Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 392

Chapter 392

Chapter 392

Chapter 392

ARIA

I heard it by accident. Again.

45 Free Coins

This was becoming a pattern in my life planned on learning. I was going to have to start making more noise when I walked through corridors, or develop a policy of announcing myself before turning corners, or simply accept that Shadowmere was a place where information found you regardless of whether you were looking for it.

arriving at the edges of conversations I hadn’t been invited to and learning things I hadn’t

The clinic corridor was quiet by the time we’d gotten Ivory settled. The medical team had taken over with the smooth efficiency of people who knew their healer and knew how to handle the specific challenge of a patient who was also the most qualified person in the room. There had been a brief moment when Ivory had attempted to direct her own treatment and Nina had said something in a tone I hadn’t heard her use before – not the professional neutral, not the security chief register, but the older one, the one that existed between people who’d known each other for two decades – and Ivory had subsided.

I’d been directed to a separate examination area for my own treatment, which consisted of the forearm scratch being cleaned and dressed by a healer who kept looking at it with the expression of someone who felt the injury should have been more significant given the context. The shoulder bruise was assessed, pronounced a bruise, and left to do what bruises did.

I’d been told to rest, which was reasonable advice that I was finding difficult to implement.

I was in the corridor outside the main examination room – the one where Ivory was being properly treated, where I could hear the muffled sounds of medical work being done and Ivory occasionally saying something that produced a response from the attending healer – when I heard Nina’s voice from around the corner to my left.

Not raised. Never raised. Nina’s voice at its most serious was quieter than her normal register, which was itself not loud. But the corridor was empty and the night was quiet and the words traveled.

“Your wolf went for her,” Nina said.

I stopped. The specific stop of someone who has heard their name without their name being used.

“I know,” Kael said.

“Not almost went for her,” Nina said. “Went. The lip was up, the teeth were visible, it was moving into a threat display. Another two seconds and it would have been an attack.”

A pause.

“I know,” Kael said again. Different inflection.

“She’s your mate,” Nina said.

“I know, Nina.”

“The wolf not recognizing her as his mate is-”

“I know what it is,” he said. The quiet flat version of his voice. The one that wasn’t angry but had run out of room for the topic. “I’m working on it. He’ll come around. The bond is there the wolf knows the bond is there, he just hasn’t processed it the way he

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Chapter 392

45 Free Going

needs to. It takes time in cases like this.”

“Cases like what specifically,” Nina said.

A pause longer than the others.

“Cases where the bond formed under unusual circumstances,” he said. “Where the wolf’s primary attachment and the bond’s attachment aren’t the same.”

The silence that came after this was Nina’s specific silence – the one that meant she’d heard something and was processing its full implications before deciding whether to respond to the surface or the depth.

“How unusual is unusual,” she said finally.

“We don’t need to have this conversation tonight,” he said.

–

“We need to have it before something happens in the corridor that can’t be walked back,” Nina said. “Your wolf attacked or nearly attacked – your Luna, Kael. If that happens in front of the pack-”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t guarantee-”

“I’m working on it,” he said, and the words had the weight of something final. Not dismissive. Final. The specific tone of someone who had heard the concern, had their own version of the concern, and was not capable of resolving it in a corridor tonight.

Nina heard the tone. She’d been reading his tones for years. The silence shifted.

“The other thing,” she said.

“Which other thing,” he said, and I could hear in those three words that he had a reasonable idea which other thing.

“Ivory,” Nina said. “The things she’s been doing. The search how long she was running it, where she went, who she made. enemies with.” A pause. “How many people are out there who have reasons to come after her because of what she did looking for a cure for you.”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “She hasn’t told me everything.”

“She won’t tell you everything,” Nina said. “You know that.”

“I’m aware,” he said. “I’m going to make her.”

“Trying to make Ivory tell you something she’s decided not to tell you is-”

“My problem,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”

“She almost died tonight,” Nina said, and the words were plain in the way of someone saying a thing that needed to be said without decoration.

“I know,” he said, and this version of those two words was the one that had everything in it. The weight behind them. All the things he wasn’t going to say in a corridor.

“Aria,” Nina said, shifting to the clinical register. “She was out there with a training injury and a silver-bolt attack and she refused to leave Ivory. Sent you through the bond under active threat. Controlled the darkness on the training traps to flush the attacker

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