopped. Made a controlled sound. “Significant.”

“That’s bad,” I said.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t bad,” she said. “I said I’ve had worse.”

1

not dead, not

The figure on the path was not silent. She was making sounds that were pain and fury in roughly equal measure fully incapacitated, but the silver in the crossbow bolts was doing something to her power that had slowed her down considerably. I could hear her moving, could feel her presence with the expanded awareness, but she wasn’t coming toward us.

I kept the darkness wrapped around our position and watched the slope above.

black, the specific deep black that

The first wolf through the gap in the lower terrain was black. Not dark gray, not dark brown absorbed light rather than reflecting it, that made the wolf look like a piece of night that had decided to move. Massive. The head was at the level of my shoulder even as it moved low and fast across the ground.

1 recognized the wolf.

1/2

Chapter 386

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Not from seeing it before. From the bond.

The moment the wolf entered my range of perception the bond responded in a way it had never responded before-a pull, a recognition, something that said ‘there’ in the direction of that enormous black shape the way a compass needle said north. Not the careful reaching I’d done to send the image up the hill. Something more immediate. More physical.

This was Kael.

But the bond felt wrong.

Not wrong in the sense of broken – still present, still running the thread from my chest to somewhere beyond me. But different. Thinner. Like a signal that was present but not clear, like trying to hear a voice through walls.

I’d felt Kael through the bond before, in small ways I’d been learning to recognize the occasional sense of his emotional state, the warm quality that appeared when he was nearby even before I saw him. It was subtle and I was still learning it.

This was not that. This was something that felt like Kael but wasn’t entirely Kael, and the bond was reaching for the man and finding mostly the animal.

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