Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 406

Chapter 406

Chapter 406

Chapter 406

ARIA

“There’s a list,” Kael said to Ivory.

“I told you there was documentation,” she said.

“Give me the list,” he said.

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“The list is part of the documentation package,” she said. “Which I can provide when I’m allowed to go to my office and-”

“Someone can get the documentation,” he said. “You’re staying on the table.”

“It’s in a locked-”

“Where’s the key,” he said.

“My quarters,” she said. “Bottom left drawer. Behind the second botanical reference text.” She paused. “Don’t move the text. I have the books organized.”

Jordan stood. “I’ll get it.”

“Don’t move the text,” Ivory said again, to his retreating back.

“The text will be in the same position,” Jordan said, from the door.

“And don’t look at what’s next to the key,” Ivory said.

Jordan stopped. Turned around. “What’s next to the key.”

“Nothing you need to look at,” Ivory said.

“Now I need to look at it,” Jordan said.

“Don’t,” Ivory said.

“What is it,” I said, because the curiosity was becoming physically uncomfortable.

“It’s nothing,” Ivory said.

“It’s clearly something,” Nina said.

“It’s a journal,” Ivory said, with the resigned quality of someone whose deflection had run out. “A personal journal. From the second curse year. It’s private and no one is to read it.”

“I won’t read it,” Jordan said.

“You will absolutely read it,” Ivory said. “You’ll read the first line and tell yourself you’ll stop and then you’ll read twelve pages”

“I have professional ethics,” Jordan said.

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Chapter 406

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“You stood outside this clinic for twenty minutes this morning pretending to check the perimeter,” Ivory said. “Your professional ethics are situational.”

“The perimeter required-”

“Jordan,” Kael said. “Get the documentation. Don’t read the journal.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Jordan said, and left.

Ivory watched the door close behind him and looked at the ceiling with the expression of someone calculating the probability that Jordan would read the journal and arriving at a number she didn’t like.

“Continue,” Kael said.

She continued.

The third incident involved someone following her from a research visit and getting considerably closer than the first two. The fourth involved a group who’d been organized by the collector to retrieve the information she’d taken. The fifth involved an ambush in a neutral territory that she’d been in for what she described as an unrelated healer consultation and that I suspected was not unrelated at all.

By the tenth incident, Kael was no longer sitting forward in the chair. He was sitting very still in the way that went with the flat amber of his wolf’s threat response – not the human version of agitation, not the managed performance of control, but the deeper stillness of someone who’d moved past the reactive stage into something colder.

By the twentieth incident, Nina had filled four pages of notes and started a fifth.

“The man who set the fire,” Kael said, at incident twenty-three. “The one who tried to burn the secondary clinic storage while you were doing overnight treatment.”

“He was identified in the documentation,” Ivory said.

“He was identified,” Kael said. “Past tense.”

“He encountered some difficulties approximately two months after the incident,” Ivory said.

“What kind of difficulties,” Kael said.

“The fatal kind,” Ivory said.

Kael looked at Nina.

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“You killed him,” Nina said to Kael, with the specific neutrality of someone delivering a finding.

Kael looked at her. “I didn’t know about-”

“Two months after the incident,” Nina said. “You tracked a rogue wolf operating near the secondary border who’d been causing problems for two allied packs. You dealt with it.”

“That was-” Kael started.

“The same person,” Nina said. “He’d been operating as a rogue between incidents. The border problem was related to his other activities.” She made a note. “You handled it without knowing it was him.”

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Chapter 406

“So I already killed him,” Kael said.

“You already killed him,” Nina confirmed.

“Good,” Kael said, with the flat satisfaction of someone filing something in the correct category.

“It wasn’t accidentally,” Jordan said, from the door – he’d returned faster than expected, the documentation folder in hend, not the journal. He’d clearly moved quickly and not gotten distracted. “He’d been escalating. Whatever he did to the clinic storage was consistent with the pattern.”

“It wasn’t accidentally,” Kael said.

“No,” Jordan said. “It wasn’t.”

“Good,” Kael said again.

Ivory looked at the folder Jordan had brought with the expression of someone seeing something they’d created under difficult circumstances. He handed it to Kael, who opened it and looked at the first page with the attention of someone reading something that was making his jaw do the specific thing it did when he was processing significant anger.

“These are organized,” he said.

“I told you,” Ivory said. “I document.”

“They’re organized by incident number, date, location, persons involved, and outcome,” he said.

“Also by threat level,” she said. “The color coding on the tabs indicates severity.”

“You color coded your assassination attempts,” Jordan said.

“Organization reduces stress,” Ivory said.

“Your stress, specifically,” Nina said, “or-”

“The documentation was for the search,” Ivory said. “Understanding the pattern of who was protecting what information and why helped me know where to look next. If someone was willing to kill to protect specific information, that information was significant The documentation helped me prioritize.”

“You used people trying to kill you as a research methodology,” Jordan said.

“I used the pattern of who was trying to kill me as information about what was worth knowing,” Ivory said. “Yes”

The room absorbed this.

“Incident thirty-four,” Kael said, looking at the folder.

Ivory’s gaze went to the ceiling.

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