Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 407

Chapter 407

Chapter 407

Chapter 407

ARIA

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“How,” he said.

“The documentation notes that the individual involved had an unfortunate fall,” she said. “From a significant height. While I was in the building.”

“While you were in the building,” he said.

“I didn’t push him,” she said. “I may have created conditions that made a fall more likely.”

“Conditions,” Nina said, writing.

“I moved a structural support,” Ivory said. “The one he was leaning against. While discussing something with him.”

“You’moved a structural support,” Kael said.

“It was a calculated structural support,” she said. “I understood the weight distribution of the room. The fall was survivable. He was injured but functional.”

“And then you escaped,” he said.

“And then I escaped,” she said.

Kael set the folder down on his knee and looked at it for a moment. Not reading. Looking at the physical object of it – the organized tabs, the color coding, the careful documentation of sixty-nine incidents across four years.

“Drugged,” he said.

“Incident forty-one,” she said. “Sedative compound in the water supply at a research facility I was using. Standard dose. I identified it after approximately twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes after taking it,” he said.

“It was a low dose,” she said.

“You were sedated for twenty minutes by a hostile compound in an unsecured location,” he said.

“I was significantly impaired for twenty minutes in an unsecured location,” she said. “And then the impairment cleared and I left.”

“How did you leave,” he said.

“Quickly,” she said.

He closed his eyes briefly. The expression of a man conducting a private conversation with his own composure and finding it a difficult conversation.

“Waterboarded,” he said.

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4:46 pm

Chapter 407

The word fell differently than the others. The room’s quality changed.

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“Incident fifty-two,” Ivory said, and her voice was the most clinical it had been for the whole account. The clinical tone doing the most work it had done, carrying the most weight. “A group who believed I had information they needed. They were wrong about what I had – I’d already moved the relevant materials – but they didn’t know that.”

“How long,” he said.

“The incident lasted approximately four hours,” she said.

“How long were you-”

“Multiple sessions,” she said. “During the four hours.” She looked at the window. “I’ve treated waterboarding victims. In the clinic. The physical recovery is straightforward. The other recovery takes longer.”

Nobody said anything.

“The other recovery,” Kael said.

“Takes longer,” she said again. “I managed it.”

“Alone,” he said.

“I managed it,” she said.

The folder in his hands had gone slightly crumpled at one corner. He straightened it with deliberate care and set it on the table.

“Target practice,” he said.

“Incident sixty-one,” she said. “A group who’d been studying lunar-adjacent powers and wanted to test their defenses against a skilled practitioner.” She paused. “I was not a willing participant in this study.”

“They used you as target practice,” he said.

“For approximately three hours,” she said. “I survived all of the tests, which I think speaks reasonably well of-”

“You survived all of the tests,” Jordan said, and his voice had lost the ceiling-looking quality and arrived somewhere more direct.

“All of them,” Ivory said. “Tenth percentile difficulty, according to their scale. Which they told me afterward, while treating my injuries, because they apparently believed that information would be comforting.”

“They treated your injuries afterward,” I said, because this detail was sitting strangely.

“They were researchers,” Ivory said. “They needed me functional for the next session. The injury treatment was pragmatic rather than-” she stopped. “They were pragmatic about it.”

“How many sessions,” Kael said.

“Three,” she said.

“Three sessions of being used as a target by people testing tenth-percentile defenses,” he said.

“I killed four of them on the third session,” she said. “Which ended the study.”

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4:46 pm Ppp.

Chapter 407

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“You killed four of them,” he said.

“In self-defense,” she said. “The third session went beyond their stated parameters. I responded accordingly.”

“The thirty,” Nina said, looking at her notes. “You’ve killed thirty of the sixty-nine incidents’ participants.”

“Thirty,” Ivory confirmed. “Various incidents. All in self-defense or direct response to immediate threat.”

“The remaining thirty-nine,” Nina said.

“Have either been handled-” she looked at Kael, “-or are still out there.”

Kael opened the folder again. He looked at a specific page, and something in his expression did the thing where it was doing several things that weren’t visible individually but collectively read as the specific state of someone who had reached the outer boundary of their controlled processing and was deciding what happened next.

“One hundred and twenty-six,” he said.

“I’m sorry?” Ivory said.

“In wolf form,” he said. “Across the curse years. People who came at Shadowmere. People who came at you. People who used the pack’s weakness while I was cursed to try to take what they wanted.” He looked at the folder. “Some of the names in this file – some of the groups. I’ve encountered them. In wolf form. I didn’t know why at the time. I thought it was standard pack defense.”

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