Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 412

Chapter 412

ARIA

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The training ground held this for a moment.

“That is,” I said carefully, “very Shadowmere.”

Kael looked at me.

“The queue for the assassination,” I said. “The modified plants requiring permission to enter. The specific botanical fortification of a perimeter so that one person who was hunting you would have to file paperwork.” I held his gaze. “That is the most Shadowmere approach to a mortal enemy I have heard described.”

Something happened in his expression.

Nina made a sound that was not her usual sound. Shorter. Sharper. The genuine kind.

“She built a security system,” Kael said, and his voice was doing the thing that happened when it was trying to be something other than what it was, “out of plants and healer knowledge and lunar-adjacent botany, that would have required a hostile agent to ask for a visitor pass and wait in line.”

“And she did it without telling anyone,” Nina said, “because if she told anyone they’d want to know why, and if they knew why they’d know about the attacker, and if they knew about the attacker there would be a whole-”

“Conversation,” Kael said.

“Involving rope, presumably,” Nina said.

“And Elite benchpressing contingencies,” I said.

He pressed his hand over his mouth.

The gesture was not the same as the one in the training ground when he’d been managing the grief and the anger. This one was managing something different.

“I’m going to be furious at her about this for a long time,” he said, through the hand.

“Yes,” Nina agreed.

“And the furious is also something else,” he said.

“Yes,” Nina said.

“Those two things are going to coexist for a while,” he said.

“They generally do with her,” Nina said. “I’ve been managing that combination for twenty-some years.”

He lowered the hand. Looked at the hole in the wall. At the concrete fragments scattered across the training ground floor.

“I should fix that,” he said.

1/44

4:46 pm P

Chapter 412

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“Jordan will handle it,” Nina said. “He’s handled it before.”

“How many times has Jordan handled-”

“More than once,” Nina said. “Less than twenty. We don’t keep exact records.”

He nodded. Looked at the training ground. At the bench he’d been sitting on. At me, still standing to the side, still present, still not having said the wrong thing through what had been a significant amount of material to navigate.

“You stayed,” he said.

“You needed someone to stay,” I said.

He held my gaze for a moment with the expression that I’d been learning to read – the one that was the quiet version of the warm version, the one that didn’t announce itself.

“The bond,” he said. “Last night. The way you called.”

“It worked,” I said.

“It worked,” he agreed. “And you called for me specifically. Not the wolf.”

“Ivory told me to,” I said. “She said you were different people.”

“We are,” he said. “Different people. Same body. Different-” he looked for the word, “-primary concerns. In a crisis.”

“She told me to call for the person who would think first,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“He was first to her. Even through the bond calling for me.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’m working on it,” he said.

“I know that too,” I said.

“What do we know that the attacker from last night probably knows by now”

“She knows what Ivory knows,” he said. “About the construction. About the bloodline. About-” he stopped, looking at me.

“About me,” I said,

“About you,” he said. “She saw what you did on the slope. The shield. The darkness. She may not have identified the full scope of what she was looking at, but she knows you were there and she knows you were capable”

“She said she’d found Ivory,” I said. “Not me. Her announcement was specifically about Ivory.”

“For now,” Nina said. “The connection between Ivory and a child of the moon bloodline is documented in what she took from the collector. When she reports back to whoever she reports to-”

“They’ll know Shadowmere has one,” Kael said.

2/4

4:46 pm PPP.

Chapter 412

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“They may already know,” Nina said. “The Hunt results were widely reported. Four fragments has specific implications for people who understand the bloodline.”

“So we’re working against a timeline,” Kael said.

“We’ve been working against a timeline,” Nina said. “We just now have a clearer picture of what the timeline is.”

He turned from the wall fully and looked at the training grounds beyond the complex – the open space, the pack doing its afternoon things in the distance, the ordinary functioning of Shadowmere continuing regardless of what was happening in the clinic and the training hall.

“Three hundred and forty-three pack members,” he said.

“Three hundred and forty-three,” Nina confirmed.

“Plus one healer who is currently arguing about rope,” he said.

“Plus one healer,” she agreed.

“Plus one Luna who split a discharge last night and used a lunar scream on Ivory for six seconds,” he said.

I kept my expression still.

“Plus the security chief and the second and Elite and whatever this situation requires,” he said. “We have what we have.”

“We have what we have,” Nina said.

“And the attacker,” he said, “made the mistake of going after someone inside it.”

‘She did,” Nina said.

‘That was her error,” he said. “We’ll make sure it’s a thorough one.”

He looked at the gap in the concrete wall one more time. Then he looked at me.

‘Thank you,” he said. “For last night. For the bond call. For not leaving.”

‘Ivory needed help,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “She did.” He paused. “She doesn’t like needing help.”

‘I know,” I said.

‘She’s going to argue about the thirty-five hours,” he said.

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