Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 415

Chapter 415

Chapter 415

Chapter 415

ARIA

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“We need answers,” Nina said. “We need to know what he knows about the hierarchy. Who he reports to. Where the others are. If he’s dead we don’t get those answers.” She got Kael’s other arm. “Pull back. Now.”

“You can kill him after,” Jordan said. “Answers first.”

“I already killed the first group he sent,” Kael said, with the specific frustration of someone who’d taken a position and was being interrupted from it. “Apparently by accident. I’d like to be intentional this time.”

“Intentional after answers,” Jordan said. “Pull back.”

“He planned to use Ivory’s policy against her,” Kael said, still in the intense focused tone. “He knew she wouldn’t talk about the incidents. He counted on her silence to walk right up to her clinic. He was going to count on the open door policy to access her- directly-”

“I know,” Nina said. “I know what he was planning. Pull back and we’ll get everything he knows and then you can-”

“He sent four groups,” Kael said. “Four separate-”

“Pull back,” Nina said. “I’m asking you. Pull back.”

Something in her voice – the specific layer that existed below the security chief and came from someone who’d been standing in his corner since before either of them had been the people they currently were – landed.

He pulled back.

One step. Then another. His eyes were still amber but the quality of the amber had shifted – from the flat threat-response version to the one that had warmth at its edges, that had the man behind it more present.

Alric Vesper was on the floor. He was alive. The arm was a problem that was going to need addressing, and his face had the look of someone who’d arrived expecting a vulnerable healer with a no-violence policy and had found something considerably more complicated.

He moved.

Not attacking that ship had sailed when the arm had become what it was. He moved with the specific motion of someone who’d made a calculation and decided that the confusion of the current moment was the only window available. Jordan and Nina were focused on Kael. Kael was focused on the pull-back. The corridor behind us had a turn that led back toward the gate and the gate had the confusion of the plants and the guards who were dealing with the aftermath of the plant delivery.

He went for the corridor gap between Jordan and the wall.

He almost made it.

I raised my hand.

I didn’t think about it. That was the honest accounting – there was no planning between seeing the gap and seeing him moving toward it and my hand coming up. The anchor was there, as it always was now, warm and present, and the lunar power gathered

1/3

4:47 pm Ppp.

Chapter 415

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and released in the half-second that was available.

Not the full version. Not the kind that had shattered clay discs and lit up a hillside. The depowered version – the one that I’d been practicing in the restricted training, the one Ivory had described as the minimum necessary rather than the maximum available.

It hit Alric Vesper in the back with the force of someone very large pushing very hard. He hit the corridor wall. The wall held – it was Shadowmere construction, which I was learning meant it held things considerably larger than one moderately depowered Luna blast. He didn’t go through it. He hit it and bounced and landed on the floor and didn’t get up.

Not dead. Unconscious. The specific boneless quality of someone whose body had decided to stop operating for a while.

The corridor was very quiet.

Jordan was looking at me. His expression had traveled through several stages and arrived at something that was genuine and slightly awed.

Nina was looking at me. Her expression was the professional neutral, but it was doing something at the edges.

Kael was looking at me. His eyes had gone back to their normal color and he was looking at me with the expression I’d seen when Ivory had reported six seconds on the scream.

“Oh,” Jordan said, into the silence. His voice had the quality of a man who’d had a realization arrive. “Oh, we’ve corrupted her.”

“We absolutely have,” he said, to no one in particular. “She just-” he looked at Alric on the floor. “She absolutely did that. She shot

a man.”

“He was escaping,” I said.

“He was escaping,” Jordan agreed, in the tone of someone who found this an entirely reasonable response. “Yes. He was escaping. She stopped the escape.” He looked at Kael. “Minimum necessary force, actually. He’s breathing.”

“He’s breathing,” I confirmed.

“Ivory will be furious she missed this,” Nina said. She was writing in her notebook, which she’d somehow produced from somewhere during the course of the last ninety seconds. “She was specifically hoping to be present for first operational use of the blast.”

“She mentioned that?” I said.

“Last week,” Nina said. “She said, and I’m quoting, ‘I want to be in the room when it first goes wrong or right in a real situation because I’ve put significant work into that development and I’d like to see the return.” She looked up from her notes. “It went right, for the record.”

“For the record,” Jordan said. He looked at the unconscious form of Alric Vesper. “He’s going to need the arm looked at.”

“He’s going to need a lot looked at,” Kael said. His voice had come all the way back from the amber. He was looking at Alric with the expression of someone who’d wanted a different outcome and was making his peace with the available one. “Nina.”

“Secure him first,” Nina said. “Then medical. Then answers.” She looked at Jordan. “You have rope?”

“I have the rope from this morning,” Jordan said.

“Get it,” Nina said.

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